A week ago today, we published the first half of an interview with “M”, whose husband was in a 3-month coma back in the early 2000s.
It’s one of the posts I’m proudest of in the history of this blog.
This post is even better.
In this half of the interview, M shares what she wishes writers would and wouldn’t do when writing about comas. About survivors. About the strain on families and purse strings.
M, if you’re reading this, thank you. Thank you again.
Aunt Scripty: What would you tell writers to make sure they get right when describing comas, and their care?
Doctors and nurses do encourage family to talk or read to the patient. Having arguments in the same room is strongly discouraged.
They will kick family out if they deem they not taking care of themselves. Family is asked to leave for a little while on a fairly regular basis so the nurses can do their jobs without family or friends being underfoot. The nurses will also come in regularly while the family is there to do a regular check and change IV bags and such.
I did not actually see the more invasive parts. (Moving the patient to avoid bed sores, dealing with bodily fluids, and for the life of me I cannot remember what they did with solids.)
The family or at least the person who is in charge of making medical decisions will be meeting with the doctors regularly for updates they will also like get called for emergency decisions while not at the hospital.
Those decisions can be many and varied. In my experience it was mostly, we need to do x, and we need your permission to do it.
The main point I would insist on is that there is no miracle, “wake up and they are okay.” It is not quick and it is not pretty.
I seriously cannot think of a single book or movie where their treatment of comas and the recovery has not completely snapped my sense of disbelief. Kill Bill comes immediately to mind as it completely doesn’t work that way.
Whatever put them in the coma doesn’t just disappear when they wake up. If it was a medically induced coma it still doesn’t erase the original reason the doctors decided to put them in the coma.
The doctors really don’t want to put someone in a medically induced coma.
I also want writers to realize that awake and aware are two separate things. Awareness also has several stages. The whole “someone wakes up and begins to talk” thing needs to stop. That control over their body is also a gradual process (of course depending on the time in the coma and why).
Muscle loss is going to be a thing, even if it is a fairly short time. Weight loss will happen no matter what the staff does, partially because of the muscle mass loss. PT (physical therapy) will likely be needed unless it was a very short time period. OT (occupational therapy) as well.
Nerve damage can happen! Even if that part of the body was not affected by the original cause for the coma. Bed sores are a real thing, it takes lots of repositioning by the nurses and luck to avoid them.
Depending on the length of the coma the patient’s body may have extra holes in it that will need to be closed and heal after their recovery is under way (GI at least). They are likely to need to be fed through said hole for a while, eating is something their body may need to relearn how to do.
If there was brain damage it can take up to two years to heal, if it’s going to. Though after that there is little chance of regaining lost cognitive abilities.
On the other side remember how much this disrupts the lives of family and friends, but also remember that these people have to somehow keep their own lives going enough to do things like pay bills (and possibly cover the bills for the patient) and feed themselves.
A lovely thing for writing is that this gives plenty of opportunity for people to take their stress out on one another or throw blame or form closer bonds.
People close to the person in the coma can get PTSD. Relationships that previously were good and healthy can blow up. Friendships can be lost.
As a side note, brain damage can cause personality changes. This can be huge or it can be things that only someone truly close will notice. For us his body language changed a lot. Which threw me for a loop. The little signs that he was open to help or not were not the same. Signs of frustration were different. The little shifts that use to mean he was interested or disinterested had changed as well.
Aunt Scripty: What were some things that happened that you didn’t expect during his care? What did you expect to have happen that didn’t, or were very different from your expectations?
The major surprise at the time was no one else had any idea of how this could have happened either. That it continued to not make sense to some of the best neurologists in the field. Looking back it make much more sense now, brains are weird and doctors don’t always have the answers we want or need.
At the first hospital they actually had him prone because of the pneumonia. That startled and scared the hell out of me.
I think by the time he was at [MAJOR MEDICAL CENTER] I didn’t have any expectations, I was already shocked and confused.
Looking back something that does confuse me is that no one ever suggested that I or his parents find someone to talk to mental health wise.
Aunt Scripty: Can you talk a little bit about the financial aspects? This can’t have been cheap.
Writers should also take into consideration (at least in the US) that Neuro ICU is not inexpensive. At the time just the stay in the ICU was over $10k a day and that was early 2000s.
Dealing with the insurance was a headache and a half on top of everything else. And we were lucky, our insurance was very good and did not have an upper cap.
After the first few weeks I had a direct number to call a specific person at the company so I didn’t have to explain the whole situation again and again. We still had to talk regularly.
One of the big things I remember was one of the drugs they wanted to try to control the seizures was new to the market. I remember the time release version came out a few year later. So at the time it was really expensive and the insurance refused to cover it at first but one of the specialists wrote up a detailed reasoning of why that drug in particular was important and it was cleared.
I don’t remember what the deductible or copays were but I paid those and had to pay for the transportation out of pocket but did get refunded eventually for most of that.
The eventual total was mind boggling and terrifying, I received the bills for it while the insurance company was still sorting out its end.
For just the stay in the Neuro ICU the bill was well over a million dollars.
That did not include the stay at the first hospital before he was transferred. It did not include the time once he was out of the ICU. It did not include the physical therapy that took months. It did not include the surgery he had to do to get the feeding tube out. It did not include the occupational therapy. It didn’t include follow up care or his meds, that without he would die. I think the meds would have been over one thousand dollars a month without insurance.
Besides the medical bills, life continued to go on around us. Student loans had to be paid. Even though our landlords were amazing and dropped our rent by an insane amount I still could not afford it.
His credit card bill still had to be paid on top of my own bills. I did not have access to his bank account and his parent refused to sign the paperwork that would give me access to pay for just his bills. Car payments still had to be made.
The constant calls from the hospital disrupted me at work so much and I was spending as much time as I could at the hospital that in the end I ended up quitting.
Again here I was lucky, I could move back in with my parents and had some savings. But factor in the gas and parking and car care for at least 6 months of traveling to the hospital or rehab everyday. Oh and food while at the hospital if I remembered to eat.
I had to fight the insurance to get him the physical and occupational therapy he needed to become functional again. Then continue to fight for his meds to be covered as they were changed many times trying to find the best combination.
So that’s where we stand. And personally, all I can say is holy shit.
I’ll just be over here in the corner, crying softly and screaming at the American healthcare system.
Thank you yet again to M for her time, her words, her experiences, and for baring her own burdens as the family of a coma survivor.
I encourage anyone with a similar story to reach out to me on Tumblr, or at auntscripty {at} gmail {dot} com. I would love to hear your story.
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What Do Benzos Do, Exactly? What Are They Used For?
Benzodiazepines act as a central nervous system depressant. That has a multitude of different effects, and honestly, they’re a uniquely useful class of drug.
They can be used to treat muscle spasms, anxiety, and sleep disorders. They can keep a patient sedated both in the short term or the long term. Some of them can even stop seizures.
One of the benefits—and terrifying side effects—of benzos are their ability to keep the brain from forming memories. This makes them extremely useful for procedural sedation, for people like me who may need things like dental surgery but want to be blissfully memory-free of the process. However, this leads to another use of benzos as, well, date-rape drugs.
Want to learn more? Read on, fair human!
(trigger warning: pharmacology of date rape drugs mentioned. No images or descriptions of sexual assault occur. One bit about dentistry and consent.)
Benzos: An Abbreviated List
Because there are an awful lot of these drugs on the market, I’m going to keep it relatively short, and list only the most common benzodiazepines available. Different meds are used for different things and come in different forms, so I’ll list that too!
Oh, and as for abbreviations: PO = oral (usually a pill, but sometimes a liquid suspension for kids); IM = intramuscular (a shot in the arm, leg or buttock), IN = Intranasal (can be administered up the nose), IV = intravenous. Anxiolysis means “breaking up anxiety”, or reducing it.
diazepam (Valium): PO / IV. Used for muscle relaxation, stopping active seizures, anxiolysis, as a sleep aid (short term). Limited use for sedating violent patients because an IV must be in place. In babies, diazepam can also be given per rectum (up the butt) to stop seizures.
lorazepam (Ativan): PO / IV / IM. Long acting. Used for stopping active seizures, anxiolysis, sedation of violent patients. Falling out of favor for seizure and chemical restraint because of its long-lasting effects (up to 8 hours).
midazolam (Versed): PO / IV / IM / IN. Very powerful sedative effects. Used for stopping seizures, sedation of violent patients, and sedation in the ICU / OR. This medication is very commonly used in ICUs because of this, and is the first-line choice for stopping seizures in patients without IVs in place.
alprazolam (Xanax): PO only. Primarily used for anxioslysis. Highly addictive.
triazolam (Halcion): PO only. Primarily used for procedural sedation and anxiolysis.
clonazepam (KlonidineKlonopinthanks anon!): PO only. Primarily used for anxiolysis and as a newer, less-addictive alternative to alprazolam.
I will say this: as a provider who works in the emergency and intensive/critical care setting, if I had to only ever have one benzo on hand, I would take midazolam and never look back.
What Does It Feel Like To Be On A Benzo?
Characters under the effects of benzodiazepines may feel drowsy, dizzy, “dopey”, “loopy”, like their limbs are very heavy, like their eyelids are heavy. They may also feel giddy. Benzos suppress inhibitions, so people may be an interesting combination of silly and drowsy.
Under a strong enough dose, benzos can cause characters to fall asleep.
Memories of time while on a benzo, particularly one with strong amnestic effects like triazolam or midazolam, can be blurry. Characters may remember one or two key events during a period of sedation, or they may simply not remember it at all.
I had triazolam three times for dental procedures. The first time I didn’t remember anything, the second time I remembered stressful events (but I don’t remember feeling stressed), and the third time I remembered nothing again.
However, the first time I was apparently still extremely anxious, to the point of crying and asking for my wife. (I’m an EXTREMELY nervous dental patient. I had my trust massively violated by a dentist as a kid, by which I mean, if you ask a kid if it’s okay to keep drilling, and she says NO, you fucking stop, you piece of shit, balloon gloves don’t replace consent.)
Ahem. Sorry.
Are There Side Effects?
There can be. Benzodiazepines often cause dizziness, drowsiness, foggy thinking, weakness, an unsteady gait (stumbly walk).
It’s more rare, but they can cause disorientation, depression, sleep disturbances, and memory impairment.
When a character has a paradoxical reaction, even though they’ve been given a stimulant, they may become moreexcited, agitated, and aggressive.
Also, any benzo given in high enough doses can be enough to trigger respiratory depression or even apnea (lack of spontaneous breathing).
All of these side effects are potentiated (made stronger and more likely) when benzos are taken while the person has also been drinking alcohol.
Are Benzos Addictive?
They can be. Those who take them every day can become physically dependent on them, dependent those who stop taking them suddenly can have seizures, nausea, vomiting, body aches, anxiety, double vision, profuse sweating, and more. This can happen with a sudden discontinuation or even a dose reduction.
Severe symptoms can include seizures, delirium, psychosis, and hallucinations. Seizures can be fatal if not treated.
Why Do Benzos Stop Seizures?
GABA receptors, the same receptors that benzodiazepines hit, are CNS depressants. That means they can reduce overall activity, such as the uncontrolled activity of a seizure.
However, the longer a seizure goes on, the more GABA receptors are inactivated, which is why patients who’ve been seizing for >10 minutes may not respond to benzos, and may need another class of drug. This condition of prolonged seizure activity, by the way, is called status epilepticus.
You Mentioned Date Rape Drugs?
Yes.
This is the downside of a class of drugs like benzos, that have both sedation, inhibition lowering, and amnestic effects. Some asshole is going to use it incorrectly. Some asshole is going to abuse it.
And that is absolutely awful. The way our society, or at least American society, handles sexual assault is atrocious, much less when it comes to those involving alcohol and drugs, whether the victim willingly ingested them or not.
That kind of abuse of something designed to be therapeutic gets me really steamed.
However, benzos help millions of people worldwide each year. Without them the odds of stopping ongoing seizures would be very slim. And millions of people have anxiety that is eased with a low dose of benzodiazepine. Two of them are in my family.
And even if we got rid of all the benzos in all the world…. assholes would find a way.
Assholesalways find a way.
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This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction. It’s one of nine injury analyses that appear in the book, but this one is near and dear to my heart, especially because you all helped pick it. I asked a couple of months ago for injuries to analyze in fiction, and this one was suggested above all others. I hope it doesn’t disappoint!
