Even without taking their backstory into account, your characters’ friendship in the present should be believable enough to allow your readers to root for them.
1. Both ways
This is the number one rule for the friendship to be healthy and believable - affection, communication, help, and everything else should go both ways. You can’t have one character always asking for help and the other always helping while never getting anything in return, or a character always showing affection while the other never reciprocating it - the friendship needs to go both ways.
2. Similar or different
Friends can either be very similar or different, and both are interesting to write about! If they’re similar, they will usually get along pretty well. However, it also leads to the potential of more bickering with each other, since their personalities will clash. Just imagine two equally stubborn or talkative characters in a disagreement
If they’re different, they’ll be able to complement each other well (eg. the troublemaker and responsible one). However, you will still need to give them a common similarity to bond over. Maybe it’s a shared hobby or favorite animal!
3. Communication and trust
Friends can either be all giggly and soft around each other or bicker 24/7, depending on their friendship dynamic and the personalities of the characters. However, a constant thing to keep in a healthy friendship is the ability to trust and communicate with each other.
Friends should trust each other, not leaving each other for a love interest or some whack reason. They should also know the best ways to communicate with each other. Even with friends who bicker a lot, the arguments should be playful. They should always know and avoid the topics that are off limits and would truly hurt the other.
4. Flesh them out individually
Most of the time, there’s only one main character in the friend group, and the rest only act as their friend and nothing more. They don’t have any other role in the story besides being the main character’s friend.
While you can’t always dive into the backstory and depth of the other characters, especially if your story is only from one pov, you should still fully flesh them out. Give then strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, goals, quirks, etc. Make sure that everyone in their friend group are their own person, not just a supporting character for someone else.
5. Reason to stick together
Your character will meet so many people throughout their life, but they can’t keep in touch with all of them. Chances are, they’ll “abandon” old friends for new ones they just met. If you want to write a long-lasting friendship, you’ll need to find that key reason why they choose to stick together despite their hardships.
Maybe they ever saved each other’s lives in the past? Or maybe they live close to each other, so it’s easier to maintain their friendship. There are lots of possibilities!
If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.
But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.
I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.
But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.
I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.
I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.
When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.
The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.
But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.
This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.
I … LOVE reading the replies and tags for this post! I’m happy that, out of all my posts, this is the one that’s blown up so quickly.
I love the people who are a part of a minority, that are gushing about their favorite fics or books that seem to have done this and offer proper representation.
I love the people who are bringing up the toxic mindset that is very popular on tumblr, the “you can’t write about it if you haven’t lived it” ideology that makes writers feel guilty for providing representation.
Iespecially love the people who are mentioning how they should start doing this. I love the people who are probably young or inexperienced writers that are seeing this and thinking of doing this for the first time. I love that there are people who read this and then think to better their writing because of it.
Arguably our most evocative sense, the sense of smell is an underused tool in writing descriptions and settings. Nothing transports me into the book I’m reading as effectively as the memory of some familiar scent, or some distant one awoken from the deepest parts of my brain. This is simply a list of recognizable scents, categorized by the “type” of scent or the kind of environment where it might be found:
Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!
Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).
Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;
One Stop for Writers - You guys… this website has literally everythingwe need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;
One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It’s FREE!
Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;
Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;
The Creative Academy for Writers - “Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication.” It’s FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
Reedsy- “A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book” It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I’ve never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);
Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It’s FREE but has a paid plan;
Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;
Even without taking their backstory into account, your characters’ friendship in the present should be believable enough to allow your readers to root for them.
1. Both ways
This is the number one rule for the friendship to be healthy and believable - affection, communication, help, and everything else should go both ways. You can’t have one character always asking for help and the other always helping while never getting anything in return, or a character always showing affection while the other never reciprocating it - the friendship needs to go both ways.
2. Similar or different
Friends can either be very similar or different, and both are interesting to write about! If they’re similar, they will usually get along pretty well. However, it also leads to the potential of more bickering with each other, since their personalities will clash. Just imagine two equally stubborn or talkative characters in a disagreement
If they’re different, they’ll be able to complement each other well (eg. the troublemaker and responsible one). However, you will still need to give them a common similarity to bond over. Maybe it’s a shared hobby or favorite animal!
3. Communication and trust
Friends can either be all giggly and soft around each other or bicker 24/7, depending on their friendship dynamic and the personalities of the characters. However, a constant thing to keep in a healthy friendship is the ability to trust and communicate with each other.
