AUTHOR | HISTORIAN | ARTIST

alatar-and-pallando:

So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…

I’m aiming to fix that.

Here are over 100 links covering just about every facet of traumatic injuries (physical, psychological, long-term), focusing mainly on burns, concussions, fractures, and lacerations. Now you can beat up your characters properly!

General resources

WebMD

Mayo Clinic first aid

Mayo Clinic diseases

First Aid

PubMed: The source for biomedical literature

Diagrams: Veins (towards heart), arteries (away from heart) bones, nervous system, brain

Burns

General overview: Includes degrees

Burn severity: Including how to estimate body area affected

Burn treatment: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degrees

Smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation treatment

Chemical burns

Hot tar burns

Sunburns

Incisions and Lacerations

Essentials of skin laceration repair (including stitching techniques)

When to stitch (Journal article–Doctors apparently usually go by experience on this)

More about when to stitch (Simple guide for moms)

Basic wound treatment

Incision vs. laceration: Most of the time (including in medical literature) they’re used synonymously, but eh.

Types of lacerations: Page has links to some particularly graphic images–beware!

How to stop bleeding: 1, 2, 3

Puncture wounds: Including a bit about what sort of wounds are most likely to become infected

More about puncture wounds

Wound assessment: A huge amount of information, including what the color of the flesh indicates, different kinds of things that ooze from a wound, and so much more.

Home treatment of gunshot wound, also basics
More about gunshot wounds, including medical procedures

Tourniquet use: Controversy around it, latest research

Location pain chart: Originally intended for tattoo pain, but pretty accurate for cuts

General note: Deeper=more serious. Elevate wounded limb so that gravity draws blood towards heart. Scalp wounds also bleed a lot but tend to be superficial. If it’s dirty, risk infection. If it hits the digestive system and you don’t die immediately, infection’ll probably kill you. Don’t forget the possibility of tetanus! If a wound is positioned such that movement would cause the wound to gape open (i.e. horizontally across the knee) it’s harder to keep it closed and may take longer for it to heal.

Broken bones

Types of fractures

Setting a broken bone when no doctor is available

Healing time of common fractures

Broken wrists

Broken ankles/feet

Fractured vertebrae: Neck (1, 2), back

Types of casts

Splints

Fracture complications

Broken noses

Broken digits: Fingers and toes

General notes: If it’s a compound fracture (bone poking through) good luck fixing it on your own. If the bone is in multiple pieces, surgery is necessary to fix it–probably can’t reduce (“set”) it from the outside. Older people heal more slowly. It’s possible for bones to “heal” crooked and cause long-term problems and joint pain. Consider damage to nearby nerves, muscle, and blood vessels.

Concussions

General overview

Types of concussions 1, 2

Concussion complications

Mild Brain Injuries: The next step up from most severe type of concussion, Grade 3

Post-concussion syndrome

Second impact syndrome: When a second blow delivered before recovering from the initial concussion has catastrophic effects. Apparently rare.

Recovering from a concussion

Symptoms: Scroll about halfway down the page for the most severe symptoms

Whiplash

General notes: If you pass out, even for a few seconds, it’s serious. If you have multiple concussions over a lifetime, they will be progressively more serious. Symptoms can linger for a long time.

Character reaction:

Shock (general)

Physical shock: 1, 2

Fight-or-flight response: 1, 2

Long-term emotional trauma: 1 (Includes symptoms), 2

First aid for emotional trauma

Treatment (drugs)

WebMD painkiller guide

Treatment (herbs)

1, 2, 3, 4

Miscellany

Snake bites: No, you don’t suck the venom out or apply tourniquettes

Frostbite

Frostbite treatment

Severe frostbite treatment

When frostbite sets in: A handy chart for how long your characters have outside at various temperatures and wind speeds before they get frostbitten

First aid myths: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Includes the ones about buttering burns and putting snow on frostbite.

Poisons: Why inducing vomiting is a bad idea

Poisonous plants

Dislocations: Symptoms 1, 2; treatment. General notes: Repeated dislocations of same joint may lead to permanent tissue damage and may cause or be symptomatic of weakened ligaments. Docs recommend against trying to reduce (put back) dislocated joint on your own, though information about how to do it is easily found online.