(Image courtesy of Dreamworks)
Format:Feature Film (animated) Genre: Action-Adventure / Kids ealism: Fantasy (high fantasy)
It’s funny. When I put out a call to my readers asking what injuries I should take a look at for this book, I got this kid’s movie as an overwhelmingly popular arc to take a look at. It’s a great representation of disability!
It’s just that everyone suggested specifically the back half of the movie, where a human gets injured.
But I say let’s start from the front and look at both of the arcs in this movie, shall we?
I think everyone forgot the first injury because it happened to a dragon.
How To Train Your Dragon is a Dreamworks movie about a Viking named Hiccup, a chief’s son who’s very… “un-Viking.” As in, he doesn’t want to kill dragons.
Dragons are initially presented as “pests,” but it turns out they’re more than that, they’re a menace: the town of Brunk gets raided, set on fire, all the time.
So here’s an interesting start: the beginning of the movie finds Hiccup working for a disabled blacksmith, who has interchangeable prostheses for his left hand and a peg leg for his right leg. His hand can become anything: a hammer, tongs, even a saw or a battle-axe. Yet his prosthetic leg is just that: a leg, something for him to stand on.
As the blacksmith’s protégé, Hiccup is shown to be a very handy inventor. He makes a mean catapult, and the opening of the movie has him trying to take out a special kind of dragon called a Night Fury. Scary!
To the excitement of all, Hiccup shoots one down! His homemade catapult launches a set of stone balls on a cord, which brings down a Night Fury — a feat no one’s ever accomplished before.
Of course, no one sees him do it, so no one believes him.
But when he goes over to check on the dragon he shot down, it turns out the Night Fury isn’t so tough after all. The beast is tied up in the cords from the weapon Hiccup launched.
In a moment Blake Snyder’s kickass book on storytelling (Save the Cat!) would approve of… Hiccup sets him free!
…and almost gets eaten for his troubles.
But the dragon doesn’tkill him, which is perplexing to Hiccup. After his relief washes away, the ever-curious Hiccup keeps coming back to find out why the dragon hasn’t killed him.
It turns out the dragon — who’s later dubbed Toothless — has an Inciting Injury: one of his tail fins has been ripped off by the accident.
Hiccup has already given him his only Immediate Treatment: he’s cut the ropes that are holding him captive.
But that doesn’t solve Toothless’s flying problems. Toothless is pretty miserable. He has fallen into a ravine he can’t get out of, because his flight trajectories are all messed up by his damaged tail.
The two form a friendship, over fish, over drawings, and Hiccup decides to build him a prosthesis to fix his tail.
This is the first analysis we’ve looked at where the protagonist gives the Definitive Treatment to another character. It’s unconventional, and it’s a risky move on Hiccup’s part, but it gets Toothless back in the air.
Cue the training montage! Hiccup builds a saddle to ride Toothless, and their training forms a Rocky Road to Recovery as they learn to fly together. They train, and Hiccup works through various incarnations of the dragon tail and harness system. They crash, they fly, they crash again, until they get it right.
TheirNew Normal is a great partnership! With Hiccup at the controls of Toothless’s prosthesis, they can fly together. The lessons Toothless teaches Hiccup about the way dragons work make Hiccup a celebrity in his town.
So Toothless’s arc is pretty straightforward…
Toothless’s Injury Arc
Inciting Injury: Tail fin amputated when he’s shot down by Hiccup.
Immediate Treatment: Freed from the projectile, which had tied him down. (A few days later, but hey, he’s a dragon.)
Definitive Treatment: Prosthetic tail fin made by his human handler.
Rocks on the Rocky Road: Toothless and Hiccup almost fall from the sky a few times during the acclimation process, but the wound itself isn’t the issue that needs discussing.
The Big Test: None. By the time we need Toothless to fight, they’ve already reached the last stage.
And the New Normal? A lasting friendship and partnership, where the two can fly — but only together.
This isn’t the only injury arc the movie has in store for us, however. Later in the plot it’s Hiccup’s turn to be maimed.
In the story’s global climax, Toothless and Hiccup are taking out the mother dragon that’s made all the other dragons behave so badly. Their plan has worked — the other dragon’s gone down and exploded!
But up shoots a wall of fire, Toothless’s prosthesis has been burnt away, and Hiccup falls—
And Toothless, ever the faithful dragon, follows him down.
When they hit the ground, there’s a horrifying moment when we think Toothless has been horribly hurt and Hiccup has been consumed by the flames, until Toothless reveals he’s had Hiccup nested inside his wings.
Hiccup has had an Inciting Injury, though we don’t know what it is until the next scene.
He wakes up at home to Toothless’s cheery face snuffling him like a puppy, and we discover when he tries to stand that his injury has been twofold: a head injury (which explains the time lapse) and a lower leg amputation. He’s got a steel prosthetic foot, a Definitive Treatment for an injury we didn’t know he had. (His Immediate Treatment for the burns and concussion was injury prevention: Toothless wrapped him in his wings so he wouldn’t burn to a crisp on the way down.)
Hiccup gets an absurdly short Rocky Road to Recovery as he tries to walk outside and stumbles — but Toothless lets himself be used as a crutch, and helps his friend learn to walk on his new leg.
However, the two get back to their New Normal pretty quickly. Turns out Hiccup’s blacksmith boss — owner of the peg leg and the prosthetic multitool hand — has built a special harness that will allow Hiccup’s new metal foot to lock in to Toothless’s saddle. They can fly again!
(All of this happens in the span of about two minutes of screen time, which is pretty impressive for a fully-told injury arc! However, this arc is abrupt even for a fantasy movie; the character goes from unconscious and unable to walk to flying a dragon in less time than it takes to brew coffee.)
Hiccup’s injury mirrors Toothless’s…
Hiccup’s Injury Arc
Inciting Injury: Falls through some fire. It’s never explained how, exactly, he comes by his leg amputation or his significant head injury which causes him to wake up at home probably weeks later.
Immediate Treatment: Injury prevention, by Toothless swaddling him as the two plummeted together.
Definitive Treatment: While he was unconscious, his blacksmith boss built him a prosthetic leg. His head injury is completely ignored here; it’s implied that he’s been allowed to rest.
Rocky Road to Recovery: Hiccup has some difficulty walking, but it quickly goes away — the magic of filmmaking! He literally stumbles twice.
(To be fair, we’re talking about a movie with Vikings riding dragons and talking with Scottish accents. Realism isn’t exactly their forte.)
The Big Test:None.
New Normal: Hiccup is back to total functional ability. Because his needs have been fully met, he can continue to walk, fly his dragon, and has no apparent significant changes to his life. This can technically be regarded as Total Disability for the foot, since the foot itself was lost, but as he shows no signs of problems walking or performing his activities, it’s almost a meaningless amputation. Functionally, this is No Disability.
What Can We Learn?
Well, first of all, the injury arc doesn’t have to be about the hero to be a meaningful arc for the audience.
The injured character doesn’t even have to be human.
Second of all… notice a theme?
The blacksmith (the only one in the village who truly believes that Hiccup can become a great Viking, by the way) is disabled. His disability is played almost for laughs; he’s got an interchangeable hand (sometimes tongs, sometimes an axe), but his leg prosthesis is just a piece of wood.
Then Toothless gets hurt — by Hiccup’s hand, an emotional element that’s never fully explored. Should Hiccup feel guilty about shooting down what turns out to be a gentle, playful, kind creature?
But Toothless has an injury that’s a parallel to a leg amputation: one of his tail fins is missing, making his usual form of locomotion impossible.
While Toothless is canonically a dragon, he’s modeled very much like a dog in his actions and behaviors: his loyalty, his curiosity, his initial standoffishness that becomes a fierce friendship. Hiccup, seeing this metaphorical dog metaphorically limping, helps.
It’s through his kindness to his companion that Hiccup learns how to save his people — and does just that in the end. Seeing Hiccup’s example of kindness and understanding toward
the once-feared creatures causes a realization in his people: that humans and dragons can coexist peacefully, that each can benefit the other. Hiccup and the Vikings help rid the dragons of an evil overlord, and the dragons stop raiding the village and stealing the sheep.
Hiccup is himself injured near the end as a parallel injury. Thus, the blacksmith, Toothless, and Hiccup all find themselves depending on their prosthetics to move through the world as they once did. The parallelism is phenomenal!
There’s even a moment of kindness repaid: It’s Hiccup who’s taught Toothless to fly again, and it’s Toothless who helps Hiccup walk again.
Now, how can we all learn to incorporate that kind of parallelism into our stories?
It’s also a great example of the Big Battle having consequences — Hiccup’s wound isn’t timed so that his Big Event will coincide with the climax, but so that the climax will be his Inciting Injury.
My one criticism of the film (from an injury arc perspective) is the way in which Hiccup’s arc is shortened.
He remains unconscious for what must have been weeks of sailing home and fitting him for his prosthesis — his smithy mentor has even designed and built a wholly new flight apparatus for Toothless so they can fly again right away.
In terms of time, it takes weeks for a stump to heal enough to accept a prosthetic, and weeks again for the amputee to learn to walk, instead of literally seconds of film time. However, since this is in the denoument of the film, it’s much less irritating than it would be if, say, it had happened before the Big Battle and Hiccup had been on his feet again for the fight.
This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out THIS WEEK from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].
It’s not too late to receive the bonus content for Maim Your Characters!
With three extra injury analyses like this and the official ScriptMedic Character Injury Worksheet, plus a copy to keep of the 5 Biggest Mistakes Writers Make Approaching Injuries. Just email a copy of your receipt for the book to AuntScripty{at}gmail{dot}com and I’ll be happy to send your bonus content right along!
(This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, which is out today!)
At its core, the Inciting Injury is the catalyst of the injury plot. It’s the moment when the leg snaps, the hammer comes down, or the bullet strikes. It’s the blossom of pain, the initial moment of agony.
There are two significant portions of the Inciting Injury:what happens, and why it happens.
Thewhat is going to determine the way the arc works. Is your character shot in the chest? Did they twist their ankle? Maybe they have a concussion, or a broken arm. You get the idea.
Of course, there’s also the why. The injury might be the effect of some other plot element that is causing your character harm. Did they poke their nose in the wrong badger hole? Are they simply a klutz, or is their injury a consequence of some choice they made earlier on, like going up against a mob boss or invading a foreign nation?
You don’t need to have a great why for a phenomenal injury story to work, as you’ll see in the form of an example: Steven King’s Misery, below.
Injuries tend to happen for one of two reasons. Either they’re completely random (you slip in the tub), or they’re a consequence of some other cause (you ventured into enemy territory and got shot). Which one you use is completely up to you, of course, but I would argue that the best Inciting Injuries are the byproduct of other elements in the plot.
We’re going to go over the exact process of building your own injury plot later on in the book (with an example and the choices we might face along the way), but as we go forward I’m going to give a few examples of the way famous writers have approached each of the elements we need to look at.
We’re also going to take a look at the arc of a fictional character I’ve made up: Billy Badbones, Demon Hunter. Where the other examples are going to get summaries, Billy’s story will be told in shortened versions of the actual scenes.
So let’s look at some examples of Inciting Injuries in fiction.
Example:Misery
Misery is a phenomenal piece of writing from Stephen King. (It was later adapted into a film, starring James Caan and Kathy Bates.) It’s a horror tale: a writer, Paul Sheldon, suffers a terrible car accident and is trapped in the house of his Number One Fan, the disturbed and disturbing Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is a nurse by trade – but an Angel of Death, a nurse who kills her patients. To survive, Paul must write Annie a novel all her own, resurrecting her favorite Sheldon character, Misery.
For Paul Sheldon, the what of his Inciting Injury is a car crash, which gives him a head injury, two broken legs, and a broken pelvis.
Thewhy is a simple accident: Sheldon, who has just finished his latest and greatest novel, goes driving in the snow. The storm picks up, and he crashes his car into a ditch. (Sheldon has just finished his latest and greatest novel). There’s a point to be made about hubris here, but King makes it subtly: it is Paul’s pride in his work that causes him to start driving in a Colorado snowstorm.
One thing that’s unique about Sheldon’s plot is the way in which it’s told. When we first see Sheldon, he’s waking up in a haze of pain and painkillers, at the beginning of his Rocky Road to Recovery. King chose to begin the tale in media res, in the middle of things – which meant starting at the heart of the story: the beginning of Sheldon’s relationship with Wilkes. We get the earlier phases as glimpses later on.