Friends should trust each other, not leaving each other for a love interest or some whack reason. They should also know the best ways to communicate with each other. Even with friends who bicker a lot, the arguments should be playful. They should always know and avoid the topics that are off limits and would truly hurt the other.
4. Flesh them out individually
Most of the time, there’s only one main character in the friend group, and the rest only act as their friend and nothing more. They don’t have any other role in the story besides being the main character’s friend.
While you can’t always dive into the backstory and depth of the other characters, especially if your story is only from one pov, you should still fully flesh them out. Give then strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, goals, quirks, etc. Make sure that everyone in their friend group are their own person, not just a supporting character for someone else.
5. Reason to stick together
Your character will meet so many people throughout their life, but they can’t keep in touch with all of them. Chances are, they’ll “abandon” old friends for new ones they just met. If you want to write a long-lasting friendship, you’ll need to find that key reason why they choose to stick together despite their hardships.
Maybe they ever saved each other’s lives in the past? Or maybe they live close to each other, so it’s easier to maintain their friendship. There are lots of possibilities!
Ironically, you need to be more prepared as a pantser compared to a plotter, because you won’t have a detailed outline to come back to if you didn’t have enough planning done. As a plantser, you need to know the general things of your WIP - How it starts, how the conflict begins and who/what it is, who your characters are, when the climax happens, dialogue and scene ideas, ships, characters, how the book ends, etc.
2. Characters & development
Besides the general plot, you also need to have an idea about your characters and their development. You don’t have to create a detailed outline with plot points about your characters’ arcs, but you need to at least know the general things - what kind of person they were before the arc, what triggered their development, who motivated them to change, and so on.
I recommend still making character sheets to annotate their appearances and such, because you’re bound to forget them after a while, especially for minor characters.
3. Take down notes
Being a writer comes in a package with getting amazing ideas at the most random times. Plotters will furiously type in their ideas in their outline, but what about pantsers? You won’t be able to do this.
That’s why you need to keep a notebook with you, so that you can jot down random ideas whenever you get them and not forget any. It doesn’t have to be neat or organized, but it has to exist.
4. Unnecessary scenes
Plotters will know all their WIP scenes in detail thanks to their outline, but that’s not the case with pantsers. They will write scenes on instinct, based on their present ideas, without knowing if the scenes will make it to the last draft.
This might be hard, but be prepared to delete tons of unecessary scenes from your manuscript once you’re in the revising stage. But this doesn’t mean you need to be scared of what you write! Go write whatever comes to mind. It’s better to delete an unecessary scene rather than not writing a potentially amazing scene.
5. Overwriter or underwriter?
As a pantser, it won’t be easy to predict your WIP’s end word count, although you already have a goal in mind. If you don’t monitor your writing with an outline, you might end up writing too little or much.
To prevent this, know if you’re an underwriter or an overwriter. If you’re an underwriter, try to write more by adding more subplots or editing your descriptions and dialogues into longer ones. If you’re an overwriter, limit your writing by avoiding scenes that serve no purpose to the plot or using shorter descriptions.
6. Zero drafts
With loads of unplotted aspects of your WIP, such as dialogues, scenes, and plot twists, you’re bound to need multiple drafts before you finish your manuscript. Your first draft will most likely just be a compilation of your initial thoughts that stull need to be organized.
My advice is to have a zero draft - a draft that blocks the major beats in each scene - where you just need to write all of your thoughts and ideas. This way, you won’t be pressured to write too much.
7. Y'all are valid!
Lots of people claim that panters aren’t valid - that writers can only be plotters, because you need to know everything about your story before you start it.
This isn’t true. Pantsers are completely valid and amazing! By pantsing, your characters will make more realistic decisions and have more natural dialogue, because you came up with them on the spot. You’re also more likely to be creative by being a pantser! <3
This is actually advice my mentoring professor gave me when I was writing my first thesis.
He said: Accept that you are never done. There is always more to know, more to research, more questions raised than answered. At some point, you just got to start writing.
Now,“easier said than done, this accepting”, I thought.
I started writing because my thesis deadline was looming. But what if you’re writing a novel and you have no deadline? How do you know when it’s okay to stop researching? When is it okay to stop worldbuilding? (Which is just like doing research, but in your own head instead of in reality.)