Muscular strains

Joint sprain

Resuscitation after near-drowning: 1, 2

Current CPR practices: We don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.

The DSM IV, for all your mental illness needs.

Electrical shock

Human response to electrical shock: Includes handy-dandy voltage chart

Length of contact needed at different voltages to cause injury

Evaluation protocol for electric shock injury

Neurological complications

Electrical and lightning injury

Cardiac complications

Delayed effects and a good general summary

Acquired savant syndrome: Brain injuries (including a lightning strike) triggering development of amazing artistic and other abilities

Please don’t repost! You can find the original document (also created by me) here.

write-like-a-freak:

Maybe you’re like Old Me and you suck at editing/revising so when you’re trying to fix your novel after the 2nd read through you panic and think “I HAVE TO REWRITE EVERYTHING” and after crying for a long time you give up and rewrite everything. You do this approximately a dozen times–and sure, every time you rewrite certain aspects of your story get better and better. But every time, there are new negatives that arise that keep your story from ever being the best it can be. So you panic and rewrite everything again.

If this is you–try this method. Now, you will need to customize this method to yourself as a writer and to your story. I’m just going to tell you how I am doing mine, and you can tweak and turn this method to match your needs.

Organized in: 

Initial Notes, Beginning Edits, Being Nice to Yourself, and Plot

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First – Initial Notes

You want to have some idea of what you’re looking to change in your MS before you start making changes. I always do one simple read through before printing off, and I make notes of things I want to make sure I address when editing–this list will get added to as I go along (You’ll notice things are in different colors but I’ll get to that in a minute)

It is possible to use this method on the computer so you don’t have to print everything off, but my brain doesn’t work like that, so I printed off my entire manuscript, and I had used the “comment”s on MS Word a few times so it naturally prints leaving a large amount of room for notes in the margins.

Next I have my multi-colored pens and hi-lighters.

Each of the pens and hilighters has a specific purpose so I know when I’m looking at my notes how I intended to handle the issue when I was reading through. To make sure I have everything straight, I make a list of what each color means

That way the actual MS won’t be cluttered with explanations of what I intended–I know that if something is hilighted in yellow it means it sounds clunky or OOC and it needs to be reworded. If there is something specific I want my future self to know about these notes, I will put it in My Edits Notebook

Second – Beginning Edits

Keep reading

legit-writing-tips:

There are lots of character development worksheets out there, but in my opinion nothing that really examines a character’s growth and development, which is what I’m aiming to do with mine. You can use this to better understand your character, spot “holes” in their development, or to build a character from scratch! 

_____________________

Ancestry

1. What is this character’s lineage? 
2. Are there any genetic factors that may affect them? (Mental illness/disabilities that run in the family, magical lineage, etc.?)
3. What is/was their parents’ social class? 
4. What are their parents/caregivers like prior to their being born?
5. If not raised by their parents, then by whom? Are their caretakers of a different social class than the character? How are they treated as a result?
6. In the case of non-human characters, what is the status of their “kind” prior to their birth/construction/etc.? (E.g., are they the first generation of a new AI? Are they the first generation of vampires to live in the light?) 
7. Are there changing social values between prior generations and their own that may affect them?

_____________________

Circumstances at Birth

1. What is their parental status at birth? (Single mother, both parents, etc.)
2. What social class is your character born into?
3. What is expected of your character based on the social class that they are born into? By their parents/caregivers? By the society they live in?
4. How are they advantaged/disadvantaged at birth? Disability? Poverty? Etc.
5. Are there any circumstances surrounding their birth that may affect their early childhood? (For example, they were unwanted by their parents/caregivers, they were the long-awaited heir to a kingdom, or they were born (assigned as) a girl when the parents were hoping for a boy?)

