I am working on a story where a pair of children (about 10 years old) have parents using meth and these kids are found by a sober adult.

My questions are;

1. What are behaviors the children would exhibit?
2. Assuming the kids are neglected and have trust issues, how could an adult try to reach the kids?

The idea is that you've already lost your voice for whatever reason and now you are screaming, also for whatever reason. Will there be any sound produced? If so, will it be similar to your normal scream or sound different?

I have a feeling you probably wouldn't be able to scream in this situation but I'd just like to be sure.

This a more focused sequel to a recent post of mine. Long story short: I'm writing a siege in a fantasy novel, and I have this character who can cause extreme cold. As in "Freeze humans solid with a few seconds of physical contact". I want him to help with the siege, and thought to just have him walk over to the gate under cover of darkness, placing his palms against it, and...

What? What would happen if this kind of instant super-cold hit a sturdy wooden gate? I could write the story so that he decides to strike after a day of rainfall. Could this destroy the gate outright, or at least leave it brittle?

For context, in my story, one of my character's family was murdered, and due to some misleading clues, the rest of the characters believe the killer is a student at their school.

This leads to some tension, and two students decide the best way to make the killer confess is pit the 2 most suspicious people against eachother, making them fight to the death. This 1v1 fights carry on for a while, forcing the students to kill eachother.

Eventually in the final act, it turns into a complete battle royale. Everyone is fighting and killing eachother, thinking the killer is among them.

Eentually when a there aren't a lot of students left, they slowly realize the threat was never one of them, and the killer was actually the character's uncle.

Point is, the massacre becomes know, the survivors killed others in a desperate attempt to save their own lives, so legally speaking, would they be treated as innocent or as criminals?

Edit: I know this plot has a lot of holes, and I plan on making it more realistic in the final version of the story. Just wanted to see how the characters would be treated by the law.

Basic idea is MC is pregnant and finds out basically during Their Worst Day Ever which kicks off the rest of the story. They're not morning sick and they don't have periods so they don't have anything unusual to tip them off that they need to take a pregnancy test on their own.

I thought it could be a natural thing that happens because they have to go to the doctor for emergency treatment (they get in a fight), but I don't actually know what might make a doctor find out? Or suspect?

The best idea I have right now is that maybe they need an x-ray, but I don't know if they would require a pregnancy test if it's 1) not in the torso region and 2) an emergency situation.

I guess the other option would be needing to check before prescribing any medication, but I also don't know if that would come into play in an emergency situation again.

I am a woman, but because I'm asexual I always answer "no" when doctors ask me if I might be pregnant, and obviously they just take me at my word. If you're sexually active (with someone with the required parts), regardless of birth control, do you always say "yes" and then the doctor might ask you to take a test if it's necessary?

I dunno, I would appreciate any suggestions!

So, in my story, the Female MC gets lung cancer, and when they decide that Chemo isn't doing any good, they call the Male MC (her husband) to ask his consent to take her off Chemo. I was realizing during a read through that this may be incorrect, because I doubt that a doctor actually needs the husband's consent to take her off treatment, since, first of all, if anyone's consent needs to be given, it's the patient, and second of all, I doubt consent does need to be given based on the fact that, if the treatment isn't working, the patient will be taken off of it, end of story.

So the replacement for this, was the idea that the doctor calls the MMC, and tells him that they're taking his wife off of Chemo since the treatment isn't working, and at this point is making her quality of life worse. Does this work, or is there also an issue with this idea?

So, in my story, there is a pretty early scene where the main character get shot in the leg. I have a few questions:

How soon would you be able to walk after being shot in the leg?

How much would you bleed?

Will you get a permanent limp/mark?

Just for info, the MC is a 46 year old guy.

Hello, everyone! I'm a lifetime West Coast resident writing a story in (mid-1990s) New England (I haven't picked a state yet, wanna do more research first).

Whenever I read a story that takes place in my hometown of LA, it's always the small things that stand out to me - the way we refer to roads, travel, & distance, the "like"s scattered about sentences, the way hollywood folks conduct themselves at parties, etc...and while inaccuracies are always forgivable in a good story, I feel their absence when they're gone.

So I ask any New Englanders - what are some small key cultural things that make you feel at home? What are some idiosyncrasies of the region that would make a story feel more authentic? Architecture, phrases, food, philosophies, etc. that you'd like to see in a story set in your home. I don't want to rely on stereotypes and clam chowder, I want to tell something more believable and respectful.

Thank you <3

Whats the difference between a concubine and a consort in Imperial China?

My character was stabbed in the thigh a month before my story takes place, and I want to know if it would be completely healed by this point.

I also want to know if the injury would have any long term physical effects, such as a limp.

If it matters at all, she’s a royal in a medievalish time period and would have gotten immediate medical attention, likely the best in the land.

Canadian here doing research on Washington state.

In what circumstances do city, county or state police arrest? I am assuming county police take over in unincorporated areas etc? While city would be in a particular city, but when do state police get involved?

Scenario is a Seattle-based group home director being arrested for abuse that took place in the home located in the city (Seattle). The home would be state licensed though.

Context: medieval-esque fantasy story, someone gets their pinky and ring fingers hacked off. They have cloth to cover up the stumps, moss that acts as an antiseptic, and a knife that could be heated up to jankily cauterize the wounds, if need be.

My full question here is: could they avoid a severe infection with those supplies? They can have lasting problems with their hand as long as they live.

