Gold-riddled Bones

Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:

• asks the wrong question • says something they shouldn’t • notices something uncomfortable • refuses to drop the topic • misunderstands something important • interrupts at the worst moment

And it is an elegant shape, especially when I translate arc to its natural form, a wave.Its rise and fall traces a motion we know in heartbeats, breaking surf, the sun passing overhead. There’s power in a wave, its sense of beginning, midpoint, and end; no wonder we fall into it in stories. But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. […]

Here are the ones Stevens calls “nature’s darlings.”

SPIRAL: think of a fiddlehead fern, whirlpool, hurricane, horns twisting from a ram’s head, or a chambered nautilus.

MEANDER: picture a river curving and kinking, a snake in motion, a snail’s silver trail, or the path left by a goat grazing the tenderest greens.

RADIAL or EXPLOSION: a splash of dripping water, petals growing from a daisy’s heart, light radiating from the sun, the ring left around a tick bite.

BRANCHING and other FRACTAL patterns: self-replication at lesser scale, made by trees, coastlines, clouds.

CELLULAR patterns: repeating shapes you see in a honeycomb, foam of bubbles, cracked lakebed, or light rippling in a pool […].

These patterns aren’t just around us; they inform our bodies, too. We have wiggling meanders in our hair, brains, and intestines; branching patterns in capillaries, neurons, and lungs; explosive patterns in areolas, irises, and sneezes; spirals in ears, fingertips, DNA, and fists. We invoke these patterns to describe motions in our minds, too: someone spirals into despair or compartmentalizes emotions, thoughts meander [..]. There are, in other words, recurring ways that we order and make things. Why wouldn’t they form our [literary] narratives, too?

A digressive narrative meanders; at times it flows quickly and at times barely at all, often loops back on itself, yet ultimately it moves onward. A spiraling narrative might move around and around with a system of rhythmic repetitions, yet it advances, deepening into the past, perhaps, or rising into the future. A radial narrative could spring from a central hole—an incident, pain, absence, horror—around which it keeps circling or from which it keeps veering, but it scarcely moves forward in time. A fractal narrative could branch from a core or seed, repeating at different scales the shape or dynamic of that core […]. And cellular narratives come in like parts, not moving forward in time from one to another but creating a network of meaning. […]

In this book I’ll look at ways that writers have done all of this, finding patterns other than the arc inside their stories. This will be a museum of specimens. »

body language masterlist

a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does

a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes

550 words to say instead of fuckin said

638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again

⊹ What do they want vs what do they need. these should not be the same thing. what they want is the surface goal ( the job, the person, the revenge, the answer.) What they need is the thing underneath that they can't name yet. The story is what happens in the gap between those two things. if they're identical your character has nowhere to go.

⊹ What are they wrong about. Not morally wrong necessarily. just. what belief do they hold that the story is going to test. What assumption do they make about themselves or the world that turns out to be incomplete? A character without a wrong belief is already finished. They have no arc, give them something to learn even if learning it hurts them.

⊹ How do they talk when they're nervous. Do they go quiet or do they talk too much? do they deflect with jokes? do they get weirdly formal? do they ask questions instead of answering them? the way a person behaves under pressure is who they actually are. And it should be different from how they behave when they're comfortable.

⊹ What do they find funny. this one sounds small and it is not small at all. Humour is worldview. What makes someone laugh tells you what they value, what they're afraid of, how they handle pain. A character with no sense of humour is just flat. even the gravest person finds something absurd. find the thing.

⊹ What are they ashamed of? not their tragic backstory. their actual shame. The small ugly thing they would never say out loud. The time they were a coward. The feeling they pretend not to have. The desire they think disqualifies them from being a good person. Shame is where the most interesting character work lives and most writers skip straight over it :(

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

These events are almost always open bar. They're not trying to make their money back on alcohol. They want you to drink and eat and donate generously.

If there are cocktails, there will be at most two on offer, pre-made in large tubs. You cannot order a different version, it is what it is.

