5 tips for writing about physical pain in fiction #SundayShare

Writing about pain is hard, but there’s no shame in that struggle; it’s difficult to articulate even when we’re experiencing it. This post featured in Joel Friedlander's ​Self-Publishing: The Carnival of the Indies #85 ​​‘Pain is […] the kind of subjective and poorly delineated experience that is difficult to express satisfactorily in language […] Indeed, pain shares some of the characteristics of target domains that have received considerable attention in the cognitive linguistic literature. Like LOVE, for example, it is private, subjective [...] cannot be directly observed,’ says linguist Elena Semino. When researching this article, I was surprised by how little has been written about the art of depicting physical pain in fiction. And, yet, the act of hurting is prevalent in most genres; it deserves as much attention as emotional distress. I've come across a few examples in my sentence-level editing work this year where great writers came a little unstuck, tending towards repetition and overwriting the pain. That was my prompt to delve deeper. I thought it would be interesting to look at depictions of physical pain from within the bubble of novel craft ... and beyond, in medicine and poetry. ​ Here are 5 tips to help you write about physical suffering. read more: https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blog/5-tips-for-writing-about-physical-pain-in-fiction