Example:Men of Honor
Men of Honor is a 2000 film that follows the career of real-life Navy diver Carl Brashear. Brashear, the first black diver in the Navy, faces struggle after struggle because of his race. He suffers unending injustices at the hands of the racist institution.
Nearly two-thirds of the way through the film, Brashear is on the deck of a ship when he sees significant tension being put on a line. Two other sailors are standing over it, and Brashear shoves them out of the way just as the line snaps – and brings a hunk of metal hurtling toward him at high speed.
Thewhat of his Inciting Injury is that the piece of metal breaks his leg, causing Brashear to immediately fall to the deck screaming in agony.
Thewhy is that Brashear is, in this portrayal of him, a hero. He saves two other men from a fate that could have been similar, or could have been worse. The why of his injury shows us who Brashear is: he throws himself into danger. (This scene immediately follows one in which he is on a dive and almost gets run over by a Russian nuclear submarine.)
Example:The Empire Strikes Back
The story of Luke Skywalker’s hand amputation is an interesting one. It’s not going to be presented here as a positive example. If anything, it’s closer to what not to do. We’ll see why that is later on, especially when we talk about magical healing, but for now, let’s just tell the story.
Luke Skywalker is a Jedi Knight taking on the evil Empire. He’s having a lightsaber showdown with one of the biggest bads in the ‘verse: Darth Vader himself, the Emperor’s right-hand man.
They’re dueling, fighting. It looks like Luke is going to have the upper hand… and then Vader gives Luke his Inciting Injury. He cuts off Luke’s hand with a lightsaber. Luke’s hand – and his own lightsaber – go sailing over the railing of the catwalk where they’re dueling.
Thewhat is an amputation of the right hand, conveniently cauterized by the blade.
(Isn’t sci-fi neat?)
Thewhy is that Luke is fighting for the freedom of all mankind – and facing an enemy far more powerful than he is.
Now what about our own example, Billy Badbones?
Homebrew Example: Billy Badbones
Billy Badbones is, well, a badass. He digs motorcycles, especially his late father’s Indian, and he guns down demonic drug lords. He rides across the nation, delivering grievous bodily harm and destroying heroin reserves everywhere he goes. He’s the Jack Reacher of demon drug busts.
He’s chasing the Demon Lord Shigure all along I-40, from Arizona to the East Coast. It’s been four days of hard rides and little sleep, and Billy’s exhausted. But he’s close on the demon’s heels, so he keeps going.
And, doing 60 down I-95, Billy Badbones falls asleep on the bike.
He does his best to keep his face off the pavement, but the fall lands his body weight on his arm. He can feel the bone crunch, feel the white-hot searing pain as his arm snaps under the weight.
He scrapes across the blacktop, ripping through his leather jacket. His favorite demon-killing gun goes skittering away, off the side of the road and into the underbrush. He and his bike go rocketing down the road, the metal sparking, his arm and leg screaming in agony.
He tries to slide, to take it on his back, but the bike has trapped his leg, and he’s getting crushed by the weight of it.
When he finally comes to a stop, the bike is mangled and so is he. He can only thank the gods that his bike isn’t on fire, that the driver behind him slammed on his brakes. The car stops ten feet shy of him.
Billy lays back on the pavement panting. He’s breathing heavily, but he’s alive. It could have been worse, he thinks.
It’s going to get worse.
InThe Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell writes about establishing the regular world before transitioning into the New World. Here we’ve talked about Billy’s regular world (health), and we see him come crashing into the New World (his upcoming disability). He’s begun his journey, even if it wasn’t his idea.
So the what of Billy’s Inciting Injury is that his arm and leg have been crushed, burned, and ripped up by road rash, and he’s been dragged by his motorcycle — he’s gonna be in some hurt!
Thewhyof his injury is his own exhaustion. Billy’s so driven to accomplish his goal – killing the Demon Lord Shigure – that he takes a spill off his bike on the highway at speed. It’s up to the reader to determine if that’s madness (working way too hard), or a marker of dedication (he must chase the demons!), or both.
Next up, we’re going to talk about the second half of the Beginning: the Immediate Treatment!
This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out TODAY from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].
Those who preorder the book, or who email me their receipt for a copy purchased from any retailer between 9/4/2017 and 9/11/2017 ( AuntScripty {at} gmail {dot} com ), will receive a package of bonus materials including three additional injury analyses and the official ScriptMedic injury worksheet.
The additional analyses are: John Silver’s amputation in Black Sails, Root’s transcendence into a demigod in Person of Interest, and the injury that changes the course of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Misery, by Stephen King
Format: Novel (Also a feature film) Genre:Horror Reality:Realism
We’ve been citing Misery as an example throughout this book, and now is the time to bring it all together.
TheInciting Injury happens off-page and before the opening scene of the novel. Writer Paul Sheldon finishes his latest novel, a work he hopes will take him from being a Genre Hack to a Respected Author. Having finished his book, Paul drives off to take his manuscript to his publisher… and gets caught in a blizzard. He crashes his car into a ditch and is severely injured.
Paul’s legs are both broken, and he suffers a significant concussion and probable traumatic brain injury, though there’s little evidence of this other than his lapsed memory of the first days of his recovery.
The brilliance of Stephen King is in his slow exposition of the arc. We learn this story in bits and pieces as the story goes on.
We learn later, for example, about the Immediate Treatment Annie Wilkes offered Paul when she “rescued” him from his car crash: she pulled him from his car in the middle of the blizzard, threw him on the backseat of her pickup like a gunnysack, and drove him to her house for care. (Annie is a once-upon-a-time nurse, who we later learn was barred from practicing after her patients kept dying suspiciously.)
As for her so-called Definitive Treatment for Paul Sheldon’s mangled legs… well, she splints his legs (badly), ignoring the most severe injuries (his broken hips). She also allows him time to rest, letting him sleep through the worst of the pain and the recovery.
Crucially for the addiction plot of the novel, she also force-feeds him Novril, a fictional painkiller that is supposed to be the allegory of codeine.
In fact, when we meet Paul, he is already deep in the throes of the Novril addiction, and numerous times we see his agony multiply without his medication. We see him force his way out of his room — risking his life, given that he’s held hostage — to get Novril. His addiction sets in deep, and it doesn’t let go.
The entire book’s present tense is set in the Rocky Road to Recovery, where Paul is recuperating from his injuries, and the stumbling blocks on that road to recovery are staggeringly huge. In fact, those stumbling blocks are the plot points of the novel; the injury plot and the global plot are one and the same.
For one, he’s not getting proper physical therapy, so Paul never recovers to the point of being able to walk.
For another, he’s got the nasty Novril addiction to fight.
For a third, his captor is demanding he write her a novel all her own — meaning that he must be moved to a wheelchair well before he’s ready, and endure the pain of sitting with broken hips and legs. He must endure this for hours while he fights to write a novel she won’t kill him over.
Of course, the villain adds new injuries to the mix…
Annie Wilkes amputates his left foot with an axe, in a fit of rage over something Paul’s done. (In the movie, Annie, played by the brilliant Kathy Bates, hobbles Paul with a sledgehammer.)
Later, she cuts off his thumb, again for disobedience.
(While it’s tempting to see these as separate injury events, they function more as stumbling blocks in his global injury/recovery arc; although they’re mentioned, and the psychological impacts are profound, Sheldon’s story is more about his overall disability and the pickle it puts him in than the individual pieces that go wrong.)
To make matters worse, Paul develops an infection in his kidneys toward the end of the book.
But come the Big Test, the big break where Sheldon escapes Annie’s wrath… well, that’s a trial, isn’t it? The woman has already killed a state trooper and outsmarted a half-dozen others.
Paul Sheldon has to take her down — mangled legs and all.
The image of Paul force-feeding Annie Wilkes burning pages of the manuscript she made him write is forever seared in the consciousness of anyone who reads the book (or watches the brilliant movie adaptation). Moreover, in spite of it all, Paul overcomes a formidable opponent with the tools he’s managed to wheedle from her: a typewriter, a stack of pages, a stolen can of lighter fluid, and a single match.
From an injury arc perspective? Well, in the struggle, Paul is forced to crawl on the floor. Annie grabs his still-healing stump and squeezes. He also gets glass in his arm from a broken champagne bottle.
He spends the end of the climax crawling to a closet looking for Novril, taking a small fistful before passing out. Later, when he wakes up, he’s rescued by cops coming to interview Annie Wilkes.
In the New Normal, set nine months after his experience in Annie Wilkes’ hell house, Paul has had to undergo a reinjury (the rebreaking of his legs to allow them to heal properly this time), but now he’s at least walking; King graces us with the Clack… clack… clack… of his two walking sticks.
In fact, it becomes a horror refrain, as Paul is thinking about Annie even now. In his moments of terror in the hell house, he saw Annie everywhere: behind couches and doors… (His fear is unfounded; he’s really seeing a cross-eyed Siamese named Dumpster.)
So his New Normal is, despite everything, one of only partial disability: he can walk, on crutches, with the hope for better ability through further rehabilitation.
Now, as to Sheldon’s psychology…
Sheldon is an interesting case study for recovery because he has only one person to help him, and she’s the villain of the story, plain as day. While his (partial) recovery is in her interest — he has to be healthy enough to write for her, after all — it’s certainly not in her interest to have him recover fully.
So Paul spends the book in the space between absolutely brokenandcompletely well, and will spend the rest of his life in that space — remember his amputations.
His addiction to Novril is his addiction to a few things: not only painless existence, but sleep and retreat.
The Injury Arc
Inciting Injury: Paul breaks his legs and hips in a nasty car crash.
Immediate Treatment: He’s rescued from the snowbank by his Number One Fan, Annie Wilkes.
Definitive Treatment: Annie has splinted Paul’s legs (badly), and he’s given time to recover in bed.
Rockson the Rocky Road to Recovery: Paul must contend with a painkiller addiction, an evil captor (who is also an Angel of Death), he endures two new amputations, he’s got terrible pain, UTIs, and he must write through the pain and against the clock.
The Big Test: Paul must kill Annie Wilkes before she kills him. He succeeds!
The New Normal: Paul has Some Disability later on. (He actually lives through a medical reInjury, briefly summed up in the last chapter: his doctors have to rebreak his legs to let them set correctly.)
What Can We Learn?
First of all, let’s just say it: none of us are ever going to write a novel as absolutely brilliant as Misery. I’m pretty sure it can’t be done. King is a bona fide genius, and that’s all there is on the topic.
What can we take away? How can we write a story likeMisery?
Well…
For starters, look at how King used disability, not only by itself, but as a way to entrap his character. Annie Wilkes needs no chains to keep Paul Sheldon trapped in her house. She’s got his broken legs — and she can keep taking pieces of him any time she wants.
In fact, that’s one of the terrifying things about the story: there is alwaysanother level to sink to, whether it’s psychological or physical, always some fresh horror that can be visited upon Paul. Even when he leaves her custody he’s terrified.
But this can be seen from an opposite and empowering perspective: don’t discount the disabled hero! Paul still manages to kill Annie with what she’s given him (and what he’s stolen): a manuscript, a match, a typewriter, and some lighter fluid, in spite of all the crash and her wrath inflict upon his body. Go Paul!
Also, especially if it’s a one-off book, don’t be afraid to let your character be disabled in the end! Sheldon might be walking, but he’s walking on crutches. That’s okay — in fact, it’s perfectly appropriate.
This post is an excerpt from the forthcomingMaim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017 and get your free bonus content, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.
I’m an RN in a 18-bed Med/Surg ICU. Intensive Care units are for the sickest patients in the hospital. You get sicker than we can handle the only step up is to meet your Maker or have said Maker do a miracle.
This is our Mantra:
We care for people in Septic Shock, with CVAs, DKA, decompensated heart failure, post cardiac arrest, COPD exacerbation, ARDS, drug overdose, and the post-ops of every discipline (except the open hearts who have their own CVICU). We manage treatment modalities like CRRT (continuous dialysis), hypothermia protocol, and LV assist devices like the Impella and balloon pump. Highly technical and lots of variety, which is what attracted me here.
I originally was going to write about an entire shift in the ICU but found that the first hour of a recent shift gave a decent representation of what we do. Not terribly eventful or comprehensive, just typical.
Hour One went as follows:
I walk on the unit for the first of my three 12 hours shifts. Check the board for my two assigned patients, find the nurse who had them for the day and plop down next to her. Yes, only three shifts, and yes, only two patients. Trust me, it’s enough.