There are two types of events: cocktail style or seated. The first includes roaming hors d'oeuvres or a fancy buffet with tiny plates called a grazing station. For a long night, the roaming food will get a little bigger throughout the evening and have a 'main' at some point based around a protein.

A seated event will usually be more structured and may include multiple courses. Silver service is not in vogue anymore. You are likely to get either alternating meals brought to you like at a wedding, or served banquet style. A good caterer can get a plate to everyone in a 300 person event in about three minutes.

Drunk people are the same no matter how expensive their suits. They still laugh too loud, spill their drinks and slip on the dance floor. They are usually less embarrassed about doing coke in the bathrooms.

A full scale event that starts at 6pm will have staff arriving at noon to begin setup. Earlier if there's a light show or pyrotechnics. Typically venues don't just have 30 tables and three hundred chairs lying around, let alone table cloths, chair covers, etc. It's all rented and brought in on the day. Bands and DJs will be running audio tests in the background throughout.

Most heritage buildings that host these things, like museums and manor houses, aren't really designed for them. They might put down mats so you're not walking in stilettos over two hundred year old wooden floors, the kitchens are weirdly far away, and there are not enough taps. There is never anywhere for staff to sit, so if you open the wrong door you might find half a dozen waiters sitting on upturned milk crates in a room full of million dollar paintings, eating the left over bread.

Really old buildings don't have enough bathrooms, which means the staff will be sharing with the guests.

Clean up starts the second the event ends, if not sooner. Unattended glasses will start to disappear first, then table decorations. When the timer ticks over, the lights come back on and exhausted staff strip the tables, pack up dirty glasses and unopened wine bottles and have to Tetris it all into the back of a van. The venue is booked for that day only, so everything has to be gone before anyone can go home. A large event that finishes at midnight might take until 3am to be cleared away.

first of all: 💀 why does every enemies-to-lovers dynamic either hit like a literary gut punch… or feel like two cardboard cutouts aggressively flirting?

there is no in between. i don’t make the rules.

and if you’re here, i’m guessing you’ve tasted both. the elite. the devastating. the oh my god i need to lie down after this confession scene kind… and also the ones where you’re like “why do you hate each other again? because he smirked?? be serious.”

yeah. we’re fixing that today.

⚔️ if you’re writing enemies-to-lovers, we need to talk.

because most people aren’t writing enemies.

they’re writing:

mild annoyances

workplace rivals with ✨tension✨

people who had one (1) misunderstanding in chapter two and never emotionally recovered

and listen. that’s fine. that’s a trope. it’s cute.

but it’s not enemies-to-lovers.

🩸 step one: define your enemy

an enemy is not someone who:

is kinda rude

disagrees with your protagonist

has a “bad attitude” (???)

an enemy is someone who cannot coexist with your protagonist without cost.

read that again. PLEASE.

their goals? incompatible. their values? clashing at a moral level. their existence? actively making the other’s life worse.

what i'm talking about:

opposing sides of a war

hunter vs hunted

“if i let you live, everything i believe in collapses” energy

if they can just… avoid each other and be fine?

that’s not enemies. that’s tension with good lighting.

🗡️ step two: make the hatred make sense

this is where people fumble it CONSTANTLY.

they jump straight to:

banter → sexual tension → accidental hand touch → oh no i’m in love

NO. come back. sit down.

before attraction, there needs to be justified hostility.

and not surface-level “you insulted me once.”

i’m talking about (and yes please quote 'rin t' on this!):

betrayal

loss

ideological opposition

deeply ingrained bias they don’t even realize they have

the kind of thing where, if someone asked your character:

“why do you hate them?”

they wouldn’t hesitate. they’d have a list

the twist:

👉 both sides need to be right. (or at least feel right)

if one is clearly wrong, you don’t have enemies-to-lovers. you have “problematic person gets redeemed because they’re hot.”

and we are not doing that today.

