Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
Girls, romanticize yourselves. You are a queen. You are a warrior. You are an enchantress. You are a mermaid. You are a goddess. You are all of these things and more, you are the stuff of fairytales.
Women, traumatize others. You are a dragon. You are a wolf. You are a bump in the night. You are the last thing they see in the darkness. You are all of these things and more, you are the heart of their fucking nightmares.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, dude, but as a general rule, women don’t pretend to virulently hate men they’re secretly in love with as some sort of elaborate courtship ritual. That’s a trope we made up to justify why the male protagonist always gets the girl in the end even when it’s starkly at odds with prior characterisation. In real life, if she acts like she thinks you’re a creep, it’s because she thinks you’re a creep!
LISTEN it is very important that you RINSE YOUR RASPBERRIES before consuming because otherwise you are in DANGER of not having little droplets of water in the berries that you can sip like a tiny fairy tea cup
just looked through about 700 werewolf books, good grief.
most seem to fall into two categories:
werewolf serial killer mysteries
domineering alpha romances
neither is really what I’m interested in.
here is what I’d want from the werewolf novel of my wildest dreams:
good relationships, especially friendships between packmates (lone wolves are boring)
werewolves who like being werewolves. (angsty wolves are boring)
the practical details of werewolfery: who’s got the bail money for animal control, whether anyone’s microchipped, what you pack in a bag for a night out werewolfing
the uses of werewolfery: hiring yourselves out as trackers or canine rescue, getting certified as service dogs, spending your free time at the library letting little kids read to a friendly doggie
female werewolves, and no weird gross hypermasculine alpha stuff going on in werewolf culture
queer werewolves, and no weird gross heteronormative ‘laws of nature’ stuff going on in werewolf culture
dog jokes.
The standard urban fantasy female protagonist dating a werewolf who is not an alpha. Bonus points for it being a cute beta werewolfess who thinks her girlfriend’s perpetual posturing as the ‘baddest bitch on the block’™ is the most adorable thing ever. Extra bonus points for fuzzy baby werewolves and adopted babies. (Because actual wolf packs? Exist to raise children. They’re family units, focused around rearing cubs.)
okay this is one of the cutest reblogs I’ve gotten.
imagine it
werewolves just going YES FAMILY GOOD and adopting everyone and making sure they get attention and food and understand that it’s fine to be who you are and that you’re not alone, you’re pack now
and the kids that can’t turn into wolves get to ride on the dogsleds to make sure they’re not left out during the full moon family bonding time (… you have to be an adult to pull a dogsled. mistakes have been made.)
werewolves on the PTA. werewolf den mothers. werewolf little league coaches. werewolves filling the bleachers and auditioriums and dance halls and galleries, cheering for their kids. werewolves helping kids with their homework, werewolves sewing costumes for the school play, werewolves showing kids how to change a tire
werewolves with battered kitchen tables with chewed legs. werewolves with huge family dinners. werewolves ferrying pies and casseroles and fresh baked bread back and forth between family members’ houses. werewolf extended families. massive werewolf packs that are technically only about 25% werewolf but still definitely packs
puppy teeth being left for the tooth fairy. fangs being left for the tooth fairy. cuttlebones being left for the tooth fairy. stolen teeth being left for the tooth fairy. werewolves with giant families full of kids with different needs and species.
werewolves adopting everyone. werewolves fostering everyone. werewolves who wind up with dozens of kids, all of whom are family and therefore pack.