My advice to you is: start writing, and you’ll run into the gaps you still need to fill. Then you know what to research before starting your second draft. Let your story tell you what it needs.
For example:
Just fill your margins with a to-research-list for your future self.
That way, it’s also managable: “I finished my first draft, and I have a list of 317 things I need to decide on.” Instead of: “I saw on tumblr that you can’t build a world without knowing everything about the sewage system! And gosh, I haven’t invented three languages yet!”
Advantages:
You get things done.
It’s not overwhelming.
You don’t spend your time inventing things you’ll like so much that you want to infodump them into your story.
You mainly research things that are relevant to your story.
Well, knowing you, you already researched enough irrelevant stuff too.
You get things done.
I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!
Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing advice here. New topics to write advice about are also always welcome.
Tag list below the cut, a few people I like and admire and of course, you can be too. If you like to be added to or removed from the list, let me know.
A fight scene should be fast-paced and intense. Unless it’s a final battle with numerous parties, a fight scene that’s too long tends to take away suspense. To speed up your pacing, use active voice to describe movement and don’t overdescribe your characters’ thoughts. Excessive inner monologue will be unrealistic, as people usually have no room to think during intense combats.
2. Character mannerisms
Here’s a point that people often overlook, but is actually super important. Through fight scenes, you should be able to reveal your characters’ contrasting mannerisms and personality. A cunning character would play dirty - fighting less and making use of their opponent’s weakness more. A violent character would aim to kill. A softer one would only target to disarm their enemies, using weakened attacks. A short-minded character would only rely on force and attack without thinking. This will help readers understand your characters more and decide who to root for.
3. Making use of surroundings
Not only the characters, you also need to consider the setting of your fight scene and use it to your advantage. Is it suitable for fighting, or are there dangerous slopes that make it risky? Are there scattered items that can help your characters fight (e.g. nails, shards of glass, ropes, wooden boards, or cutlery)? Is it a public place where people can easily spot the fight and call the authorities, or is it a private spot where they can fight to the death?
4. Description
The main things that you need to describe in a fight scene are :
• Characters involved in the fight
• How they initiate and dodge attacks
• Fighting styles and any weapons used
• The injuries caused
Be careful to not drag out the description for too long, because it slows down the pace.
5. Raise the stakes
By raising the stakes of the fight, your readers will be more invested in it. Just when they think it’s over, introduce another worse conflict that will keep the scene going. Think of your characters’ goals and motivations as well. Maybe if the MC didn’t win, the world would end! Or maybe, one person in the fight is going all-out, while the other is going easy because they used to be close :“D
6. Injuries
Fights are bound to be dirty and resulting in injuries, so don’t let your character walk away unscathed - show the effect of their injuries. For example, someone who had been punched in the jaw has a good chance of passing out, and someone who had been stabbed won’t just remove the knife and walk away without any problem. To portray realistic injuries, research well.
7. Drive the plot forward
You don’t write fight scenes only to make your characters look cool - every fight needs to have a purpose and drive the plot forward. Maybe they have to fight to improve their fighting skills or escape from somewhere alive. Maybe they need to defeat the enemy in order to obtain an object or retrieve someone who had been kidnapped. The point is, every single fight scene should bring the characters one step closer (or further :D) to the climax.
this is just going to be a short notice to say that i have recently been made aware that someone has felt uncomfortable with day 11′s prompt: “chronic pain”, due to it being their lived experience. i understand and appreciate that this is has made them uncomfortable, and if it has made one person upset, it has likely made several more who have not come forward.
the process behind “chronic pain” featuring in the event was that it had been suggested several times in the initial prompt poll, i had then thought it would be a good prompt that would inspire creators to research and learn about what they’re creating so they could properly depict it, and it was then voted 28th most popular in the voting poll.
however, amidst worries that there will not be enough research done on this prompt, but the prompt list has already circulated and now will not be changed, here are the options for day 11:
1. if you choose to creating for the prompt “chronic pain”, that’s great, but i implore you to spend some time researching what you’re creating. what kind of chronic pain? what are the symptoms? what are the very real life experiences of this? and how will you depict it in your work?
2. use one of the 10 alternate prompts in place of “chronic pain”.
3. use the brand new prompt “suffocation” in place of that day. this change will be reflected in the text of the prompt post.
my personal opinion is that pain and disabilities can be written about sensitively and well, and that putting in the time and energy to learn about what your writing about can make better and more detailed work. if you don’t think you will be able to write about chronic pain while doing it justice, consider using a different prompt for the day.
