: Re: Effective techniques for describing pain I've noticed something in writing: it's difficult to convey pain, and even specific types of pain, to an audience who's comfortably sitting at home in

@Annie587

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You have surely felt pain at some time in the past. Think back to what it was like. What thoughts went through your head?

Two concrete suggestions:

-1- Use metaphors or some form of poetic language. I write non-fiction so I don't claim to be good at this, but which of these do you think is more effective:

(a) When he was stabbed, it hurt really bad. He had trouble breathing.

(b) When he was stabbed, it felt like a fire raging through his chest. The air rushed out of his lungs and he struggled to get a breath, like he was a hundred feet under water.

-2- Take your time. Build up to it. Make sure we care about the character first, so that his pain matters. Drag out the description of the pain. In real life when I've felt physical pain I've often thought that it dragged on forever. So don't just say, "It hurt really bad. When he got over it he went to the store."

This isn't entirely the same thing but I recall a novel I read once where a character is introduced and then it's revealed that her husband? boyfriend? whatever recently died and she is upset to the point of suicide. But as I read the story, this character was introduced and then like two pages later the reader is expected to feel deep sympathy for her loss. I'm sorry, but I just didn't. Intellectually I can certainly appreciate that such a loss could be very upsetting, but with no build up, I just didn't care about the character. You can't just say, "Then I met a woman named Jane. She was dying of cancer and was in a lot of pain." The reader won't care. You need to tell us enough about Jane first that we start to think of her as someone we know and like before we're going to care about her pain.

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