Thread: How to phrase this

(originally posted in Fiction)

A line in "Obsession" read:
He was in horrible pain, yet numb.

On July 1 of this year I was involved in a serious incident which permanently damaged my face. You think I was ugly before, you should see me now I broke my nose and orbital area around the right eye and smashed in my forehead. When it happened, I repeatedly told a woman who was screaming that I was okay and did not need an ambulance. I grabbed my nose, which was bent to the left, and wrenched it back into place. I could hear it crack and I think the woman almost fainted. Blood was pouring out of me so fast I thought I might exsanguinate myself, and I was simultaneously 1) in shock, 2) numb, 3) in pain, which came and went. I don't know how to describe this so that someone who hasn't experienced it can understand.

I don't think the line I wrote is adequate. Can anyone come up with a good verbalization of this phenomena? I think if you haven't gone through this sensation, it might be tough, but then again there are some very good writers here.

There is nothing wrong with your sentence as is when enhanced by a description of the injury. Telling how it happened would enhance it further.

Originally Posted by J.R. MacLean

There is nothing wrong with your sentence as is when enhanced by a description of the injury. Telling how it happened would enhance it further.

Thank you. Someone did point out, though, that the descriptor was a little vague, so I hope to enhance it some. Cover all bases, y'know, mate?

Being in pain and numb at the same time is hard for anyone who has not been there to understand.

Yes, you're right, garza. A big challenge. You and I have been there, but how do we describe it?

I don't know. I honestly don't know. I can describe in detail the events, the surroundings, the chronology, what I saw and heard and what I initially felt, a little sting, a little burning, then this blinding, paralysing, numbing pain that's bigger than your body, but I don't think I could ever make anyone who has not been injured to that extent and lived through it understand how it feels.

You're coming upon the same idea that another poster had: instead of trying to describe the sensation, just describe the events. That I've done, but I never want to leave the reader puzzled by my wording. Maybe I should just remove that line, or make it simpler: he was in terrible pain. I hate to agonize over that one stupid line, but then again, I'm a perfectionist. I bet you can understand that.

About being a perfectionist? No. See my current signature, something I picked up from my father.

I don't know what to advise. My first impulse is, leave the line in. People who've been there will know what you mean.

garza - I thought I understood your signature until I read your above post. Now I'm assuming you, and perhaps engineers, believe that good enough is good enough.

Ox - When a project reaches a point where any further improvement will involve costs that outweigh benefit, then the project is good enough. I can remember my father doing cost/benefit analyses on projects for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

There comes a time when to get a penny's worth of improvement you have to spend a dollar. If at that point the project, say a new pump system for a spray plane, operates within design parameters, then it's signed off for production. It's good enough. If the design team continues to struggle for perfection, the project will go over budget and will not be finished on time, so both money and time will be wasted and, in extreme cases, not as rare as you might think, the project can bog down to the point that it gets cancelled altogether, and development is never finished on what would have been a good project.

'Good enough' means a machine does the job it's designed to do efficiently and effectively.

A burning axe chopped at his frozen limbs.

Originally Posted by ppsage

A burning axe chopped at his frozen limbs.

Ooh, I like this!

Something which represents the disassociation, there was one room in my brain where I was dealing with pain, there was another where I was observing the changes in my body, the sudden flushes and sweats, meanwhile and in the ante room, the hallway to my mind I was holding the door shut on all this while I fended off the idiots who wanted to give me drinks or move me.