Any of the prompts can and will be someone’s lived experience. And that might hit home hard. The alternate prompt “suffocation” for example: There’s a reason plastic bags often have warnings not to leave young children alone with them.
One of the other prompts is “spiked drinks” of all things. “Self-inflicted wound” is also on that list. Yes, this is personal for a lot of people.
What’s the conclusion though? Not to write whump prompts? Only write about them “sensitively and well”? (Who gets to judge?) Only write them when you are a survivor? (Do we want people to have to disclose status?) Write whatever you want until someone complains and then make that topic a priority? Write what you want for whatever reason you want and tag/warn accordingly?
Ok for context I do have chronic pain to a disabling point and honestly i feel like expressing related needs (i.e. “I don’t think I can do this cause my pain is unbearable today”) has been made a lot harder in terms of the common stereotypes written about characters with chronic pain. Yes, a lotta kinds of whump can be hurtful to people because of personal experiences. The problem doesn’t lie there but is when chronic pain is portrayed in ways that perpetuate harmful tropes and stereotypes? I see a lotta hurtful tropes used regarding disability and whump, so many portrayals of people with chronic pain perpetuate negative tropes and stereotypes (all people with chronic pain are opioid addicts, life isn’t worth living if you have it, it’s endless misery and nothing else, disability being used as a punishment, searching endlessly for a nonexistent cure instead of living with your condition, etc), that makes it harder for our actual voices and experiences to be heard. Which is why it’s important to research what chronic pain is like and how to approach it respectfully.
And obviously this isn‘t a thing of “oh if you’re abled you can never write a disabled character ever” because forcing people to disclose their belonging to a certain minority to be “justified” in writing something never ends well. And don’t get me wrong, it’s good to write characters different from you! It’s good to have disability representation in your writing cause we rly need more of that! Writing abt chronic pain can certainly be good for vent art or whump or other things- i.e. it adds a new and irreversible level of depth to injury/recovery, etc- and like the reason why it’s being written doesn’t rly matter as long as one takes the time to make sure theyre not using harmful stereotypes in how they write a character with chronic pain or another disability.
And@febuwhump you handled people’s response to the prompt really well and I’m glad you care enough to take people’s worries/criticism into consideration and truly reflect on them. I definitely appreciate the idea behind using it as a prompt- encouraging people to write characters with chronic pain is definitely a good opportunity for people to research and understand those who have struggles different than they are. It did worry me that so many people would be receiving the prompt and using it without intent of researching or understanding things abt chronic pain, so I’m glad you’re encouraging people to research and be respectful. Thanks for taking the time to respond to people’s concerns.
For anyone who wants to write a character with chronic pain and is looking for resources: I have a post regarding some do’s and don’t‘s of writing disabled characters here but obviously I’m not the end-all-be-all on this so take it with a grain of salt and ofc use other resources as well! My dms are also open to anyone who would like some help.
I’ve gotten a few asks requesting some research resources for writing characters who have Bipolar Disorder. I don’t have Bipolar, nor am I a mental health professional, but I have found some helpful resources from people who experience it in order to get you started.
Please let me know if you have any reading recommendations, and if you’d like to share your experiences!
Also note: apologies I haven’t been able to answer asks the way I used to, as adult life and grad school keep me rigorously occupied. But I always appreciate the people who take the time to write to me!
How many heroes or villains have you encountered in books, comics, or films who couldn’t feel pain? Ever read a story with a character who is cursed with an odd hunger they must satisfy to retain their sanity? Unique or unconventional senses, attributes, or neurobiological mechanisms can punch-up an already, curiously assembled character. Readers and writers of sci-fi and fantasy know this well. But when starting from scratch, or seeking to craft something distinctive, one might view the expanse of published literature and feel like it’s all been done before. Well, maybe so.
Or, maybe the big, wide world is hugely bored. All the more reason to take up character building, conduct a few deep dives into all the ways animal biology is fantastic (and fantastically weird), and push and pull each never-ending query toward its nearest (or farthest) logical (or illogical) conclusion.
➔“If you start from the wrong construction of the phenomena, then you might produce a very clever piece of philosophy, but it will be worthless because it’s not actually getting to grips with how things really are.”