🔥 step three: attraction should feel like a problem

this is where it gets fun. :)

when they start catching feelings, it should not be:

“oh this is inconvenient but kind of exciting :)”

it should be:

“this is catastrophic. this compromises everything.”

love = risk.

because now:

their judgment is compromised

their loyalties are tested

their identity starts to crack

they should be actively resisting it.

denying it. sabotaging it. making worse choices because of it.

if falling in love doesn’t cost them something?

you skipped the entire point of the trope.

🕯️ step four: force proximity (but PLEASEEE make it hurt)

you can’t resolve enemies-to-lovers from opposite sides of the map.

they need to be stuck together.

BUT-important distinction-

not in a cute “one bed at the inn” way (yet. we’ll get there. don’t worry.)

in a:

forced alliance

mutual threat

political arrangement

survival situation

where they have to rely on each other…

while still fundamentally not trusting each other.

this creates:

tension

vulnerability leaks

moments where they see each other as human (ugh. disgusting. hate that.)

and every time that happens?

it should complicate things further.

💔 step five: the shift is not soft. it’s violent.

i need you to understand this.

the transition from enemies → lovers should feel like something breaking.

because it is.

their worldview? breaking. their assumptions? breaking. their sense of self? yeah. that too.

there should be a moment where:

they realize they were wrong about the other person

and it doesn’t feel good.

it feels like:

guilt

confusion

grief for the version of reality they believed in

this is what makes the payoff hit.

not the kiss.

the reckoning.

🗝️ step six: they don’t “fix” each other

if i see one more enemies-to-lovers arc where:

“he became a better person because she loved him 🥺”

i will simply pass away.

they don’t fix each other.

they force each other to confront things they were avoiding.

that’s different.

love isn’t the solution.

it’s the pressure that reveals the cracks.

🖤 final thought (and a gentle threat):

if your enemies-to-lovers could be replaced with:

friends-to-lovers + mild inconvenience

and nothing changes?

you didn’t go far enough.

push them harder.

make it uglier. riskier. a little bit devastating.

so, question to you my chaotic writers... what’s the real reason your characters hate each other?

not the surface answer.

the one they’d never admit out loud.

i’m nosy. tell me everything. 👀 I LOVE HEARING your thoughts (i reply because yes, i am a real person!)

I HAVE DIGITAL PRODUCTS!!!

if you're writing dark academia feel free to check out this packet filled with all the juicy prompts to spark ideas!

need help with your opening pages?! i have a free ebook for you all (aesthetic, cohesive and actually informative! it's free! but tips are highly appreciated!)

Instead of trying to fill paragraphs describing everything, choose one or two things that breathe.

• The way the floorboards creak in one specific spot • A stain on the ceiling no one acknowledges • A flickering light that makes gives everyone a slight headache • The smell of something burnt and forgotten • A crooked family photo • Dust in the sunlight • A cracked mug someone refuses to throw away • The hum of an appliance in silence • A chair that wobbles • A window that should open, but doesn't • Shoes lined up too neatly • A plant flourishing, or showing signs of obvious neglect • The sound of neighbors arguing • A clock that’s slightly off

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

⊹ standing too close. like just barely not touching. why are their shoulders breathing on each other??

⊹ conversations that sound normal but feel like foreplay. “pass the salt” has never been so loaded.

⊹ one of them says something flirty and the other freezes for 0.2 seconds like “oh.”

⊹ eyes dropping to lips and then—back up. with effort.

⊹ holding eye contact just a little too long. like... are they gonna kiss or duel??

⊹ unintentional physical contact that lasts one second too long and now they’re both broken

⊹ a hand on the small of the back. that’s it. that’s the tweet.

⊹ tension so thick that other characters start noticing like “hey are you two okay?” (they are not)

⊹ “accidental” sleepovers. “oh no there’s only one bed.” yeah. suuuure.

⊹ biting back a smile. biting back a moan. biting anything really.

