xviii ; to define is to limit @soliloquyofstars - Tumblr Blog

Scenes to Write When You’re Blocked

Not to keep, not to polish… Just to shake the rust loose.

• A character deletes and rewrites a text three times before sending it • Two people arguing quietly so no one else hears • Someone almost confessing something and backing out • A character lying about being “fine” in a way that convinces no one • Bonus: Same scene but they convince everyone, and it's even worse • An apology that comes moments too late • A secret revealed accidentally, not dramatically • A character overhearing only half a conversation • Someone packing a bag and pretending it’s temporary • A reunion where one person is happier than the other • A goodbye that is meant to be casual but isn’t

Low stakes, high emotion. Momentum comes from movement, not brilliance.

hayatheauthor

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas:

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

Instagram Tiktok

kerriganhouse

[KHD] Linen Bathroom Set

16 all new original meshes

includes sims 3 conversions by @keibea

see more previews here

ToU

[Download] patreon // early access (may 3)

birdcagewalk

hwhwgwhnwnwbwbwg-deactivated202

on-the-heath

good morning to the sunlight hitting my desk and the sunlight hitting my desk only

rocktheholygrail

Hannibal 1x04 - “Œuf”

rocktheholygrail

celluloidvampire

always thinking about the production of hamlet i saw at the pop up globe a couple of years ago where everyone was costumed in typical shakespearean dress and the set was fairly minimal BUT! they gave polonius an iphone. it was like a running gag that his ringtone kept going off when hamlet or claudius were trying to speak and they would get more and more impatient with him every time. the cast had perfect comedic timing and it was such a perfect modernisation of typical shakespeare humour

but oh my God. the nervous laughter that rippled through the audience when his phone went off behind the tapestry. the heavy silence that followed, interrupted only by the incessant chime of polonius' ringtone and a muffled "shit, shit!" while he tried to decline the call. it keeps ringing even after hamlet has already put his sword through him. hamlet picks it up in his bloody hands and ends the call, puts it back in polonius' grasp before turning back to face gertrude.

hands down the best set up and pay-off of any addition to a shakespeare play i have ever witnessed

theandreaharker

obsessed with the art of studying

queenmoriarty

must be the season

of the witch

🎃

joytri

Hello October

ace-and-ranty

Listen, I’m not for a “TikTok is ruining literature” panic, and it’s FINE if you use tropes to describe your book, tropes are very useful, but I just.

I just run across a book claiming to be a dark retelling.

And the. The fucking summary. Reads.

“You can expect ‘touch her and I’ll unalive you’ vibes.”

THIS IS A BOOK SUMMARY. ON GOODREADS. YOU DON’T GOTTA CENSURE ‘KILL’. THIS IS A MOTHERFUCKING DARK RETELLING AND YOU’RE THREATENING TO ‘UNALIVE’ SOMEONE?

tributary

lovelesshearts

"The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine" by Eric Cassell

mountain-spirits-deactivated202

There were many reasons why I stepped away from archaeology & academia just 16 months post-PhD but the one that still angers me most today has to be the ways in which the Institution™ categorizes folklore vs science when it comes to Indigenous people. Ancestral knowledge of the ‘Old World’ is seen as a form of early science—curiosity leading to rigorous study and eventual advancement—with their fairytales and folklore viewed as purposefully allegorical. The Indigenous people of Africa, Turtle Island, and the rest of the so-called Americas never got that same respect. Outside of a handful of tokenized and understudied societies, most Indigenous ancestral knowledge is viewed through the lens of folklore—and no grace is given to allegory or metaphor or philosophy, either. The assumption is that our people can only think in literal, concrete terms. And it’s fucking insulting. There’s this joke in academia that if archaeologists don’t know an artifact’s usage they’ll deem it as ‘ritualistic purposes’; and it’s funny or whatever but nine times out of ten those artifacts are from [insert literally any Turtle Island or Mesoamerican nation] and not from much-older Greek civilizations. But it’s not well-studied because we’re not well-respected, and therefore nobody bothered to ask our still-living people who are very much aware of what said artifact was meant for (spoiler alert: not ritualistic).

Early on in my first Master’s program I got into a huge fight with a white professor who wanted to use a widely misinterpreted SuPeRsTiTiOn from MY tribe as an example of a persistent folktale. The folktale being that: Chiricahua Apache women don’t take baths during pregnancy bc we think the water is evil. It is true that, after being moved onto the rez, birthing + postpartum women were becoming ill when they bathed. This isn’t some ancient happening stoked by mythology—this is 100 years ago to recent times; midwives saw it happening and acted by cautioning against bathing. My grandmother, an Indigenous midwife, saw it play out and is very hesitant to recommend bathing to birthing women on the rez today. This isn’t because she or any other Chiricahua thinks water is evil; it’s because water quality has been so horrific that it quite literally was infecting the womb at its most vulnerable time. Had this been a European society, this knowledge would be considered evidence-based but since we’re Indigenous, they slap some contrived faux folkways mythos onto it and call it superstitious.

This is just one example of what happens on a constant basis when it comes to communities who are being oppressed by the same systems that set the standards for what science, history, and art are.

It’s maddening and sickening to me to this day.

(Tangentially, the next time I see a non-ndn upload or reblog our artifacts and crafts and tag it as “primitive art”, I’m going to scalp you. You’ve been duly warned)