(Barry C. Smith, Director, Centre for the Study of the Senses, Univ. of London, as quoted in The Irish Times)
This research article explores 15 unique methods of sensory awareness, some of their related pathologies, and other curious traits or manifestations.
Agency
Auditory Hallucinations
Chemoreceptors
Effort
Electroreception
Equilibrioception
Exoskeletons
Homeostasis
Itch
Magnetoreception
Pain
Polarized Vision
Proprioception
Spinal Reflexes
Thermoception
Some of these “senses” are largely cerebral (sense of agency), others are more instinctive (reflexive senses) or intuitive (sense of effort), while yet others are evolutionary survival mechanisms (sensing another animal’s heartbeat). Others are extraordinarily combinative (sense of balance). Many of these senses and sensory response faculties overlap (e.g., magnetoreception and polarized light).
❯❯ Agency
The sense of knowing/understanding one’s ability to act on one’s own accord. Pop psychology on mindfulness will frame this as “self-advocacy” or of “taking control of one’s life,” but such views don’t provide a fully nuanced perspective. Instead, consider how studied social psychologists may frame a sense of agency as a sense of ownership-accountability over the mind and the body, but monitored and influenced by the variables, constraints, and controversies that manifest in one’s environment, real or perceived. In this context, agency represents voluntary control over one’s thoughts and actions to reach a desired, experiential state. An important caveat, however, rests behind the descriptors “perceived” and “desired”; agency can also be dangerously misleading, as “priming thoughts” about forthcoming events often “foster [an] illusory sense of agency” over said actions or events, notes an article in Frontiers in Psychology. A sense of agency is affirmational, yes, but it can also make one delusional.
In storytelling, agency regards characters and the level of control they exert over their engagement with the narrative reality. On the micro level, agency can also refer to a character’s control, attempted control, or accountability concerning specific experiences. What environmental pressures would force a character to act in her self-interest? What dangers may be present, and how intense might they be, to force a character to work against her self-interest? Human history is rife with political machinations that have resulted in individuals who feared greater punishment for doing what was right than for their acquiescing to that which was wicked.
The differing theories of agency and cognitive causation are intensely layered. But for writers determined to validate this on the page, it may help to recall German philosopher Thomas Metzinger’s self-model theory of subjectivity. Metzinger’s theory holds that for one’s self-representation to be fully experienced, it must be transparent, and a conscious self-representation can only be fully transparent if its internal properties are accessible.
❯❯ Auditory Hallucinations
Gothic literature is bursting with auditory hallucinations, whether from the sound or voice of an “other” that has gained a sense of autonomy, from a valorized voice meant to warn against danger, from a word of the defiant who ardently resists entrapment, or from a disturbed and narcissistic, disembodied entity.
An auditory hallucination can manifest as either incoherent sounds, echoic memories of traumatic experiences, or distinct voices. In humans, such hallucinations might arise or occur in various disorders (paracusis), as a result of post-traumatic stress, or in a patient with psychosis. Auditory hallucinations occur in the general population ranging from 5% to 28%, according research appearing in the journal World Psychiatry. Altered or damaged brain connectivity (cognitive processing) is the subject of much research. But in some cases, scientists suggest the origin stems from spontaneous activation of an individual’s auditory network; that is, the spontaneous firing of sensory neurons in the absence of appropriately functioning inhibitory mechanisms (i.e., the limbic system). From the perspective of the individual, the source of the hallucination varies, as does the quality and intensity of said hallucination.
❯❯ Chemoreceptors
Sensory cells or organs that interact with chemicals in the blood; or more specifically, chemical controls for stimulating or inhibiting respiration. The amount of respiration depends on this neuronal network’s response effectiveness. Peripheral chemoreceptors detect large changes in arterial blood oxygen, notably as it relates to the respiratory rate (allowing oxygen into the blood), blood flow (sensitivity to hypoxia), and cardiac output (supplying oxygen to the body). Central chemoreceptors detect changes in arterial carbon dioxide, notably concerning brain blood flow and metabolism, lung ventilation, and pH control (for optimal protein structure and function). A simple example would be to imagine a fantasy novel in which a character or adventurer is impervious (or not) to a gaseous poison that would inhibit proper breathing.
From a more practical standpoint, abnormally enhanced peripheral chemosensory inputs result in an overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system. According to the journal Biological Research, onsetting pathologies can include “hypertension, heart failure, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (e.g., systemic inflammation, muscle dysfunction, and/or cachexia, which is when the body literally wastes away), and metabolic syndrome (e.g., sympathetic hyperactivity, impaired blood-pressure sensitivity).”