⊹ one of them walks away and the other has to physically restrain themselves from watching the hips

for people who need some help with smuts

don’t read if you’re not comfortable

These are from a site where the person knows what they’re talking about. So if you don’t think these are accurate, move along. It could be helpful to others

reaction words

shivered

shuttered

trembled

quivers

quakes

shakes

gasps

moan

groans

jolted

jerked

pants

huffs

cries out

bites back a moans

breathing hitched

collapsing 

eyes rolled back

arched back

adverbs(a lack of adverbs weakens your writing)

shakily

desperately

roughly

deeply

raggedly

breathily

loudly

lazily

softly

gently

warmly

frantically

quickly

slowly

harshly

sexy words for said

purred

cooed

murmured

whispered

breathed

rasped

cried out

begged

muttered

growled

grunted

mewled

chocked

sobbed

whimpered

pleaded

teased

sexy actions

licking

nipping

biting

shoving our hips together

pinned their wrists

caressed

stroked

hike up shirt

pressing against wall

rank nails through hair

hooking legs around waist

splay hands over chest

dipping tongue into ___

hair pulling

grasping their chin and tilt up/down

cupping cheek

lips brush ear

hip grind/thrusting/rolled/shifting

dirty talk

tease

kissing

brushed lips together

teeth clicking together

lip play(biting/running tongue over lip)

pausing when lips are just barely touching

sucking bottom lip

kissing hard

teeth clicking

sucking tongue

swirling tongue around one

blow job

redden lips

swollen lips

slick

sloppy

making eye contact

hallowing cheeks

swirling tongue

fucking someones mouth

deep throat 

playing with balls

using hands and lips together

oral(female)

lapping

playing with woman wetness

fingering

parting lips

flicking their tongue

delving tongue

fleshly pink/brown (i prefer not to use skin color for poc)

intercourse

sinking into someone/cock

riding

digging fingers into shoulder/hips/back/chest

snapped/slammed/pounding hips

pace/rhythm

orgasm

shockwaves

pulsing

shattered

coil snapped

splintering

going tense/still

jerking

moans mix with curses words and/or lover name

slang word

clit

cock

dick

slit 

cum/cumming

sexy word

dark

sinful

lush

wanted

need

velvet/lace/satin/silk

desire

heat

aroused

intoxicated

teased

spanked

Showing vs Telling

Do you have any narrative summary, or are you bouncing from scene to scene without pausing for breath?

Characterization & Exposition

What information do your readers need in order to understand your story? At what point in the story do they need to know it?

How are you getting this info across to your readers? Is it all at once through a writer-to-reader lecture?

If exposition comes out through dialogue, is it through dialogue your characters would actually speak even if your readers didn’t have to know the information? In other words, does the dialogue exist only to put the information across?

Point of View

Look at your descriptions. Can you tell how your viewpoint character feels about what you’re describing?

Proportion

Look at descriptions. Are the details you give the ones your viewpoint character would notice?

Reread your first fifty pages, paying attention to what you spend your time on. Are the characters you develop most fully important to the ending? Do you use the locations you develop in detail later in the story? Do any of the characters play a surprising role in the ending? Could readers guess this from the amount of time you spend on them?

Dialogue

Can you get rid of some of your speaker attributions entirely? Try replacing some with beats. 

How often have you paragrapher your dialogue?Try paragraphing a little more often. 

See How it Sounds

Read your dialogue aloud. At some point, read aloud every word you write.

Be on the lookout for places where you are tempted to change the wording. 

How well do your characters understand each other? Do they ever mislead on another? Any outright lies? 

Interior Monologue

First, how much interior monologue do you have? If you seem to have a lot, check to see whether some is actually dialogue description in disguise. Are you using interior monologue to show things that should be told?

Do you have thinker attributions you should get rid of (by  recasting into 3rd person, by setting the interior monologue off in its own paragraph or in italics, or by simply dropping the attribution)

Do your mechanics match your narrative distance?(Thinker attributions, italics, first person when your narrative is in third?)