The “Day Babe,” as we night shift nurses affectionately call day nurses (do they have a name for us? The walking dead……) fills me in on each patient: history, hospital course, treatments, status of each body system. I fill out all the little boxes on my report sheet in an attempt to grasp an entire patient’s health and plan of care in less than five minutes in a way that somehow qualifies me to be responsible for them. It’s always astounded me how short, random, and unregulated this process is.
Hemodynamic monitors placed around the unit display heart rhythms and vital signs on each patient. They alarm and flash with increasing levels of dismay when something is out of range. This varies from little peeps and flashes for something minor (O2 sat probe is off) to the From Hell noise that awakens your hindbrain to mortal danger (your patient’s heart has stopped beating.)
Both of my patients have heart rhythms that are compatible with life and no alarms. Yay. I fill out a quick little schedule for myself for each patient and then go to see the sicker one first.
Patient One: Small bowel obstruction status post Exploratory Lap, went into respiratory failure on the hospital floor after developing pneumonia. Came up to us to be intubated, diuresed, and get IV antibiotics until the invading organisms are killed to death. She’s in septic shock on several pressors, Cardizem and heparin drips for AFib, fentanyl for sedation.
I assess her, making the million little observations that tell me if she is really doing as well as the monitor might lead me to believe. Vital signs can be very deceiving, nowhere more than ICU. Lung/heart/bowel sounds, ET/OG tubes, pupils, hand grips, pulses, skin integrity, IV access.
She’s severely edematous. Her flesh puckers under my finger like that green brick material flowers are arranged in. I wonder what she does for a living, if she has kids, pets, if she’s married? Read any good books lately? Details of personal life are UTA (Unable to Assess) when the person is I&S (Intubated and Sedated) and there’s no family around.
I ensure all her drips are running correctly and calibrate the arterial line, which tells me her MAP is 68. Beautiful. Only as much Levophed as she needs, no necrotic fingers and toes for her. She looks good. Stable-ly unstable, we call them, when their vitals are normalized on medicated drips.
Patient Two: Older gentlemen, VFib arrest, visited the Cath lab for a variety of stents then hypothermia protocol. He’s past all that now and has just been extubated. The day nurse told me he looked good respiratory-wise. I don’t agree.
He’s tachypnic taking shallow breaths. Weak cough that isn’t getting the job done. He’ll be reintubated within 12 hours if he keeps this up. I call my friends in Respiratory Therapy for ENT suction. It helps, but he HATES it. He asks me why I like to torture him. I tell him that I don’t, that I’m trying to get him better. He scowls. He’s over it. I don’t blame him.
The rest of his assessment is WNL, and that’s not “We Never Looked,” it’s “Within Normal Limits.” Because I looked. Except…….I can’t help but notice that he doesn’t move his left side as much as his right, and his hand grip on that side is just a tiny bit weaker. Am I imagining it? His pupils both react to light but don’t look exactly the same…..and he’s not really answering my questions. He’s probably just being difficult….right?
Come on man, don’t do that. Let’s not take an emergent trip to CT and do TPA protocol right now. Fast as I can, track down the NP. He has a history of right CVA with residual left-sided weakness. The day nurse didn’t tell me that in report.
I push some IV hydralazine for his BP of 180/70. He asks for a beer. I feel foolish for worrying about him so much a few minutes ago.
The hydralazine helps for only a few minutes so I chase it with 5mg of metoprolol, pushed over two minutes because I don’t want to stop his heart, just slow it down. I make peace with the fact that I’m going to be chasing his BP with IV meds all night long.
I set the bed alarm. Dude’s awake now and I don’t trust him, even as weak as he looks. You know how 100 lb. moms can lift cars when their kids are in danger? Elderly patients can do astounding things when the delerium sets in.
Overall a pretty easy ICU assignment.
I leave his room and hear a plea for help from a nurse at the end of the hall.
I know this patient, Heroin OD. Tattoos everywhere. When I say everywhere I mean it. Many of the nurses had speculated about whether or not certain tattoos look differently when certain body parts were in certain anatomical configurations. If you know what I mean. If you don’t, don’t think about it too much.
We don’t mean to belittle people or treat them as objects. We can’t help but think these things.
The nurse called for help because he’s been on tube feeding for over a week and his Dignicare fell out. You can imagine the consequences. If you can’t imagine them because you don’t know what a Dignicare is don’t worry about it, innocence being bliss and all. I help her get things straightened out. She grateful. I promise to help her with his bath later. He’s a big dude.
Quick stop at the Accudose, grab my meds and waste Versed and Fentanyl for another nurse. We chat and make fun of the NP who’s working on the other side of the glass, not noticing us. We’ll tell him about it later.
I give Patient One’s meds after deciding that they’re all safe and appropriate for her. A few IV pushes, hang an IV antibiotic, crush up the pills, mix them in some water, flush down the OG tube.
I most definitely neverpretend I’m a wizard making a magic healing potion when I do this. That would be childish and I’m a professional.
Her MAP is 64. Borderline but I’ll ride that out another 10 minutes before titrating her Levophed; you learn after a while not to micromanage your pressors……
Then the monitor starts alarming THAT alarm, the hindbrain one. Bed 24, and judging from the trace on the monitor it’s legit VTach. I start to run to the room but two steps in the alarm stops. Just a run of VT, not sustained, 20 beats or so.
I grab the rhythm strip that’s printing out and go to the room to give it to the nurse, a friend of mine who just got back from maternity leave. She turns to me and takes the strip.
I don’t know this patient. Septic on CRRT, came in yesterday.
“She looks like shit, ” my friend says. She does indeed.
Now that’s not some random or insensitive insult. It’s a thing we ICU nurses say when we get that vague unsettling feeling in our perceptive gut that even though this patient looks okay on paper or computer screen they’re going to go downhill, soon. And now here she comes with the increasingly-long runs of VT.
“I told them,” she says, shaking her head. I tell her to let me know if she needs anything, I have my unit phone.
Then I go get a unit phone and sign into it since I forgot to do it earlier. My manager runs a report every week that tells her when we forget to sign into a phone within five minutes of starting our shift. I’ll get a strongly-worded email.
Check the monitor, Patient One, MAP 72. Hah! Peek in on Patient Two. Still in bed. BP 200/103. Awesome. Bust out the IV labetalol. Take THAT. Back down to around 180/70. Sigh. NP says to give it a half hour.
Grab the aide, both patients get repositioned. Sit down to chart. Barely get logged on.
Good buddy nurse sticks her head outside the curtain and gives me The Smile. She’s helped me so many times, she knows I’ll do anything for her. Not that I want to go into that patient’s room. I do not. But we’re nurses, and we do what needs to be done.
I enter the room of the patient who solidified my belief that ultimately ICU nursing is not for me.
Now, I love intensive care. I love helping someone right in the moment they need it most. I’m good at my job and I love using my head and my heart to do it. But I can’t stay here. I’m willing to walk with a patient through difficult and painful treatments to get them better but I didn’t sacrifice my time with my family and go to nursing school to put people through hell for no meaningful recovery. I have an ethical aversion to a good 40% of what I do at my job now and that percentage only seems to be growing.
Her history is too long to recount. Her body had lost the ability to heal a long time ago. Every organ failing, even her skin. Her skin would break under our hands no matter how gently we would move her.
Her BKA stump has been infected for months. The flavor of this month was Pseudomonas. The nurse was asking for help changing the dressing. We remove the old dressing to find her stump disintegrating into the telltale light green of raging Pseudomonas infection. It looked like pea soup. We were keeping this woman alive so she could turn into pea soup before our eyes.
I couldn’t look at her face anymore. When I had first taken care of her I had paid very close attention to her face, trying to read her expression for anything I was doing that she found painful since she was nonverbal at baseline after massive stroke. Eventually I figured out everything we did caused her pain.
We still warned her of what we were going to do, still apologized. The family had instructed that no pain medicine be given “because it makes her less interactive with us.” The family wasn’t even here. Sorry she can’t entertain you like you want because of the tremendous pain she’s in. I try so hard no to judge them as I’m sure they’re are suffering too. But I fail every time and every time I get angry.
Ethics consult was “pending.” Meaningless, we have no teeth, no real influence. If the family says treat, we treat. What does “treat” even mean, then? If all we do is…..
I stop myself from going down that mental road, again. It simply isn’t up to me. What is in my power to do for this woman, right now, that will help her? I can think of nothing but to treat her gently and say a prayer for her relief.
I don’t know if it helped.
Dressing done, I leave the room with ice in my gut and go back to charting.
A few clicks done before Bed 24 alarms again.
VTach, really fast and not stopping this time. Everybody runs for the room. I’m first so I go to grab the cart with the Resus meds and Life Pack but it’s not there because my friend with the bad feeling already has it in the room. She’s been feeling for a pulse while we ran to her.
“No pulse,” she says as I walk in. I start CPR while she digs out the defibrillator pads. She puts them on around my hands and starts charging the Life Pack. “Clear!,“ I back off, she discharges the shock.
(Ahhhhh sorry. I can’t help it, it’s exactly what we’re doing when we shock someone.)
Sinus rhythm restored.
“Maternity leave didn’t slow you down, did it?” I say to her. She shrugs. Intensivist walks in and starts barking orders about STAT labs and electrolyte replacements. “Need something, call me,” I say as I walk out.
Check the monitor. Patient Two’s BP is 190/90. *sigh*
All things considered, not a bad hour. My scrubs aren’t covered in anything. I didn’t get any indecent proposals. Nobody tried that hard to die.
So, as we talked about last time, occupational therapy is a therapy focused on the specific aspects of what makes you, you—and we call those your “occupations”, the things you find important and spend your time doing.
When you come into occupational therapy with an impairment of some sort, OTs will take that and come up with a two-pronged approach to therapy:
First, we get an immediate, short-term solution to the problem. This is a modification, an adaptation. Second, we start figuring out how the patient can work, learn, or exercise in different ways to strengthen, stretch, or otherwise adapt their body to be able to do the thing they want to do long-term.
When one of my professors (an OT) was very young, she decided she wanted to be a physical therapist. Her mom wanted to encourage her, so she set her up with a volunteering gig at a local therapy place. Her job as a volunteer was to wheel elderly people in from the waiting room to their therapy, then wheel them back out. As she wheeled in one particular lady, who was recovering from a stroke, the physical therapist asked, “How are you doing today, Mrs. Smith?” Mrs. Smith admitted she was not doing very well. The PT responded something like “Well, no pain, no gain, right?” and continued on about therapy as usual. (Most PTs aren’t like that, hopefully!)
After the PT session was over, the volunteer was supposed to wheel her to OT which was just down the hall. When the occupational therapist asked, “How are you?” Mrs. Smith responded the same way. The OT stopped and pressed her for more information. Eventually Mrs. Smith reluctantly disclosed that she had been unable to put her bra on in order to leave the house, and she was embarrassed and upset at having to ask her husband for help with such a simple thing. The OT immediately reformulated the structure of her entire therapy session. First, they re-fitted her bra with Velcro in the front and adjusted it and practiced until Mrs. Smith could put it on herself. Then they began to address the issues of her limited shoulder mobility. There was a lot of work yet to do, but Mrs. Smith was wheeled out of the office with a smile because they had addressed what was specifically important to her.
So what do you do if the patient’s preferred occupation—their own personal goal, the thing they want to spend time doing—doesn’t have direct therapeutic value for addressing their impairment? That’s where artistic media can sometimes be brought in, like I mentioned briefly in part 1.
Let’s imagine an elderly woman who more or less goes around chatting with people at her assisted living facility all day long—all she wants to do is chat. But, since she’s having difficulty using her fingers for fine movements (like dressing herself, brushing her teeth, feeding herself), we want to do occupational therapy for strengthening her fingers. Sure, we could force her to do a boring activity that she doesn’t connect with: squeeze on a stress ball for 10 reps, practice picking up small items over and over again…or, we could incorporate an activity here. Have her make a pot out of clay that she has to pinch and shape. Have her make a mosaic by pressing tiles into air-dry clay. And while she’s doing that activity, she can chat, and when the project is done, she has something to tell other people about and show off!
