How To Describe Shock In Writing
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On Writing: Psychological Shock
There are 2 different kinds of shock that tin can easily exist confused with each other: physiological daze from receiving a grievous injury and psychological shock which is an acute stress reaction to a terrifying or traumatic event. In this article, we're going to talk about how a writer can communicate that their graphic symbol is experiencing psychological shock without having to outright state information technology. There are many tips out there that are useful for writing fight scenes and virtually of them won't be helpful when your story requires coupling an action sequence with an astute stress reaction.
And then, allow'southward go below the cut and talk about it.
In this, we're going to talk about psychological daze from the writer's perspective and how to use it. Still, we are not medical professionals. For a full understanding of psychological stupor, more research will be required.
What is an astute stress reaction?
An acute stress reaction comes from experiencing or witnessing a traumatic upshot. This could be annihilation from watching a random passerby get gutted by a mugger, being attacked by a mugger, finding a family unit member dead in their bed, being the victim of violence, experiencing a betrayal by a close friend, being on the wrong end of a gun, etc.
This experience links into both the fight or flight response and the combat stress response.
Okay, then what does that mean?
If you've never experienced an acute stress reaction before to a traumatic result in your ain life and then manufacturing it on the page may be hard. Fifty-fifty if y'all have, reliving the experience in your own mind in order to get it right can be incredibly traumatizing. What is most important to presenting shock in your story is not that you focus entirely on getting the verbal symptoms right, it'southward getting the feeling right and making certain that the same feeling infuses every aspect of the scene if it'due south being written in either First Person or 3rd Person Limited.
I hateful everything from pacing to word choice should exist representative of selling the experience to your audience. This is how you make annihilation in your story accurate. You have to sell it as if you were experiencing information technology yourself. Method acting will help; imagining the scene as if it were happening to you will help if you're willing to go there.
How to do that:
I personally describe shock as feeling sluggish and dazed. I felt far away from my body, far away from reality and what was happening around me. Information came in slow, but my reaction to information technology was boring and, depending on the situation, nonexistent. In events that happened subsequently, I remembered everything that had happened with perfect clarity merely it nevertheless felt similar I had been on autopilot. For me, how hard I get rocked by daze ofttimes depends on what I was expecting going into the event. If I'thousand completely blindsided, it tin can take a while to recover. If I was prepared for it or had begun preparations for it, I take less to piece of work through earlier getting dorsum to the regular world. I employ this to my characters when working through how they feel nearly events and what parts of the process they become defenseless in.
You tin communicate stupor fairly easily through some simple techniques.
Remove the agile verbs.
Compare:
Looking down at her hand, Margaret saw claret.
Versus:
Margaret looked downward at her paw and saw blood.
One of these is fast and I'll acknowledge, the one with "looking" sounds better, but it as well moves more than speedily and feels more active. When yous desire your sentences to move more slowly, to feel more sluggish, it's worth taking a pace back and taking your time because from the graphic symbol's perspective everything has slowed down. (Always recall though, fourth dimension is keeping stride for the other characters in the scene unless they are likewise affected, and so go along them moving at normal speeds.)
Long sentences interspersed with short sentences.
Margaret looked downwards at her mitt and saw blood. Blood. Whose blood? My claret. No. No, it couldn't be. It couldn't be her blood.
By interspersing long sentences with brusk ones, you can develop an bad-mannered, intentionally hasty feel in the pacing which adds to the sense that the character is feeling out of sorts and afar to what's happening around them.
Repetition
Margaret looked down at her mitt and saw claret. Blood. Whose blood? My blood. No. No, information technology couldn't be. It couldn't exist her blood.
We can apply repetition of the same word over and over to emphasize that sense of distance; that the character is taking a while to come to terms with what he or she is experiencing. The information is taking a while to sink in. Nosotros also add in a denial of the reality present which results from surprise.
"He shot me! You shot me! Derrick! Why would y'all shoot me?"
Stupor can follow your characters for a while, so even at later points in the story it'south important to recollect to it through changes in your character's behavior. So, call back to keep track of that. Whether it's pain from the wound:
Her cheek hurt. Why would it hurt? Oh right, Margaret thought, she'd been shot.
or from a singled-out change in their lifestyle:
I turned my head, hand tightening on the remote. Dad ever came home at 5 after five and he'd give me hell if he caught me watching television. I waited, listening for the familiar thrum of the Ford Taurus equally it wound up the driveway, the grab of the headlights on the windows, the mistiness of light-green through the white shades. On the tube, Batman laughed but no grinding wheels came up the asphalt. Information technology was just another automobile passing our forepart door outside.
Oh. I paused. Oh, right. Dad wasn't coming home from piece of work today. Dad wasn't coming home ever once again.
Give it a endeavour. See what you turn out.
Happy Writing!
-Michi
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