❯❯ Effort
Prior to undertaking an activity, physical or mental, most humans make an assessment of the energy required to successfully complete said effort. The “sense of effort” deemed necessary to effectively conduct a task can occur consciously or subconsciously, depending on one’s familiarity with the event at hand. Cognitive fatigue, muscular fatigue, cost-benefit analyses, and more, all affect the perception of effort.
In physical/behavioral terms, some scientists call the sense of effort a “judgment of force,” because of how an individual must accurately estimate the ratio of vigor to fatigue, assign various motor commands (intuitively or peripherally), and dynamically assess how sustained the effort must be (duration of force application). However, for individuals with disabilities, a sense of effort is tangibly skewed; practice doesn’t always make perfect; local, social, and environmental factors influence one’s quality of concentration, feelings of strain, and stimulus sensitivity (or insensitivity).
On a related note, in psychological terms, self-control is viewed as an aversive mechanism. That is to say, to consciously recognize the costs of exerting effort or to establish a credible perspective on what is or is not a rational level exertion given the scenario at hand. Too much effort? Not enough effort? The right amount of effort, but for the wrong reasons? Self-control will surely have something to say about that. Psychologists frequently debate the extent to which humans are evolutionarily hostile toward effort-contingent rewards (or, conversely, actively assign positive values to effort).
❯❯ Electroreception
At its broadest, electroreception concerns sensitivity to electrical fields. Applied narrowly, electroreception explains a predator’s capacity to locate and monitor its prey based on the electrical signals produced by said prey’s heartbeat or nerves. For a predator, this means locating one’s prey no matter where it hides, as well as at extended distances, depending on the medium through which the electrical field passes (e.g., water, air). Sensors are often delicate (e.g., beneath the skin of a shark’s head rest hundreds of highly conductive, ampullary electroreceptors). Fascinatingly, some weakly electric fish have evolved their signal frequencies away from the sensory range of their predators in an effort to increase environmental fitness. Other animals use electroreception for intraspecies communication, identifying mates, or sensing and evading unwanted visitors.
❯❯ Equilibrioception
The sense of balance. A generally unobtrusive physiological sense in humans and animals to prevent them from falling over as they move or stand. It entails a visual system, a vestibular system (spatial awareness via the inner ear apparatus), and proprioception (“kinesthesia,” the sense that lets one perceive the location, movement, and action of various parts of the body), all working together to orient the individual to the surrounding environment (and gravity) to achieve balance.
Balance is a quintessentially multi-modal sense. To summarize an array of medical literature on the matter, balance occurs when (1) sensory input (vestibular, visual, proprioceptive) is processed by (2) the cerebellum (coordination and regulation), the cerebral cortex (higher-level thinking), and the brainstem (sorting of sensory information), and is then paired with (3) motor output reflexes, motor impulses, and postural adjustments.
Cognitive or physiological damage, spatial disorientation, illness, or malfunctioning sensory inputs all affect one’s sense of balance and one’s dependence on it. As cheekily noted in an editorial published in Behavioral Sciences,“It is said that (perfect) balance is the action of not moving.”
❯❯ Exoskeletons
Not traditionally thought of as a unique sense, the exoskeleton, while protecting the body, also enhances one’s capacity to interpret the surrounding environment. Some animal exoskeletons specialize in providing certain types of sensory enhancements (e.g., stress or pressure sensitivity), some exoskeletons possess environment-particular chemical compositions (e.g., to maintain osmotic balance or inhibit infection).
For writers who are interested in this clever brand of defense and offense curiously bundled into the same package, one recommends researching the differences between exoskeletons, ossified scale exteriors, and for extra credit: whatever the hell turtles are made of (hint: a combination of bony plates, fused scapula, and fused rib bones, blended over countless years of evolution).
❯❯ Homeostasis
To wit, it’s “any process that living things use to actively maintain fairly stable conditions necessary for survival,” per Scientific American. Achieving homeostasis relies on a convergence of multiple senses.
More critically, achieving homeostasis also means maintaining stability despite an array of conflicting stressors or environmental characteristics (which themselves influence hormone secretion and sensitivity). Hunger? Thirst? Sweat? Blood pressure? In terms of what the body requires, homeostasis concerns regulatory mechanisms or processes that enable one to dynamically maintain steady-state conditions. Anticipatory feedforward mechanisms initiate advantageous and predictive responses to keep the body healthy (or, healthy enough).