_____________________

Childhood 

1. If they lose a parent/are orphaned/adopted/parents divorce, etc., at what age does this happen? a.) How does the age at which this happened affect them? Do they remember this change? Are they affected by the change?
2. Does their social status/class change at any point during childhood? Why?
3. What is their relationship with their parents/caregivers like? How do these interactions affect them in later life? (For example, a perfectionist character may have only received approval from their parents for big achievements.)
4. Do they have siblings or other close relationships with family members of a similar age? (Do bear in mind that early relationships with siblings can play a strong role in the way that people approach friendships in later years.)
5. If they have siblings, what is their birth order, and how does this affect them?
6. What are some of the most impactful moments from their childhood? How do these moments affect them? What do they learn from these experiences? (E.g., “authority figures aren’t to be trusted).
7. Was their childhood a happy one? If not, how do they see their childhood as an adult? Does this make them angry, do they try to ignore it, or have they moved on?
8. What are their typical social interactions like as children? Do they have a lot of friends, are they shy, etc.?
9. Do they exhibit expected behaviors or have difficulty conforming? (Conforming to gender roles or not, for example.)
10. What are their primary interests as a child?

_____________________

Adolescence

1. Is there a turning point that moves your characters from childhood and into a more “mature” perspective? (For example, the death of a loved one.) 
2. Does their social status/class change at any point during adolescence? Why?
3. How does their relationship with their parents develop from childhood to adolescence?
4. Do any major changes occur in their life during adolescence? How do these changes affect them?
5. In the case of MOGAI characters, at what point does your character realize they are “different” than the expected social norm? What are the circumstances surrounding that?
6. What is your character’s attitude toward sex and sexuality? How does their interaction with their parents/caregivers affect them?
7. How much independence is your character granted as an adolescent?
8. Does your character have more/less responsibility than the typical adolescent? In what ways? (For example, having to take care of a younger sibling.
9. How does their social life change (or not change) from childhood to adolescence?
10. How are they prepared for adulthood as an adolescent?
11. When in their society are they expected to become an “adult”?
12. How do their interests evolve from childhood to adolescence?
13. Is there a defining moment that transitions them from adolescence into adulthood? (Joining the military, moving out, etc.) 

_____________________

Adulthood

1. What is their primary attitude towards life based on their experiences in childhood and adolescence?
2. What kinds of events would be necessary to change these attitudes? 
3. Does their social status/class change as they reach adulthood, or at any point after? Why?
4. Are they generally independent as an adult? Why/why not?
5. Do they retain their relationship with their family on reaching adulthood?
6. Do they retain their social group from adolescence?
7. How/where do they meet new friends/love interests?
8. What is their attitude toward romance/love/family? What are their main goals regarding this as they enter adulthood?
9. What is their main goal as an adult? (A high-paying career, romance, family, to have fun, to survive, etc.) 
10. How do their goals change over time? As they meet old goals and set new ones?
11. How do their interests mature from adolescence to adulthood? (For example, an interest in writing as a teen may lead them to a career in publishing.)

_____________________

Older Age

1. Do they accomplish their goals as set out in earlier adulthood? How do they feel if these goals are not met?
2. As they approach older age, what is their social class?
3. Do they build a family in their adulthood? What is this family like?
4. If they become a parent, how is their relationship with their children affected by the relationship they had with their own parents?
5. What do they want to “leave behind” in the world?
6. Do they become a mentor/teacher to others?
7. As they grow older, how do they feel about the concepts of aging? Weakening? Death?

Think outside the box as you answer these. Remember that if you bend and stretch them enough, these questions can fit into virtually any world. 

legit-writing-tips:

Since I had an earlier ask about slang, I thought I’d pull together a few resources:

Historical Dictionary of American Slang – allows you to search by year

Slang Terms for Sex (And Related F*ckery) – Bow chicka wah wah

Medieval Slang Terms and Terminology – PDF File (Use these sparingly)

Shakespearean Slang and Sexual Language

Elizabethan Slang and Terminology

Victorian Slang Terms – Again, use sparingly

1700s UK Slang Terminology

Military Slang (Revolutionary War Era)

Slang From Colonial America

Civil War Era Slang

1920s Slang

Great Depression Era Slang

1940s Slang

1950s Slang

1960s Slang

1970s Slang

1980s Slang

1990s Slang