Creative media are so useful when it comes to getting people engaged. Mr. Jones is a grumpy retired veteran who tends to be labeled noncompliant: you’ll get so much better results if you teach him how to make a leather wallet than if you try to force him to pick marbles out of some putty. Bobby is a little boy with Down syndrome who has a single mom and multiple siblings: get him interested in a therapeutic game on his iPad, and he’ll be much more likely to do therapy in his free time than if you prescribed an intervention that required hours of uninterrupted one-on-one time with his mom. Mrs. Miller has high anxiety about regaining full use of her arm: show her a soothing, repetitive craft like knitting or crocheting that will strengthen her hand and also help calm her down. Seriously, the possibilities are endless.
So hopefully you understand a little more about how OT is unique. It fits into every practice setting: there’s OT for acute care, home health, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, schools, pediatrics, geriatrics, and everything in between. I personally want to be a pediatric OT and work with children with special needs, which looks like gaining as much independence as possible for that child’s particular challenges: can they learn to feed themselves? Dress themselves? Communicate with an iPad? Maybe they can learn to walk with a walker; maybe they can learn to walk independently; maybe they can learn to use a wheelchair, maybe they can control the wheelchair with the movement of their eyes. How independent can this child possibly be? How empowered can we possibly get him/her?
It’s a fantastic profession, despite being little-known. If you’re interested in a medical profession, but you have no idea which one, consider occupational therapy when you’re making your decision! If you’re a medical provider already, hopefully this may give you some ideas of the use of prescribing OT for people. In many places, it’s considered an “emerging practice” and we’re trying to spread the word about how important OT can be, so keep an eye out at wherever you work or see how you can help drum up support for including OT in your profession!
Hi everybody! Occupational therapy first year second year student here to answer the question, “So, what is occupational therapy exactly?”
Many people in the medical field may have heard the name or have some vague concept about what occupational therapy (commonly abbreviated OT) is, but others may have not, and certainly there are a large number of people not in the medical field who have no idea what this is. In fact, it’s probably easier for me to start by explaining what OT is not:
Occupational therapy is not career counseling. (That’s the name of my blog!) Yes, the independent words seem like synonyms of one another, but they’re totally different things.
Occupational therapy is not physical therapy. A lot of times, they get prescribed together (OT/PT), to the point where medical providers act like “oh-tee-pee-tee” is one long, bizarre word meaning “please exercise this guy”.
Occupational therapy is not just group craft time, nor is it artistic busywork. Many OT providers do choose to use art as a component of their therapy (which I’ll explain more about later), myself included. Sometimes laypeople and even medical providers look at this and don’t think it can have any value because on the outside it looks fun and playful. Because everybody knows that in order for therapy to work, it has to be super boring, and the minute you start to have fun it ceases to be therapeutic!
Okay, so those are probably the most common misconceptions about what occupational therapy is not. So we’re back to our original question, what is occupational therapy? That’s a good question, and in fact, the American Occupational Therapy Association is currently in talks to agree upon a simple definition encompassing exactly what we do, which will be announced at the 100th Birthday of OT happening in 2017.
In the meantime, we’re having to get by with our own simple definitions, and here’s mine:
Occupational therapy is therapy that focuses on an individual’s ability to enjoy life the way they want to as a measure of success.
That means that, for an occupational therapist, the most important measure of whether they are succeeding in providing therapy is whether or not their patient is able to participate in the things they want to do. Right now, if you’re in the medical field (or even if you’re not), you might be scratching your head and saying “uh, isn’t that what every medical provider wants?” And the answer is, yes and no.
So let me break this down a little further.
The reason the name “occupational therapy” confuses people (see: not career counseling) is because in our society, our “occupation” specifically means our job. But in occupational therapy, an occupation is defined as any meaningful activity that a person does to occupytheir time. Under this definition, your job is definitely still your occupation, but so is being a parent, going to school, playing with your pet, engaging in your hobbies, participating in leisure activities, and so on.
It encompasses all the roles in your life (employee, parent, sibling, student, child, friend, volunteer). And, here’s the most important part: your occupations are totally different than somebody else’s occupations. You may be the same age, live in the same area, and have the same diagnosis as someone else, but your therapy will be totally different because it’s going to focus on the crucial aspects of what make you, you!
This is not at all to say that other medical professions don’t care about you as a person, or that they don’t know how to adjust their tactics to fit their patient’s personal needs. Not at all! Good medical professionals in every field will have elements of this holistic viewpoint in their practice. But at the end of the day, if a surgeon has a guy open on his operating table, it doesn’t matter whether this guy uses his knee to play basketball, to perform martial arts, or to dance at the grocery store and embarrass his kids; all that matters is that the surgeon needs to replace the knee. (Cue kneeologists correcting me in the comments.)
But when the guy is recovering from surgery and learning how to do things again, his occupational therapist will be the one taking that into consideration.
We’ll look more at how OTs do that in Part 2 of this series!
An injury plot works on one very simple three-part platform:
A character gets hurt. (The Beginning)
That character gets treatment and begins to feel better, but must navigate the world in a state of partial disability. (The Middle)
Finally, the character settles into their new normal, whether that’s back to a healthy baseline, living with some partial disability, or suffering a total disability of one body part or another. (The End)
Congratulations! This book is done. Go forth and maim your characters!
If only…
The good news is that sticking to this simple structure will give you a perfectly reasonable injury tale. Observe:
While daydreaming about smashing a homer at the company softball game, Mary trips over the ottoman, falls, and breaks her wrist. She tries icing her wrist, but the pain just keeps getting worse. (The Beginning)
She goes to the ER and gets X-rays and a cast. Thoughts of the game are replaced with daily challenges: how to button her shirts, how to drive her stick shift, how to type her TPS reports at work. She solves these challenges by asking her wife for help with her shirt, swapping cars for a couple of weeks with a coworker who has an automatic, and using dictation software. (The Middle)
Eventually, Mary’s cast comes off. Her wrist still hurts when the weather changes, but mostly she can ignore it. The softball game is all but forgotten. (The End)
This progression certainly works, although it’s a little dull and, most importantly, it lacks meaning. At present, it’s a plot, but not really a story. Remember, Mary needs to change in some fundamental way for it to be a story with meaning (rather than a series of things that happen).
One way we could add some meaning is defining why the softball game is so important to her. Does she need to redeem herself for a mistake? Does she miss the glory days of her youth? Is she trying to impress her boss – or a potential side lover? (Scandal Alert! Or, a perfectly healthy polyamorous relationship.)
In short: this plot is good, or at least makes sense, but now let’s elevate this plot to the level of story.
In my experience, this is where most injury plots fall apart. There’s a very clear cause – a character is injured, usually shot – but there’s no effect on the person or on the story. It becomes simply a piece of texture, an element of “grit” that carries no weight of meaning behind it.
(If texture is something you’re interested in for your story – if you want the injury for the sake of having an injury, not as a mirror to hold up to your character – that’s okay too, as long as the injury is fairly minor. We’ll get to this in Part 8: Sweating the Small Stuff.)
So we’ve taken a look at the Beginning, Middle, andEnd of Mary’s broken wrist plot, and touched on why this might matter to her. All of which is great! But let’s break down those three components into smaller pieces that will help us understand the particular quirks of an injury plot.
There are six distinct phases of the injury portion of the injury plot.
Broken down by plot section, these are:
The Beginning
TheInciting Injury: the moment and manner in which the character gets hurt.
TheImmediate Treatment: what the character does in the moment to feel better and avoid further injury.
The Middle
TheDefinitive Treatment: when the character receives care which ultimately begins their healing process.
TheRocky Road to Recovery: when the character faces challenges relating to their new disability and how they cope with those problems during healing.
The End
TheBig Test: the moment when a character must overcome a greater challenge related to the global plot – while still recovering from their injury.
TheNew Normal: when your character’s final degree of disability becomes apparent. They can have No Disability, a Partial Disability, or be Totally Disabled (for the affected body part).
You can see places where the five fundamental elements of storytelling mesh into the injury plot. The Inciting Injury is the Inciting Incident, the Progressive Complications are in the Treatment stages and the Rocky Road to Recovery, the CrisisandClimax parallel nicely with the Big Test, and the Resolution is one and the same as the New Normal.
So why the relabeling? Because it’s easy to get distracted by vague terms. The labels that are injury-specific will help you remember the pieces you need to have in place in order to make sure your audiences find your arc believable.
Let’s take another look at Mary’s wrist fracture, through the lens of the Six Phases:
Inciting Injury: Mary trips over the ottoman and breaks her wrist.
Immediate Treatment: Mary tries to ice her wrist and hopes it gets better, but it doesn’t.
Definitive Treatment: Mary goes to the ER, gets X-rays and a cast.
The Rocky Road to Recovery: Mary’s everyday life becomes more challenging with her broken wrist! Driving a stick shift is out, she can’t even button her own shirt, and she can’t effectively type one-handed. She solves each of these problems.
Big Test: Mary doesn’t have one… yet.
New Normal: Eventually Mary’s cast comes off, and she has a very minor Partial Disability: some lingering wrist stiffness and some aching when the weather changes.
Hopefully the first three phases are pretty clear and straightforward. But I want to talk about the Rocky Road to Recovery for a little bit, because, at least at the moment, it’s the easiest way to touch on the third rail of the story: why the injury actually matters.
Why is it, exactly, that these three tasks are so important to Mary? Essentially, what parts of herself does this injury force her to face?
Buttoning Her Shirt: As it stands, this is just an inconvenience, one that will go away in a few weeks. But what if Mary is very independent, and hates anyone – even her wife – seeing her vulnerable and weak? Why would she feel this way? Maybe when she was younger, Mary had to take care of her aging grandmother, and she always hated buttoning her grandmother’s blouse. She always vowed that she would never get to that stage in her life – and yet here she is. Maybe she’s coming up on a birthday and fearing her older age.
(Note that these concepts are both very natural and very ablist. On the one hand, change is extremely hard, especially where it concerns things we take for granted, such as our ability to do anything we choose. On the other hand, the mindset that becoming disabled is an awful thing implies that the lives of disabled people are awful, which doesn’t necessarily follow. Be aware of what you’re writing as you write it!)
Swapping Cars: Again, this is an inconvenience – until we know why it’s a big deal for Mary. Is she super proud of her ability to drive a stick shift? Is she super proud of her car as a status symbol – and now she’s swapping her this-year’s Lexus for her coworker’s twelve-year-old Civic? What if she’s a neat freak, and the person she’s switching cars with is a total slob? Or, what if she just got her car – by inheritance, and she has conversations with her car as though it’s her lost parent?
In any of these cases, why does it matter?
Typing and Work: Why does it matter so much that Mary has difficulty typing? Is she on the verge of losing her job – hence her burning desire to impress at the softball game? Is it her dream job she’s at risk of losing, one she’s fought to get? Does she feel like an imposter, like she’s gotten someplace she doesn’t actually deserve, and maybe losing the job is some cosmic retribution for her masquerade? Or maybe she’s self-conscious about her voice (why? An utterly embarrassing failure at a school talent show when she was a teen?), and doesn’t want to use dictation software where other people can hear – but it’s the only way to keep doing her work?
As you can see, this is the single best place where an injury plot can teach us about Mary. With just three relatively small challenges, we learn about her grandmother’s illness, her connection with her lost parent, and her sense of being an imposter at a job she doesn’t deserve (even if she does). All of a sudden, Mary isn’t just a woman who tripped over an ottoman – she’s a person, with a story. Maybe we even feel like we know her. Maybe we identify with these pieces of her we’ve discovered through her struggle.
The magic of storytelling is that if what happens to the character matters to the character, and we know why that is, then what happens will matter to your audience as well.
In the next few sections, we’re going to break down each part of the injury plot more thoroughly, including the way some stories, great and small, have approached them. I’m also going to give you a rough sketch of a story made especially for this book that will illustrate the way each portion of the injury plot might work.
This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.
An injury plot works on one very simple three-part platform:
A character gets hurt. (The Beginning)
That character gets treatment and begins to feel better, but must navigate the world in a state of partial disability. (The Middle)
Finally, the character settles into their new normal, whether that’s back to a healthy baseline, living with some partial disability, or suffering a total disability of one body part or another. (The End)
Congratulations! This book is done. Go forth and maim your characters!