Never underestimate the value of negative feedback mechanisms (i.e., change or error signaling; disturbances of the “normal range” of critical feedback), and never overlook the danger of having a time lag in repairing otherwise natural or effective systems once they’re damaged (i.e., disturbance or departure from equilibrium).
❯❯ Itch
As the journal Clinical & Experimental Allergy explains, “itch, or pruritus, can be defined as an unpleasant sensation that evokes the desire to scratch. [C]hronic itch originates from [..] [a] serious, unmet clinical need. Broadly, subtypes of chronic itch have been delineated and termed pruriceptive, neuropathic, neurogenic, and psychogenic itch.”
Pruriceptive itch follows activation of primary nerve terminals, is inflammatory in nature, and notably follows, not precedes, skin damage. A neuropathic-type itch stems from nerve injury or nerve trauma. The neurogenic type is an itch resulting from central nervous system activation without necessarily activating the sensory nerve fibers (e.g., internal injury results in external, physiological reaction). A psychogenic-type itch comes from underlying mental illness (as with delirium). So, an itch can be caused by something seemingly minor (skin irritation), injurious (nerve trauma), deceptive (overactive nerves), or systemic (internal injury or disease).
❯❯ Magnetoreception
Most commonly, navigation by way of sensitivity to magnetic field intensity. In birds, for example, the optic nerves receive and process the magnetic intensity of their environment and transmit said information to the brain. Sensitivity to magnetic fields is frequently cited when discussing what the greater animal kingdom has but humanity does not (at least, at scale). Salmon, hatchling turtles, honeybees, whales, and bats are all said to use magnetoreception, for navigation or migration, to some extent.
Magnetic fields, unlike other sensory stimuli, pass completely unimpeded through biological tissue. By extension, magnetic-field sensitivity is more ambiguous and under-researched than other senses, as the process of transducing the magnetic stimulus into a cellular response lacks specificity. Three hypotheses dominate: (1) mechanically sensitive magnetoreceptors; (2) light-sensitive, chemical-based mechanisms; (3) an anatomical structure that would enable electromagnetic induction. These concepts are not mutually exclusive, according to research published in PLOS Biology, “animals may have evolved multiple mechanisms to detect different components of the (magnetic) field.” Wild.
❯❯ Pain
Neural feedback permitting the central nervous system to detect (or avoid) potentially damaging stimuli, either passively or actively. This is nociception. A StatPearls article on PubMed notes: “Inactive nociceptors provide less-than-conscious nudges that strongly encourage the avoidance of potentially injurious and hazardous exposures.” Now, if you want to get technical, then general pain and nociception are notidentical;nociceptive pain is more acutely defined according to the locus of sensory activation (e.g., skin, tendons, joints, bones, muscles, internal organs). But to keep the conversation accessible, only a few additional notes remain.
Consider, for example, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, a rare nervous system disorder that begets a lack of sensitivity to noxious stimuli (resulting in recurring infections, cuts, bruises, and unintentional self-harm). Following such a diagnosis, “pain-sensing nerves in these patients are not properly connected in parts of brain that receive the pain messages,” per the Iranian Journal of Pediatrics. With no cure for this hereditary disease, treatment regimens aim to control body temperature and prevent self-injury.
Consider also, allodynia, a different type of pain. In short, allodynia is chronic pain brought on by extreme sensitivity to touch. Actions or behaviors that are not typically considered painful can be excruciating. Pain and pain sensitivity are essential to survival, but what if one’s body is unable to differentiate variations in pressure or temperature? The result is debilitating. In a medical environment, reducing such pain is extraordinarily complex (e.g., nerve-block injections, surgery, opioids, lots of therapy).
❯❯ Polarized Vision
Interestingly, animals with polarized vision can control the amount of light entering their eyes (or, attenuate the orientation at which light waves oscillate). Many animal species have developed superior navigational skills by basing their efforts on the sun’s various positions. In other words, navigating the sky using time-dependent light patterns. Some animals use polarized vision (or polarized-light sensitivity) for “contrast enhancement, camouflage breaking, object recognition, and signal detection and discrimination,” according to a research article published in Integrative and Comparative Biology.
