It has come to my attention that not everyone knows proper lab procedure and experimental design! So here's how to write lab whump like a real scientist:
Step 1. Lab cleanliness and Safety
- In all labs, no matter what kind of science you're doing, it's important to keep a clean environment. (This isn't the same as a sterile environment, which you would need if you are doing any kind of major surgery.) Mostly, it's important to keep floors and walkways clear, to prevent tripping hazards.
- In most labs, latex gloves, pants, and close toed shoes are required. Long hair must be put up in a ponytail or bun. Sometimes goggles are necessary, but only when working with heat, pressure, or volatile chemicals. Eating and drinking in the lab is also expressly forbidden.
- In whump context, I would think that ensuring the ahem... test subject, is securely restrained would be of the upmost importance. You don't want your doctors getting bitten or scratched on the job.
Step 2. Experimental Design
- This is something I see a lot of writers misunderstand and it's a pet peeve of mine. Before you can start torturing your Whumpees, first you gotta ask: "What are the scientists trying to figure out?"
- For example, lets imagine a whumpee with very fast healing. The scientists studying them might want to figure out exactly how fast their healing works. So do they just start cutting Whumpee into pieces willy nilly? Nope. They gotta be systematic. Here's how I would design this experiment:
Independent Variable (The thing that you change): The amount of flesh removed from Whumpee.
Dependent Variable (The thing that you measure): The amount of time it takes for Whumpee to heal.
Levels (The different values of the independent variable): 5mm², 10mm², 100mm², etc.
Replicates (The amount of times you repeat each level): Should be at least 3
Control (The data you are comparing to): A normal human's healing speed.
Constants (Things that stay the same between trials): Same part of Whumpee's body, same time of day, same depth of injury, etc.
Cofactors (Other variables that could be potentially affecting your data): Stress levels of Whumpee, any drugs that might be in their system, conscious vs unconscious, hungry, etc.
- With all this in mind, you would run the experiment, with someone recording in a lab notebook real time. (Very important. Lab notebooks can be on actual paper or digital. Most labs use digital these days.)
- Once the experiment is done, you'd examine the data, see if there's any discrepancies or ways that the procedure could be improved, and run another experiment.
- Sometimes, questions answered from one experiment will give rise to even more questions. For example, let's use the healing Whumpee again. Let's say your scientist figured out Whumpee's baseline healing rate. But, they want to know if/how certain drugs affect Whumpee's healing speed. To figure this out, they'd conduct a new experiment, but this time, instead of changing how much flesh is removed, they'd make that a constant, and instead they would change how much of a drug they are injecting into whumpee.
- Experiments are meant to be repetetive and methodical, meaning that your Whumpee may very well have to go through the same thing over and over again, with very minor tweaks here and there.
- Overall, you don't need to worry too much about designing an entire experiment if you just want to write simple lab whump. But, if your whumpers are meant to be official and experienced scientists, then it might be worth it to go the extra mile and show how their scientific brains are working. (And personally, I will always find methodical lab whump more interesting than aimless torture.)
I hope this helped and it wasn't too long. If y'all have any more questions on lab whump and science, feel free to send me an ask. Happy Whumping!
And thank you to @detectingeagle310 for asking me to elaborate lol