If only…
The good news is that sticking to this simple structure will give you a perfectly reasonable injury tale. Observe:
While daydreaming about smashing a homer at the company softball game, Mary trips over the ottoman, falls, and breaks her wrist. She tries icing her wrist, but the pain just keeps getting worse. (The Beginning)
She goes to the ER and gets X-rays and a cast. Thoughts of the game are replaced with daily challenges: how to button her shirts, how to drive her stick shift, how to type her TPS reports at work. She solves these challenges by asking her wife for help with her shirt, swapping cars for a couple of weeks with a coworker who has an automatic, and using dictation software. (The Middle)
Eventually, Mary’s cast comes off. Her wrist still hurts when the weather changes, but mostly she can ignore it. The softball game is all but forgotten. (The End)
This progression certainly works, although it’s a little dull and, most importantly, it lacks meaning. At present, it’s a plot, but not really a story. Remember, Mary needs to change in some fundamental way for it to be a story with meaning (rather than a series of things that happen).
One way we could add some meaning is defining why the softball game is so important to her. Does she need to redeem herself for a mistake? Does she miss the glory days of her youth? Is she trying to impress her boss – or a potential side lover? (Scandal Alert! Or, a perfectly healthy polyamorous relationship.)
In short: this plot is good, or at least makes sense, but now let’s elevate this plot to the level of story.
In my experience, this is where most injury plots fall apart. There’s a very clear cause – a character is injured, usually shot – but there’s no effect on the person or on the story. It becomes simply a piece of texture, an element of “grit” that carries no weight of meaning behind it.
(If texture is something you’re interested in for your story – if you want the injury for the sake of having an injury, not as a mirror to hold up to your character – that’s okay too, as long as the injury is fairly minor. We’ll get to this in Part 8: Sweating the Small Stuff.)
So we’ve taken a look at the Beginning, Middle, andEnd of Mary’s broken wrist plot, and touched on why this might matter to her. All of which is great! But let’s break down those three components into smaller pieces that will help us understand the particular quirks of an injury plot.
There are six distinct phases of the injury portion of the injury plot.
Broken down by plot section, these are:
The Beginning
TheInciting Injury: the moment and manner in which the character gets hurt.
TheImmediate Treatment: what the character does in the moment to feel better and avoid further injury.
The Middle
TheDefinitive Treatment: when the character receives care which ultimately begins their healing process.
TheRocky Road to Recovery: when the character faces challenges relating to their new disability and how they cope with those problems during healing.
The End
TheBig Test: the moment when a character must overcome a greater challenge related to the global plot – while still recovering from their injury.
TheNew Normal: when your character’s final degree of disability becomes apparent. They can have No Disability, a Partial Disability, or be Totally Disabled (for the affected body part).
You can see places where the five fundamental elements of storytelling mesh into the injury plot. The Inciting Injury is the Inciting Incident, the Progressive Complications are in the Treatment stages and the Rocky Road to Recovery, the CrisisandClimax parallel nicely with the Big Test, and the Resolution is one and the same as the New Normal.
So why the relabeling? Because it’s easy to get distracted by vague terms. The labels that are injury-specific will help you remember the pieces you need to have in place in order to make sure your audiences find your arc believable.
Let’s take another look at Mary’s wrist fracture, through the lens of the Six Phases:
Inciting Injury: Mary trips over the ottoman and breaks her wrist.
Immediate Treatment: Mary tries to ice her wrist and hopes it gets better, but it doesn’t.
Definitive Treatment: Mary goes to the ER, gets X-rays and a cast.
The Rocky Road to Recovery: Mary’s everyday life becomes more challenging with her broken wrist! Driving a stick shift is out, she can’t even button her own shirt, and she can’t effectively type one-handed. She solves each of these problems.
Big Test: Mary doesn’t have one… yet.
New Normal: Eventually Mary’s cast comes off, and she has a very minor Partial Disability: some lingering wrist stiffness and some aching when the weather changes.
Hopefully the first three phases are pretty clear and straightforward. But I want to talk about the Rocky Road to Recovery for a little bit, because, at least at the moment, it’s the easiest way to touch on the third rail of the story: why the injury actually matters.
Why is it, exactly, that these three tasks are so important to Mary? Essentially, what parts of herself does this injury force her to face?
Buttoning Her Shirt: As it stands, this is just an inconvenience, one that will go away in a few weeks. But what if Mary is very independent, and hates anyone – even her wife – seeing her vulnerable and weak? Why would she feel this way? Maybe when she was younger, Mary had to take care of her aging grandmother, and she always hated buttoning her grandmother’s blouse. She always vowed that she would never get to that stage in her life – and yet here she is. Maybe she’s coming up on a birthday and fearing her older age.
(Note that these concepts are both very natural and very ablist. On the one hand, change is extremely hard, especially where it concerns things we take for granted, such as our ability to do anything we choose. On the other hand, the mindset that becoming disabled is an awful thing implies that the lives of disabled people are awful, which doesn’t necessarily follow. Be aware of what you’re writing as you write it!)
Swapping Cars: Again, this is an inconvenience – until we know why it’s a big deal for Mary. Is she super proud of her ability to drive a stick shift? Is she super proud of her car as a status symbol – and now she’s swapping her this-year’s Lexus for her coworker’s twelve-year-old Civic? What if she’s a neat freak, and the person she’s switching cars with is a total slob? Or, what if she just got her car – by inheritance, and she has conversations with her car as though it’s her lost parent?
In any of these cases, why does it matter?
Typing and Work: Why does it matter so much that Mary has difficulty typing? Is she on the verge of losing her job – hence her burning desire to impress at the softball game? Is it her dream job she’s at risk of losing, one she’s fought to get? Does she feel like an imposter, like she’s gotten someplace she doesn’t actually deserve, and maybe losing the job is some cosmic retribution for her masquerade? Or maybe she’s self-conscious about her voice (why? An utterly embarrassing failure at a school talent show when she was a teen?), and doesn’t want to use dictation software where other people can hear – but it’s the only way to keep doing her work?
As you can see, this is the single best place where an injury plot can teach us about Mary. With just three relatively small challenges, we learn about her grandmother’s illness, her connection with her lost parent, and her sense of being an imposter at a job she doesn’t deserve (even if she does). All of a sudden, Mary isn’t just a woman who tripped over an ottoman – she’s a person, with a story. Maybe we even feel like we know her. Maybe we identify with these pieces of her we’ve discovered through her struggle.
The magic of storytelling is that if what happens to the character matters to the character, and we know why that is, then what happens will matter to your audience as well.
In the next few sections, we’re going to break down each part of the injury plot more thoroughly, including the way some stories, great and small, have approached them. I’m also going to give you a rough sketch of a story made especially for this book that will illustrate the way each portion of the injury plot might work.
This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.
An injury plot works on one very simple three-part platform:
A character gets hurt. (The Beginning)
That character gets treatment and begins to feel better, but must navigate the world in a state of partial disability. (The Middle)
And finally, the character settles into their new normal, whether that’s back to a healthy baseline, living with some partial disability, or suffering a total disability of one body part or another. (The End)
Congratulations! This book is done. Go forth and maim your characters!
If only…
The good news is that sticking to this simple structure will give you a perfectly reasonable injury tale. Observe:
While daydreaming about smashing a homer at the company softball game, Mary trips over the ottoman, falls, and breaks her wrist. She tries icing her wrist, but the pain just keeps getting worse. (The Beginning)
She goes to the ER and gets X-rays and a cast. Thoughts of the game are replaced with daily challenges: how to button her shirts, how to drive her stick shift, how to type her TPS reports at work. She solves these challenges by asking her wife for help with her shirt, swapping cars for a couple of weeks with a coworker who has an automatic, and using dictation software. (The Middle)
Eventually, Mary’s cast comes off. Her wrist still hurts when the weather changes, but mostly she can ignore it. The softball game is all but forgotten. (The End)
This progression certainly works, although it’s a little dull and, most importantly, it lacks meaning. At present, it’s a plot, but not really a story. Remember, Mary needs to change in some fundamental way for it to be a story with meaning (rather than a series of things that happen).
One way we could add some meaning is defining why the softball game is so important to her. Does she need to redeem herself for a mistake? Does she miss the glory days of her youth? Is she trying to impress her boss – or a potential side lover? (Scandal Alert! Or, a perfectly healthy polyamorous relationship….)
In short: this plot is good, or at least makes sense, but now let’s elevate this plot to the level of story.
In my experience, this is where most injury plots fall apart. There’s a very clear cause – a character is injured, usually shot – but there’s no effect on the person or on the story. It becomes simply a piece of texture, an element of “grit” that carries no weight of meaning behind it.
(If texture is something you’re interested in for your story – if you want the injury for the sake of having an injury, not as a mirror to hold up to your character – that’s okay too, as long as the injury is fairly minor. We’ll get to this in Part 8: Sweating the Small Stuff.)
So we’ve taken a look at the Beginning, Middle, andEnd of Mary’s broken wrist plot, and touched on why this might matter to her. All of which is great! But let’s break down those three components into smaller pieces that will help us understand the particular quirks of an injury plot.
There are six distinct phases of the injury portion of the injury plot.
Broken down by plot section, these are:
The Beginning
TheInciting Injury: the moment and manner in which the character gets hurt.
TheImmediate Treatment: what the character does in the moment to feel better and avoid further injury.
The Middle
TheDefinitive Treatment: when the character receives care which ultimately begins their healing process.
TheRocky Road to Recovery: when the character faces challenges relating to their new disability and how they cope with those problems during healing.
The End
TheBig Test: the moment when a character must overcome a greater challenge related to the global plot – while still recovering from their injury.
TheNew Normal: when your character’s final degree of disability becomes apparent. They can have No Disability, a Partial Disability, or be Totally Disabled (for the affected body part).
You can see places where the five fundamental elements of storytelling mesh into the injury plot. The Inciting Injury is the Inciting Incident, the Progressive Complications are in the Treatment stages and the Rocky Road to Recovery, the CrisisandClimax parallel nicely with the Big Test, and the Resolution is one and the same as the New Normal.
So why the relabeling? Because it’s easy to get distracted by vague terms. The labels that are injury-specific will help you remember the pieces you need to have in place in order to make sure your audiences find your arc believable.
Let’s take another look at Mary’s wrist fracture, through the lens of the Six Phases:
Inciting Injury: Mary trips over the ottoman and breaks her wrist.
Immediate Treatment: Mary tries to ice her wrist and hopes it gets better, but it doesn’t.
Definitive Treatment: Mary goes to the ER, gets X-rays and a cast.
The Rocky Road to Recovery: Mary’s everyday life becomes more challenging with her broken wrist! Driving a stick shift is out, she can’t even button her own shirt, and she can’t effectively type one-handed. She solves each of these problems.
Big Test: Mary doesn’t have one… yet.
New Normal: Eventually Mary’s cast comes off, and she has a very minor Partial Disability: some lingering wrist stiffness and some aching when the weather changes.
Hopefully the first three phases are pretty clear and straightforward. But I want to talk about the Rocky Road to Recovery for a little bit, because, at least at the moment, it’s the easiest way to touch on the third rail of the story: why this the injury actually matters.
Why is it, exactly, that these three tasks are so important to Mary? Essentially, what parts of herself does this injury force her to face?
Buttoning Her Shirt: As it stands, this is just an inconvenience, one that will go away in a few weeks. But what if Mary is very independent, and hates anyone – even her wife – seeing her vulnerable and weak? Why would she feel this way? Maybe when she was younger, Mary had to take care of her aging grandmother, and she always hated buttoning her grandmother’s blouse. She always vowed that she would never get to that stage in her life – and yet here she is. Maybe she’s coming up on a birthday and fearing her older age.
(Note that these concepts are both very natural and very ablist. On the one hand, change is extremely hard, especially where it concerns things we take for granted, such as our ability to do anything we choose. On the other hand, the mindset that becoming disabled is an awful thing implies that the lives of disabled people are awful, which doesn’t necessarily follow. Be aware of what you’re writing as you write it!)
Swapping Cars: Again, this is an inconvenience – until we know why it’s a big deal for Mary. Is she super proud of her ability to drive a stick shift? Is she super proud of her car as a status symbol – and now she’s swapping her this-year’s Lexus for her coworker’s twelve-year-old Civic? What if she’s a neat freak, and the person she’s switching cars with is a total slob? Or, what if she just got her car – by inheritance, and she has conversations with her car as though it’s her lost parent?
In any of these cases, why does it matter?
Typing and Work: Why does it matter so much that Mary has difficulty typing? Is she on the verge of losing her job – hence her burning desire to impress at the softball game? Is it her dream job she’s at risk of losing, one she’s fought to get? Does she feel like an imposter, like she’s gotten someplace she doesn’t actually deserve, and maybe losing the job is some cosmic retribution for her masquerade? Or maybe she’s self-conscious about her voice (why? An utterly embarrassing failure at a school talent show when she was a teen?), and doesn’t want to use dictation software where other people can hear – but it’s the only way to keep doing her work?
