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.