Easy Beats

How many beats do you have? How often do you interrupt your dialogue?

What are your beats describing? Familiar every day actions, such as dialling a telephone or buying groceries? How often do you repeat a beat? Are your characters always looking out of windows or lighting cigarettes? 

Do your beats help illuminate your characters? Are they individual or general actions anyone might do under just about any circumstances?

Do your beats fit the rhythm of your dialogue? Read it aloud and find out

Breaking up is easy to do

Look for white space. How much is there? Do you have paragraphs that go on as much as a page in length? 

Do you have scenes with NO longer paragraphs? Remember what you’re after is the right balance. 

Have your characters made little speeches to one another? 

If you’re writing a novel, are all your scenes or chapters exactly the same length? -> brief scenes or chapters can give you more control over your story. They can add to your story’s tension. Longer chapters can give it a more leisurely feels. If scene or chapter length remains steady while the tension of the story varies considerably, your are passing up the chance to reinforce the tension. 

Once is usually enough

Reread your manuscript, keeping in mind what you are trying to do with each paragraph–what character point you’re trying to establish, what sort of mood you’re trying to create, what background you’re trying to suggest. In how many different ways are you accomplishing each of these ends?

If more than one way, try reading the passage without the weakest approach and see if it itsn’t more effective. 

How about on a chapter level? Do you have more than one chapter that accomplishes the same thing?

Is there a plot device or stylistic effect you are particularly pleased with? How often do you use it?

Keep on the lookout for unintentional word repeats. The more striking a word or phrase is, the more jarring it will be if repeated 

Sophistication 

How many -ing and as phrases do you write? The only ones that count are the ones that place a bit of action in a subordinate clause

How about -ly adverbs?

First thing: horses are not bikes or cars. They are large, emotional animals with opinions. If they don’t trust the rider, everything gets harder.

Mounting is awkward. Even experienced riders don’t look graceful every time. Missing the stirrup happens. Especially under stress.

Riding is physical work. Thighs burn, hands cramp, lower back aches. Beginners feel it in minutes, not hours.

Horses spook. Sudden noises, shadows, smells—anything can set them off. A startled horse doesn’t politely wait for instructions.

Speed has limits. You cannot gallop forever. Horses overheat, tire, and need breaks or they risk injury.

Stopping is not instant. Horses need distance to slow down. Pulling hard just makes things worse.

Terrain matters a lot. Mud, rocks, steep hills, ice, forests, crowds—each changes how fast and safely you can ride.

Falling hurts. Even a short fall can knock the wind out, break bones, or leave a rider stunned and slow to get up.

Horses get injured too. Strained legs, thrown shoes, sore backs—an injured horse may refuse to move at all.

Bond beats skill. A calm horse with a trusting rider is safer than a powerful horse with someone it doesn’t know.

Fear travels both ways. If the rider panics, the horse feels it and reacts.

Long rides leave evidence. Chafing, stiffness, sore muscles, raw hands—nobody rides all day and looks fine.

Talking while riding is hard. Breath bounces, voices break, and shouting is common at faster speeds.

If the rider is unconscious or dead, the horse doesn’t magically keep going toward the destination.

Common Horse Writing Mistakes

Like, as a very, very basic example: a character is apologizing by saying, "I'm sorry." But that line is going to look and sound different depending on what the character is thinking. Crossed arms and a sullen tone can mean that a character is actually thinking: "I don't mean it and also I hate you." A pleading tone and reaching out to take the other character's arm can mean: "Please don't leave me." A tired voice and slumped shoulders within context could mean: "I did what I had to do."

This is one way to begin to do "Show, Don't Tell" in storytelling. It is trusting your audience to see the depth and to catch on to the things you leave unsaid. It's fun to let the audience be observant and clever. It is also reflective of real life, where people are often scared of being vulnerable, or don't necessarily even understand their own emotions, or can't articulate their own thoughts, or have difficulty identifying the true feelings of the people around them, and so don't say very much.