As you can see, this is the single best place where an injury plot can teach us about Mary. With just three relatively small challenges, we learn about her grandmother’s illness, her connection with her lost parent, and her sense of being an imposter at a job she doesn’t deserve (even if she does). All of a sudden, Mary isn’t just a woman who tripped over an ottoman – she’s a person, with a story. Maybe we even feel like we know her. Maybe we identify with these pieces of her we’ve discovered through her struggle.
The magic of storytelling is that if what happens to the character matters to the character, and we know why that is, then what happens will matter to your audience as well.
In the next few sections, we’re going to break down each part of the injury plot more thoroughly, including the way some stories, great and small, have approached them. I’m also going to give you a rough sketch of a story made especially for this book that will illustrate the way each portion of the injury plot might work.
This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page,click here.
Before we even start to look at injury plots specifically, it’s worth taking a good strong look at what stories are overall. This definition applies not only to an injury story, but to all stories.
Ready? Here goes:
A plot is what happens – the outside events of the tale.
A story is the change a character undergoes when faced with mounting obstacles and the consequences of their own choices.
Shawn Coyne (The Story Grid) understands that there are always two tales, woven together to form a truly compelling story. There’s the External Plot, the events of the story. Then there’s the Internal Plot, the changes that the character undergoes. His chief example is the novel Silence of the Lambs, where the External Plot is a thriller – but the Internal Plot is about Clarice Starling’s disillusionment with her budding career at the FBI.
Lisa Cron (Story Genius) calls this second part the “third rail,” the part that our readers glom onto instantly, the emotional fire that gives your story oomph. This is the crux of storytelling.
In the end, we don’t care what happens.
In the end, we care how people behave and change.
Without the internal aspect of story construction, no one is going to care about your story. You can have the biggest, most epic battle in the history of storytelling. But unless we see how individual people are affected, it’s just cool words on a page – words that may dazzle us with their brilliant prose or wondrous events, but which fail to give us the emotional satisfaction we crave.
So whenever you construct a story – any part, any scene – you need to focus not on the events, but on how those events affect the characters. Ultimately the furniture can be as cool as can be, but we want to read about people (or people-like robots, aliens, sentient tacos, etc.).
Kurt Vonnegut taught that there are only six emotional arcs available in all of storytelling. Wikipedia describes a total of 36 plots available to storytellers. Yet from these simple and repetitive arcs can come the entire range of human emotion.
This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.
What’s up, keyboard trolls?! I’ve been getting some pushback from some writers about my recent post on the knocking-someone-unconscious trope, and I wanted to take a second to address it. Mostly I’ve been challenged to provide a better alternative, which is totally reasonable.
So if we can’t knock people out with head injuries, how do we neutralize enemies without killing them, Aunt Scripty?
(First of all, yes, head injuries can knock people out, it’s just that anything that’s hard enough to knock them out is enough to also kill them or cause permanent brain damage.
This is a really good question, and one I’ve thought about quite a bit. There are a couple of options that I can think of, but I want to make one thing absolutely clear:
Your characters have to be morally prepared for the fact that any of these techniques could still be lethal. If they’re going to be “neutralizing” someone, that means that they may be forced to take a life. It’s a not-so-good option, it’s not the desired outcome, but it’s a very real possibility. If they can’t stomach that thought (or you don’t want to deal with the fallout afterwards), they may need to find another way to accomplish what they want.
Option A: “Be quiet and put your hands up or I’ll shoot you in the head.”
Why is that gun chained to the….? Okay, fine. New plan. Shaw?
That’s better. (Side note: do not fuck with Shaw.)
A gun to the head can be very convincing indeed, although your characters have to be ready to pull the trigger if the person offers resistance. A gun should never be drawn if the person drawing it isn’t ready and willing to use it. This should be followed by another character, either the subdued themselves or a second protagonist, duct taping someone’s mouth and binding the hands and feet. (Don’t put anyone on their stomachs and don’t hogtie; these are risky.)
Option B: Ketamine.
You guys, ketamine is my very favorite drug. (By which I mean medication. I have actually never done a drug that was not prescribed to me, and I’m not just saying that in case my bosses find this blog.) [if they found this blog I would be in a world of shit anyway, and i would tell you if i had tried anything interesting, which i have not.]
Of all the sedatives one could theoretically use for a chemical takedown, ketamine would be my choice, primarily for its safety. Benzodiazepines would definitely work, it’s just that one of their major side effects is respiratory depression in high doses. (We routinely use 10mg of midazolam IM at work; I would caution that while this is (usually) (eventually) effective, it takes a few minutes before the struggling winds down, and patients may need airway support if this is done.)
Ketamine, on the other hand, works very well, and patients maintain their own airways pretty well, as well as managing secretions (swallowing). It’s a very popular anesthetic in adult, pediatric, and veterinary medicine (there’s a forthcoming post about sedatives vs analgesics; ketamine actually does both).
The reason I like it for this purpose is multifold. For one, it’s just a neat fucking drug. It doesn’t cause the typical unconsciousness that other anesthetics do; ketamine causes the brain to still be awake, but basically get shut off from the outside world, meaning that the person’s eyes may remain open, and they may have rapid eye movement, but they will not be aware of any outside stimulus. This is really unnerving the first time you see it. Watch this child below:
This kid is fully anesthetized and pain free, even though she looks awake.
It isn’t an instant onset, though, because nothing (except MAYBE propofol) is.
For two, there is basically no upper dose limit on ketamine. Once upon a time a child accidentally got100xthe appropriate dose and was absolutely fine; she was just…. anesthetized for 24 hours. Y’know. Just cuz.
An appropriate dose of ketamine, given in the muscle, is 5 mg/kg; basically, everyone under 220lbs would get 1x 500mg dose (5mL syringe) in the thigh, even though for a smaller person (50kg/110lbs) this is a double-dose. As the mg/kg dose rises, onset quickens; typically it’s about 2 minutes from injection to sedation, but again, quicker in smaller people.
The one thing worth noting here is that actually the max volume any one muscle can really take in is about 5mL, so you may want to have your character duel-wield syringes loaded with ketamine (5ml each) and go for one in each thigh, or double-stab the assmeats, if the person they’re taking down is particularly big.
You could even do a “will one syringe do?” moment, where your characters have to decide whether one syringe will “do the job” or if they need two. The cutoff for a single syringe working is probably around 100kg, or 220 lbs.
One thing here is worth going back to, which is the 2-minute onset. Two minutes is a long time, even if functional resistance is lost sooner. People get angry when you inject them in the butt without their consent. Even if they’re going under sedation, they may struggle and fight and make noise. So your characters need a plan for what to do when the target doesn’t go down immediately.
It’s also worth noting that there can be complications with ketamine. Some people’s larynxes briefly freeze up (laryngospasm), some people get transient apnea, and some people transiently desaturate (blood oxygen % goes down). All of these fall under “probably fine”, but it is worth noting that your characters still may kill someone with ketamine. It’s safer than a head strike or shooting someone, but it’s not 1000% guaranteed to be survivable.
Oh, and a certain number of people, coming up from a ketamine sedation, will have godawful hallucinations, because ketamine is a hallucinogen; this is called an emergence reaction, and may be dramatically useful. Imagine being a bad guy and walking into a room: one of your minions is lying on the floor, eyes open but clearly not awake, and the other is screaming and hallucinating in the corner. Neat.
Option C: The Sleeper Hold / Choke Hold / Kill Someone Hold (NOT SAFE, MINIMALLY EFFECTIVE)
This is a common technique in martial arts. Here we see Hulk Hogan doing this to a reporter (who is a willing participant; we’ll get to why I believe this video in a moment)
Watch how quickly this works: the hold begins with pressure at 0:39, he goes completely limp 7 seconds later (0:46).
Hogan used: Blood Choke! It was very effective!
The downside? The victim wakes up/lifts his head another 11 seconds after that (0:57). In the intervening 11 seconds, Hogan has dropped him on the ground so hard that he hit his head on the hard floor and opened up his scalp. (You can see this at 1:09, when he turns around and the back of his jacket has a good hard smattering of blood on it.)
There are two reasons I believe this video is real: one is the head strike and the blood involved; the other is that he actually sued Hogan for the injury.
There are two kinds of choke holds: blood chokes, which compress the carotid arteries, and air chokes, that compress the trachea and prevent people from breathing. As we can see above, a blood choke is rapidly effective, but also rapid offset. They’re relatively safe in young people, but anyone who may have some plaque building up in the carotid arteries they may have a stroke if the plaque gets broken off from the artery wall.
Air chokes can fracture tracheas and kill people, but they’re probably effective for a little bit longer than above, and are routinely used in martial arts as a “victory hold”, so there’s that.
Option D: A+C or B + C = Effective?
The “ultimate” trope-done-right version of getting a sentry or other bad guy under control may just be a combination: a blood choke for temporary unconsciousness, during which a nice dose of ketamine gets injected in the thigh, or a bad guy willingly takes a sedative rather than get shot in the face.
So that’s it for this post!
I hope you all liked it and found it at least remotely useful. As a personal note, I ask you not to try any of these things in real life, and I also give you my Disclaimer of Infinite Justice. Thanks for reading!
Content Warning: This post contains numerous references to needles and blood.
Sometimes in our stories, our characters are going to need to give blood. Whether it’s to help an injured family member or a wounded comrade, one of the ways your characters can show their heroism is by giving of themselves, their literal lifeblood, to help another.
Blood donation can also be a way to “save the cat,” a positive act that demonstrates that our character is a kind, compassionate person that the reader should like.
There are two types of blood donation that I’m going to talk about. This post will discuss a typical blood donation, where the character’s blood is tested, a set quantity is drawn off, and the blood is banked. This can be a directed donation for a specific person, typically done in a hospital, or an undirected donation in which a character donates blood for a bank to use later, which is likely to be done at a blood drive.
The second post, which we’ll talk about in the near future, is a person-to-person transfusion, in which one character’s vein is linked to another’s. This is a far more dangerous scenario which is only done in emergencies in an austere environment where hospitals, and blood banks, are not an option.
What Are the Minimum Standards for Donation?
To donate blood, a character must….
Weigh at least 110 lbs (50kg)
Be at least 17 years of age
Have not donated whole blood in the last 56 days (8 weeks)
Be feeling well and healthy
Not be taking antibiotics, aspirin related products, or blood thinners
Not be a male who has had sex with another male in the last year. (The American Red Cross and FDA advocate that gender is self-identified; the ARC has a whole page about LGBT donors located here.)
The process for a typical blood donation looks like this:
The character registers with an intake person. Often they’re offered a “gimme” as an incentive to sign up and donate, such as lip balm or a small book. They’re given a ticket (or have a donor card), which is scanned by a barcode reader.
They answer a very, very detailed questionnaire, which asks everything from their height and weight, whether a male character has had sex with other men ever, which countries they’ve visited in what timeframe, or whether they’ve ever had a graft of their meninges. These days this is done on a tablet.
The donor will then wait to see an intake nurse, who performs a few checks. They get their blood pressure taken, their pulse taken, and a fingerstick is performed to check the blood’s concentration (hematocrit).
The donor will then wait to actually go and donate. When they go in, the nurse taking the blood will ask which arm the donor prefers; usually donors prefer their non-dominant arm.
The donor will lie down on a cot. The nurse will prepare the supplies, affix pre-printed labels to the bags, and check the character’s name and date of birth.
The nurse will place a blood pressure cuff on the arm above the selected donation site, which is usually the bend of the elbow, and partially inflate the cuff. The character will be given something to squeeze; a rubber or foam stress ball or a roll wrapped in paper is typical.
The nurse will insert the needle into the vein, hopefully on the first attempt and hopefully without “fishing.” The needle is fairly large, a 16ga (the smallest IV needle in common use is a 24ga, the largest is a 14ga). and is taped into position. The entry site will be covered with a small piece of gauze and taped down.
The blood is first sent into a series of tubes for testing. After the vials are drawn, the blood goes down one tube into a small pouch, which is where it’s available to draw from in the blood bank to test for compatibility with recipient blood. After that, blood begins to fill the actual donation bag, which is 500mL in size (or about a pint). During this process the character will be encouraged to squeeze their fist every 5-10 seconds to help improve blood flow.
