Tips For Writing Sad Scenes

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

20 Ways to Show Extreme Fear in Your Writing

As I dive into researching signs of fear for my horror WIP, I wanted to share some of the most compelling and visceral reactions I’ve come across. Whether you’re writing a chilling scene or crafting a character’s panic, these 20 signs of fear can help bring tension and realism to your story.

Physical Reactions

Hyperventilating — sucking in air but never feeling like it’s enough

Chest tightens — feels like a weight or hands pressing down

Limbs shaking violently, knees buckling

Complete loss of muscle control — collapsing or unable to stand

Cold sweat soaking through clothes

Heart hammering so hard they feel it in their throat or head

Tunnel vision — the world narrowing down to one terrifying focal point

Ringing in the ears or sudden deafness, like the world drops away

Dizziness / feeling faint / vision blurring

Dry mouth — unable to speak or even scream

Uncontrollable Behavior

Screaming / sobbing / gasping — involuntary vocal outbursts

Panic run — bolting without thinking, tripping over everything

Clawing at their own skin / chest / throat — like trying to escape their body

Begging / pleading out loud even if no one’s there

Repeating words or phrases — “No, no, no” / “This isn’t happening”

Hiding instinctively — diving under tables, closets, or corners

Desperate grabbing — reaching for someone, anything solid

Loss of bladder or bowel control (for extreme terror)

Total mental shutdown — frozen, slack-jawed, staring blankly

Memory blackout — later can’t recall what happened during the worst moment

AM radio is like literal magic. There is music all around us that we can't hear, and to hear it you just have to tap a crystal (diode) to the earth and listen to it with another magic rock (magnet) and a tin can. You dont even need electricity to make it work because this music around us is literally all the power you need. Oh and at night when the sun has set, the light of the day gets replaced by MORE music because the signals can travel further at night. This is magic. If you even care.

"He would not fucking say that" but it's "He would not handle someone having a breakdown in front of him like that."

A Quick Guide to Varying Sentence Starters

One of the things that really winds me up about my own writing is looking back and seeing a multitude of sentences beginning with “I” or “And” or “But”. I’m a messy first-drafter as it is and I do a lot of line edits, but it’s still takes up a significant portion of my time going back to change things. 

So, I’m here today to share with you the ways I try to vary my sentence starters and some tips and tricks for drafting and edits” 

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We all know why it’s important to vary your sentence structure, and by extent, your sentence starters. Besides obvious intentional things such as creating tension, or specific mood/tone/atmosphere, we should be aiming to vary how we start sentences to keep the reader engaged and not it being repetitive.

This is especially important if you, like me, write in first person and begin a lot of sentences with things like “I was” or “I am” etc. Or if you have a habit of beginning sentences with characters’ names. But what other options do we have? Here are five general categories that I like to use:

ING WORDS Coughing, she pushed her way through the blaze.  Smiling, he leaned in for a kiss. 

SIMILIES (and other techniques) Like the chattering of a typewriter, their eyes flittered over the group in front.  Sweeping in like a dove, she cut through the awkward conversation.

PREPOSITION (beside, near, with, across, around, out, at, in, etc.)  On the starter’s whistle, I pushed forward.  Under the heavy fog, the streetlamp glowed valiantly 

CONNECTIVE (Because, but, and, despite, after, before, etc.) After he left, I slipped the dagger back into its brace.  But I wasn’t about to give in now.  ED WORDS Distracted, she let the ice cream fall from her hands.  Stunned by his words, they stopped in their tracks. 

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Obviously you can make these examples much more complex and attuned to your own styles! There are lots of other ways you can vary your sentence openers, these are just what I personally use - so hopefully you can get some use of them! 

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Hints and Tips!

Use the highlighting treatment! Go through your WIP and focus on your sentence openers. Select a different colour for each category (Blue for She/He/They/I starters, red for ED Words, yellow for ING words, as an example) and use it to help you see where you may need to add some more variation! 

This also is a great exercise to do with a published book you really enjoy or by an author you admire - it’s a great learning experience!

Use a good mix of short, long, and medium sentences! If you find that your writing feels a bit samey or dry, even with varied openers, try changing the structure of the whole sentence itself! 

Experiment and play around with word order and structure - free write for a few minutes every day and try something new! It’s all practice and even if it never sees the light of day in your WIP, it’s still a worthwhile thing to do! 

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide and/or found it useful!

If you’d like to request a particular guide, please pop into my inbox and leave a request!

Ten origin stories for Dungeons & Dragons sorcerers that aren’t “my mom fucked a dragon”:

Sorcerer who attained their powers by practising bending reality to their will for thirty minutes every morning, and is honestly baffled when people try to explain that magic doesn’t work like that  

Sorcerer who was incredibly unlucky and kept getting struck by lightning, and after the seventh or eight time it sort of stuck  

Sorcerer who claims to be a god of calamity and ruin, and they’re actually telling the truth – they just happen to be a very small god of calamity and ruin  

Sorcerer who tried some pipeweed they found in a beholder’s stash and experienced some unusual long-term effects  

Sorcerer whose parents learned the hard way why you’re not supposed to get frisky on the night of a lunar eclipse (answer: because you end up with a baby who can conjure knives)  

Sorcerer who’s a time traveller from an unimaginably distant future where people can just do that  

Sorcerer who spent four minutes technically dead due to one of those incidents that begin with the phrase “watch this”, and woke up with slight brain damage and power over unearthly spirits  

Sorcerer who’s been cursed to die in a fire, and the curse is fulfilling itself in an extremely roundabout way  

Sorcerer who was supposed to be an ogre mage’s dinner, but the ogre mage had been brewing potions the night before and didn’t clean their cauldron before dunking the poor kid into the soup  

Sorcerer who got so angry one day that they spontaneously developed the ability to set things on fire with their brain

You allowed your child to join the vampire hunters against your better instincts. A decade later, they return home for dinner with a vampire spouse.

There are moments in life that feel so structured and poetic that they feel less like reality and more like scripted fiction and I think that those are some of the most important ones to hold onto

Write a piece about something that takes a year to build being destroyed in a minute.