When perceiving scattered or refracted light, environmental factors, atmospheric factors, perturbations in the medium (e.g., waves in water), medium quality, and pollution all affect an already highly sensitive manner of pattern discernment.
Human-world applications abound, from fancy sunglasses that enable one to increase visual clarity in high-glare environments to increasing the precision of advanced military technology. In one fantastic example, engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied the mantis shrimp in extraordinary detail and developed a camera (i.e., a one-inch cube) that mimics the shrimp’s use of polarized light as well as the shrimp’s capacity to manipulate its detection of light intensity. According to Scientific American, the camera’s dynamic emulation of these natural abilities could help cars detect hazards in ambiguous conditions, enable military drones to identify camouflaged or shadowed targets, and help surgeons perform more accurately. It’s difficult to state how powerful this new technology is: The engineers’ cube camera’s light-detection ability was 10,000-times higher than today’s commercial cameras (and yes, the tech is already available for cheap, mass production…).
❯❯ Proprioception
The sense that allows an individual to perceive or otherwise intuit the location, movement, and action of various parts of the body (i.e., a limb-position sense). Proprioception is also defined as the unconscious awareness of joint position, for how one absently-mindedly deliberates, identifies, and predicts willed movement. That is to say, knowing what one’s body is doing, in the moment (not reactive or reflexive), without really thinking about it. This is all about movement detection and movement-detection thresholds.
Likening proprioception to kinesthesia, either broadly or narrowly, is common, but may not be entirely appropriate when one considers how dependent (and specific) proprioception is regarding sensory nerve endings and their correlation to the particular location, position, and orientation of specific joints, muscles, and limbs (e.g., athletic trainers often focus on soft tissues, such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments). Some researchers have gone so far as to detail the number and type of skin receptors pertinent to signaling limb position. To simplify, proprioception is imperative for precise and fluid movements.
Impairment doesn’t simply mean reduced movement-sense and spatial-bodily awareness (kinesthesia), damaged receptors mean the body’s physical pathway to communicate with the brain is broken or askew. For example, imprecise sensory interpretation as a result of muscle vibration (e.g., antagonistic conditioning, muscle fatigue) may encourage receptors to inform the brain of the illusion of limb movement or of limb displacement.
❯❯ Spinal Reflexes
Also not considered among the traditional senses, reflexes are important and effective components of sensory stimulus-reaction complexes. Reflexes are involuntary or unintentional (uncontrolled). Each type of reflex response is initiated by sensory stimuli relayed from any of the other major senses. Most importantly, the stimulus itself excites specialized sensory receptors that respond unambiguously to a certain type, quality, or intensity of stimulation.
Interestingly,reflexive actions receive their signals from the spinal cord. This makes them considerably faster than one’s normal reactions because they bypass the traditional neural pathway (the brain). Not to say the brain is uninvolved. The brain continuously builds, adapts, and influences spinal circuitry, in both short- and long-term development, and many spinal reflexes operate simultaneously as a result. An overview of the main types of spinal reflexes will include: stretch reflex (muscle contraction), crossed-extensor reflex (opposite limb compensating for loss of support), withdrawal reflex (nociceptive reflex, protecting the body from pain), and autogenic inhibition reflex (negative feedback mechanism to control muscle tension).
“The spinal cord is the simplest and most technically accessible part of the mammalian [central nervous system]. Thus, spinal cord reflexes, the brain’s influence over them, and the spinal cord plasticity this influence produces provide the basis of a powerful experimental protocol for studying the mechanisms and substrates of learning.” (Encyclopedia of Neuroscience)
❯❯ Thermoception
The brain’s recognition and the body’s ability to register changes in temperature. Or, put more simply, sensitivity to heat flux and temperature intensity. Animals possess a diversity of temperature sensitivity mechanisms. All thermosensors have activation thresholds and are moderated by various inflammatory mediators (e.g., some proteins are intrinsically heat-sensitive, others are cold-sensitive).
What does this mean? It means thermoception is fundamental to animal survival, as temperature homeostasis is essential to comfort and reproduction. It also means the human body cannot actually determine the absolute temperature of its environment; it must instead regulate its own temperature relative to that of its immediate surroundings.
Mutated or damaged proteins (as with inflamed or damaged tissue), associated with temperature detection, can result in heat hyperalgesia (pathological sensitivity to heat), in which one’s heat-activation thresholds are so markedly low that otherwise pleasant and warm temperatures can be very painful.
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