Blood donation is timed, for reasons I’m not quite sure of. A healthy donor with good vasculature might complete their donation in about 5-6 minutes, while someone with worse veins might complete theirs in 8-10 minutes.
Once the donation is complete, the nurse will clamp off the line, retract the needle, and ask the donor to put pressure on the gauze over their insertion site. The nurse will then get a piece of stretchy, self-stick material known in the biz by its original trade name Vetrap, and roll it around the insertion site. The bandage sticks to itself, theoretically not to skin, and can come in a number of colors; on my last donation, it was teal.
The character will be instructed not to bend over or lift heavy objects for at least 2 hours, to not remove the Vetrap for at least 6 hours, and to increase fluid intake over the next 2 days to compensate for the lost blood volume. They’ll be allowed to lie still if the character feels faint, or sent to sit for a few minutes and recover if they feel well enough to walk. Most donation sites offer juice, water, and snacks — especially cookies — to help restore fluid volume and sugar to the bloodstream.
How Does Blood Donation Feel?
This will vary from donor to donor. Genetic males, and those with larger bodies, typically have a slightly higher blood volume than genetic females, and thus tend to tolerate significant blood loss (such as donation) better, but the effects of donation can be felt by anyone.
It’s very common for donor characters to feel dizzy, lightheaded, or nauseous after a donation. Headaches are quite frequent, and the donor might feel a need to sit down for a prolonged period after the fact. The character might simply feel fine after donation.
Remember that this is fiction, so the effects you choose are up to you. Sometimes the effects are felt more severely the next day than the day of the donation.
It’s common for the needle site to bruise significantly, particularly if the vein was small or the nurse was inexperienced and had to “fish” for a vein. This will start almost immediately after donation and will continue to worsen for an hour or two, then will fade over several days to a week.
So that’s a pretty standard blood donation! Next time in Part 2 we’ll discuss how donor-to-recipient, or direct transfusion works, and how your characters can make it work in dire circumstances!
Shoot when it’s light out for best quality photos, because natural lighting is honestly your best friend. Taking them when it’s lighter out will also make it easier to edit them.
** A lesser known tip that I’ve learned myself is to take photos in pure light. My room is pink, so unless I take pictured in the middle of my room at noon they turn out with an annoying purple tint. it’s hard to edit that out, so I sometimes go to other spots in my house to take photos.
EXTRA: If you’re taking photos with a screen turn down the brightness. High brightness gives the screen so much glare that you often can’t see anything other than a bright spot.
Taking the photos:
I’m using a colorful planner as an example, so I’m using a white background.
If your subject is plainer, you can use a brighter background. (I used a sweater)
EXTRA: lots of pillowcases/sheets=lots of backgrounds!
Editing:
I use Aviaryandvsco, and I edit the brightness/exposure, contrast, saturation, warmth, and tint. On vsco I add either the filters A6 or OC and add on the following to fit.
Brightness/exposure: turn these up depending on how bright your original photos are
Contrast: turn this up for clarity
Saturation: turn the saturation up because photos will generally look washed out after you turn up the brightness (be careful that it doesn’t look unnatural)
Warmth: always turn this down, especially if you take pictures in artificial light.
Tint: this is what I use to correct the purple-y tint that a lot of my pictures cave because of the color of my walls (I turn it greener, but I imagine it’ll be opposite if you have a green/blue room).
You don’t have to do this at all to be a good studyblr. Plenty of amazing studyblrs don’t jump through this many hoops every time they want to post. I would actually encourage you to not do all of this every time you want to post. I used to spend hours agonizing over my photos, and, believe it or not, my grades went down! Now I know how to balance the aesthetic and actual studying, but I was so caught up in how my notes looked that I wasn’t studying them. If you like to take pretty notes and photographs, then have fun with it, but definitely don’t feel pressured to do all of this if you don’t want to.
Hello sweeties! Now that I’m in uni, I’m more aware of the money I spend not only on materials, handouts, but also on textbooks. Since I’m in my second year, I’ve learned a lot of things (sometimes the hard way) on saving some money so here they are ♥
Discounts: So of course this is my first tip. I had no idea but a lot of textbooks are more expensive when you buy them on campus, probably bc you want to get it over with and think it’s easier BUT there’s this website (the trivago of books) that can help you compare prices. Long story short, check various places before giving your money.
Used textbooks: Apparently Amazon and Ebay not only sell new things but used too lol. Check if they have the ones you need (on your syllabus) or maybe you could find some that complement your courses.
Check with teachers: Before you do anything, check your institution’s library to see if you can rent or talk with your teachers and see if they have the book you need laying around. Even if they don’t, ask them for the chapters you’ll be using.
Scanning/Photocopying: So this brings me to my next point. I hate reading on the computer, so for me photocopies are the best way to save on books to be honest. Asking our teacher what chapters we’d need through the weeks helped us so much.
Older students: Talk to people. Seriously. An older studentis most likely to have the textbooks you need. I’m the worst person when asking for things I need but I’ve honestly learned I need to OPEN MY DAMN MOUTH sometimes. Now there are some books I won’t need again that I could gladly lend to a student!
Share books with friends: If you are a group worker, and you’ll need it to study out of class, a good way to save is by sharing with a friend or splitting the money between a group.
Thank you for your trust in my guidance. But I have already answered many of your divination questions. Please refer to this list and explore as you wish.
this post is meant to be a directory of every resource I come across for German. It will be a continuous work in progress so thank you for your patience! If you have any issues or things to add, please reply to this post!
A while ago I made a post about Dutch websites that can help you practice your Dutch, and a bunch of lovely people added some websites to the original post so I figured it was time to update the post. The websites are now sorted into more specific categories to keep the post more organised.
A special thanks to @onzin-en-talen for adding the Belgian websites!
Beginner (kids websites)
jeugdjournaal.nlis the website forhet Jeugdjournaal (daily on tv for 7-10 year old kids). Easy language, so easier to follow. Daily news ‘episodes’, 15 minutes long.
AD.nl is an online newspaper - it is for adults so if you want news that’s familiar to items you can find on your newspaper you could go to the topic Buitenland.
NU.nlis another online newspaper which might be harder to read so again, if you go to Buitenland you’ll find worldwide newsitems.
demorgen.beI couldn’t find a Buitenland section, but they do have, among others, a MusicandTechnology section on which you can find interesting articles.
hln.be another Belgian newspaper. This is the link to the Buitenlandsection.
VRT NWS is the Belgian public broadcasting service’s news website.
More advanced: Sports
sportnieuws.nl offers the latest sports news in the Netherlands.
sporza.beis the Belgian public broadcasting service’s sport news site.
More advanced: TV
NPO 1 is the Dutch national broadcasting channel, here you can watch live TV.
uitzendinggemist.nl here you can watch TV too, this website uploads recent episodes you might have missed on TV.
More advanced: Magazines
humo.beis a Belgian magazine, which provides interviews. They also offer reviews of concerts, CDs, TV programs and movies.
knack.be is a magazine that offers news as well as interviews on their website.
More advanced: Radio
onlineluisteren.nl offers all radio stations in the Netherlands, sorted by genre (if you scroll down). You can also find the regional channels on here! These offer more news about the province.
qmusic.nlis the website for Dutch radio station Q Music. You can find music, videos from the studio and music related news on here.They mainly focus on pop.
radio 538 is another Dutch radio station, focused on pop. They have a section called Gemist that offers the latest interviews and other cool stuff they did.
stubru.be is a Belgian alternative rock radio station - @onzin-en-talen recommends the interview Linde Merckpoel had with Ed Sheeran. They offer music news and more.
mnm.beis another Belgian radio station, which is more focused on pop.
Learning vocab
woordjesleren.nlis a website where you can look up lists of words and sentences from a lot of language methods we use in Holland. There are not only Dutch - English lists, but also Dutch - other languages. It isn’t that great though if you don’t have the schoolbooks that belong to the lists… There also is an app but that probably will only work if you’re in the Dutch Appstore.
wrts.nl wrts is short for woordjes which translates to words. I think it’s free - at least when I made my account. You can make lists by yourself, or download lists from woordjesleren.nl.
Let me know if you have any questions or are looking for something specific! Voor nu wens ik je veel succes en plezier!
So I’m Dutch and thought that it’d be cool to make a list of some Dutch news sites and other stuff. I’ll add more if I think of anything and feel free to add/suggest :) I sorted it into 2 categories, kids and adult, with kids being the easier language and adult being normal Dutch. Please let me know if any of the links don’t work!
Oh, also, don’t hesitate to ask me if you need anything! I’d love to help you studying this language :)
‘Kids’:
jeugdjournaal.nlHet Jeugdjournaal (daily on tv for 7-10 year old kids). Easy language, so easier to follow. Daily news ‘episodes’, 15 minutes long.
‘Adult’:
AD.nl is an online newspaper - it is for adults so if you want news that’s familiar to items you can find on your newspaper you could go to the topic ‘Buitenland’.
NU.nlis another online newspaper which might be harder to read so again, if you go to ‘Buitenland’ you’ll find worldwide newsitems.
NOS.nl again, an online news website with the topic ‘Buitenland’.
So I also thought of some websites to memorize words and sentences, I’ve no idea if it works if you’re not in the Netherlands but you can always give it a try right?
woordjesleren.nl is a website where you can look up lists of words and sentences from a lot of language methods we use in Holland. There are not only Dutch - English lists, but also Dutch - other languages. It isn’t that great though if you don’t have the schoolbooks that belong to the lists… There also is an app but that probably will only work if you’re in the Dutch Appstore.
wrts.nl wrts is short for woordjes which translates to words. I think it’s free - at least when I made my account. You can make lists by yourself, or download lists from woordjesleren.nl.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (generation 4) - a little guide on how to watch it
BEFORE YOU START, SOME INFOS:
the generations before can be ignored
they are different worlds etc etc
g5 instead, is a sequel to g4 but with different characters
so, if you want, you can watch g5 before g4, if you like doing stuff that way
g5 is only one movie so far + a few eps on YouTube that you don’t have to watch, as that follows the g5’s story
back to g4
it also has quite a handful of official comics. they are canon to themselves, but not the animated series
I can’t give an opinion on how they are, since I never got the chance to read them
if you are interested, go in order, I think?
the Equestria Girls series is skippable, if you really don’t like it. or you can just watch if after.
you don’t need it for the original series alone
once the original series was done, My Little Pony: Pony Life was created. it’s definitely not canon, but you can check out if you like it, if you’re a fan
you can also find the characters doing a cover of some Christmas songs! you should easily find them on YouTube!! they’re pretty good!
(I’m using the TV Time app to remember how many there are
I hope it doesn’t miss any)
NOW TO THE LIST! (bold is the original series only) :
season 1
season 2
season 3
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (movie)
(16 jun 2013)
season 4
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks
(27 sep 2014)
season 5
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Friendship Games
(17 sep 2015)
season 6
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - The Legend of Everfree
(1 oct 2016)
season 7
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Magical Movie Night
(8 apr 2017)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (series)
(24 jun 2017)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Tales of Canterlot High
(24 Jul 2017)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Summertime Shorts
(30 Jul 2017)
My Little Pony: The Movie (a movie and it’s not about the human world? it’s more likely than you think)
(6 oct 2017)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Better Together
(2 nov 2017)
Equestria Girls - (apparently it’s a YouTube series where you choose the ending. I never heard of this one before)
(17 Dec 2017)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Forgotten Friendship
(17 feb 2018)
season 8
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls- Rollercoaster of Friendship
(6 Jul 2018)
My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever
(27 oct 2018)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Spring Breakdown
(30 mar 2019)
season 9
My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip
(29 Jul 2019)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Sunset’s Backstage Pass
(27 Jul 2019)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Holidays Unwrapped
(2 nov 2019)
only Equestria Girls:
•My Little Pony - Equestria Girls (movie)
•Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Friendship Games
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - The Legend of Everfree
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Magical Movie Night
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (series)
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Tales of Canterlot High
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Summertime Shorts
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Better Together
•Equestria Girls - (youtube - choose your ending)
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Forgotten Friendship
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rollercoaster of Friendship
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Spring Breakdown
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Sunset’s Backstage Pass
•My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Holidays Unwrapped
Film masterpost highlighting the stories of women of color. Representation of women of color in film is quite scarce, so here are some films I think showcase a wide range of perspectives and experiences that we don't get to see on our movie screens.