There are exceptions to this advice, of course. In writing especially, rather than in a visual medium, some POV characters are very good at reading emotions from body language and others are not, and their observations in the narration may reflect this skill. Some characters will assume everyone around them is always angry with them or simply not pay attention to other people's moods at all, personalities which can also be subtly communicated to the audience and later used in the story in some interesting way.

Some characters have excellent control over their body language and tone of voice, because they are on-guard, highly trained in some fashion, or a very good liar. They will not easily communicate their true thoughts through their body language or their actions. Their lie can be so good that it can be slipped past the audience as nothing important to the plot until it comes back to bite. Their oddly perfect control over their body in a tense situation can instead maybe be used to indicate to the POV character and/or the audience: "Oh, there's something up with this person."

Body language will also change by culture and class and disability and so on. This clash can cause communication problems between characters, as a character's affectionate pat on the shoulder of another might be intended as casual comfort, but be received as overly intimate condescension. Different cultures / people can even have very different opinions on what level of eye contact and overlapping speech is rude.

✧ Broken ribs suck. You don’t just “walk it off.” Breathing hurts. Laughing hurts. Existing hurts. Characters with rib injuries won’t be doing heroic sprints.

✧ Concussions aren’t instant naps. Dazed vision, nausea, dizziness, maybe even personality changes, but they’re not going to collapse neatly like in the movies.

✧ Blood loss is sneaky. It’s not just about dramatic pools of blood. It’s dizziness, confusion, and the body getting cold as circulation tanks.

✧ Adrenaline lies. Someone can take a serious injury and not feel it until the fight’s over. That “I didn’t realize I was bleeding until later” trope? Very real.

✧ Twisted ankles are brutal. One bad step and suddenly running is off the table. Even walking hurts like hell. Perfect way to ground a chase scene.

✧ Burns linger. Even small burns hurt more than most people expect. Blisters, infection risk, constant pain, it’s not just a cool scar later.

✧ Dislocated shoulders = useless arm. Characters can’t keep swinging a sword or firing a gun. They’re basically fighting one-armed until it’s fixed.

✧ Shock is a thing. Pale skin, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and eventually disorientation. A character might not even realize how bad their wound is.

✧ Stitches aren’t magic. Getting sewn up is painful and recovery takes time. They’re not instantly battle-ready after a needle and thread.

Broken rib? Yeah once the adrenaline wears off you're down, but until then you absolutely CAN sprint potentially enough to get out of harm's way. Just ask my cousin who got attacked by a bull, cracked a couple ribs, and still made it outside the fence before collapsing (largely due to her military training - muscle memory kicked in and got her to safety).

Whether or not concussions knock you out in addition to the above symptoms depends on where/how you got hit and how hard... like. Let's be real for a second there are people with medical conditions that make them pass out if they stand up too fast. A sufficient blow to the head (or at the right part of the jaw - hello major nerve bundle) WILL put your lights out. It's just worth remembering that if something hit that hard they're unlikely to just shake it off after waking. (With the possible exception of if somebody knows that nerve bundle enough to skip the middle man and just jam a thin blunt object right into it. But similar to getting hit in the solar plexus you are going to be having a bad day until the nerve overload passes.)

As for the dislocated shoulder, I have known people well trained enough in quick and dirty field medicine (*cough* my partner) to shove that fucker right back into the socket and keep on going. So just like. Know your character and what they would know how to do.

Stitches aren't magic but the drugs they give you with the damn things might as well be (to a point). There are people who will get up and cause a ruckus because their pain is dulled enough they just get up and start a fight. They will, however, absolutely regret it later and also probably need to be re-stitched. Also, again, somebody with sufficient combat training MIGHT be able to ignore the pain, get back up and keep fighting - they are just, again, going to regret it later.

Through the power of adrenaline and sheer stubbornness humans are capable of some buckwild shit.