This week: Pain Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
—Julius Caesar
Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.
—John C. Maxwell
In moments of pain, we seek revenge.
—Ami Ayalon |
One of the few universal facts of life is pain. We all experience it; even those few who have a neurological condition that doesn't let them feel physical pain can still be subject to mental anguish.
Despite what coaches might tell you, pain isn't "weakness leaving the body." It's a signal that there's something wrong and you might want to stop doing the thing that made the pain happen.
But it can be tricky to write about.
This is partly because pain isn't always logical. A paper cut can hurt worse than an amputation. What causes massive pain to one person might be a minor inconvenience to another. People can learn to push through the pain, though that's sometimes a really bad idea. Some might even learn to enjoy it, but this isn't a newsletter about that kind of fantasy.
It can also be tricky to write about because it's almost entirely subjective. Doctors like to use the 1-10 pain scale, as if you're rating someone's attractiveness or lack thereof. But if you've been lucky enough to avoid things like broken bones, you might consider a stubbed toe a 10, whereas a stunt performer who's been knocked around a lot might rate it a 3.
As with most things in writing, this is a place where "show, don't tell" comes in. Sure, you can write, "She was in pain," but that doesn't tell us anything. If, instead, you write something like "Her face contorted and a scream escaped her throat," it might give the reader some idea of the level of pain the character is experiencing.
It helps me to think of it as a movie or TV show: how is the actor going to communicate to the audience that they're in great pain (or, alternatively, that they have a really bad headache but are soldiering through it)? But with writing, there's at least one other way: if you're in the character's head already, you can be like "Sharp pain exploded in his knee, and he collapsed."
The twist with Fantasy writing is that the stories can involve nonhuman entities, and it's possible that pain would be different for them, just like it's possible that they could see more or less of the light spectrum, or have senses that we don't share. So perhaps a nonhuman character could shrug off what would be massive trauma for one of us, and be laid low by something that doesn't even register on a human.
Nothing says you have to have your characters experience pain. But how they deal with it is one way to illuminate who they are and how they deal with things. |
Some (hopefully not painful) fantasy for you:
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Last time, in "Bugs" , I discussed little creepy things.
Beholden  : Thank you very much for including my short story, Wyvern, in your Editor's Picks section.
Thanks for writing!
So that's it for me! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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Fantasy: September 17, 2025 Issue [#13348]
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