Long story short, I'm writing a fantasy novel, and there's this guy with the magic to cause extreme cold. He's not Elsa; he can't create ice out of nothing. Just extreme cold. And I want him to help take a besieged city. Could taking advantage of ice expansion help somehow? If he waits for a day of heavy rainfall, then makes the wall partly crack? Or if they launch water at the city gate, and he causes the wood or hinges to burst apart?

If we assume the water freezes extremely quickly, how could I make this work?

I'm writing about a character whose jaw and nose are broken while changing a flat tire. He's taken into the hospital and lives, but Im wondering how to write about his recovery. Would he be given headgear? Was headgear a thing in the 60s?

I also read from WebMD that one could experience a cut in the ear canal from the jaw moving back in a weird way. Would this cause hearing loss in the ear? Is that a possibility?

thank you so much!

I’m writing a murder mystery in which there’s a question of whether or not the victim is actually dead at all.

Here’s my question: If someone were to do an action that they believe would kill another person, but that action turned out to be an intentional bait from the would-be-victim and there is actually no danger at all, would any crime have been committed? If so, what would be the charge in an American court?

I think it might just be attempted murder since there was a genuine attempt at murder, but the key here is that there was never any actual danger, and the situation was completely engineered to goad the perp into doing it.

Like the title says, where could someone get impaled (preferably around the abdomen) pass out from blood loss/shock after maybe 1-3 minutes, but still survive after receiving medical care shortly after passing out? I’m working on a story and one of the characters is going to get impaled, any help is appreciated, thanks!

Hey everyone!

I'm currently working on a YA novel set in 1990s Canada centered around a high school bombing. I'm a few chapters in to my outline at the moment and I want to approach this story with sensitivity and accuracy, particularly regarding the social context.

I have some ideas for organisations I could contact to help with research, but I'm looking for advice on how to dig deeper into specifics. I'm particularly interested in how bullying, violence, and immigration were handled in Canadian schools during the 90s, especially concerning teenagers. If anyone has suggestions for sources, archives, or even personal insights about the social climate in Canadian high schools during that era, I would be incredibly grateful.

Additionally, if anyone has any tips for writing about sensitive topics like school violence, I would love to hear them. Thanks so much in advance for your help!

For context, my world is set in roughly the 1100s and I want my main character, a time traveler who was just whisked away at a random Tuesday morning, to accidentally trigger epidemics just by wandering around because of the pathogens he has on his body that he transmits to others.

I'd like for the disease to be:

1. Not that deadly to the transmitter by virtue of immunity (namely, my main character);

2. Preferably spread by air or by droplets, but any manner of transmission is fine;

3. Is common enough in the body or in occurrence that we can reasonably assume that the character would have its pathogen on his body (i.e., on his skin or on his lungs) during the random time travel;

4. Could cause an epidemic/pandemic that could shut down entire cities or kingdoms for days or months (if it "kills sustainably", i e., kills the host slow enough to pass the pathogen to another, then much better).

Is there any pathogen like this? I was thinking of the common cold, but I am not sure whether it has epidemic/pandemic potential.

Hi I'm writing a children's book and the main character is a monster I need a name for him I want a name that means like monster or ugly or freak or any variation of that I'm going to change it at the end but the thing is like the kids called him that he doesn't really know what it means but yeah so if any of you know names like that mean monster or things like that Please let me know cuz I can't really find a lot of information except for like monster and different languages and it pretty much just all sounds the same

A character of mine has half their body burned in a fire they get trapped in and they stay in the fire for about a minute or two. They live in an apocalypse with no medical assistance and only survive because of magical purposes. Becuase of the apocalypse, they’d be in a lot of fighting and physically trying scenarios, what sort of physical limitations would they have?

So I have a character who has selective mutism. Due to a childhood trauma she can only bring herself to speak albeit quietly to her closest family. Though I'm struggling to figure out what kind of traumatic event could cause such a thing? The whole story is fiction so it doesn't have to be deeply scientifically accurate but I'd like it to have some barring. Any advice would be helpful 🙂

One of my main characters is five months pregnant and it is 1986. There’s plenty of information for what to expect in terms of physical changes in the remaining months on the internet, but I’m wondering if things more or less stayed the same back then. I don’t want to include details from a Google search if it’s just going to be an anachronism. I know technology has come a long way for some things.

For context if needed: she’s the wife of a police officer in the US South. I’m undecided on a job but don’t know how long she’d be able to work.

Physics/Biology/Medicine and Health, I'm unsure which fits better in this case.

Hi I'm currently writing a scene where one of my characters holds onto the other while being launched in a pod/small ship off a spaceship. I'm imagining, with how the pod ejects, it'd sort of have the force of how a rollercoaster shoots off. As they enter the pod, there's one seat (the pilot's seat), and the second character is injured. Originally the second character was plopped against a wall during launch, but the idea of the first character holding the second one against them came to mind (the first might worry about the second getting a concussion if they hit their head somewhere during the launch). But now I'm wondering if there are any consequences. Should they be positioned back to chest or chest to chest? Is there a recommended position the first should hold the second for the least repercussions? Would they be fine? Would they be bruised? Would their rib cages against each other break and penetrate through flesh?

Of course, I am writing fiction, but I'm still curious about the realistic part of it, and I can't really find anything online. Any help is greatly appreciated!

For example, in Pirates of the Caribbean, Will Turner was able to remove the doors from Jack's cell with "a certain amount of leverage," i.e. sticking a chair into the bars and pushing up; are there any other ways of doing this with other hinges? Aside from unscrewing the nails with a screwdriver.

Is there a way to that from inside a cell with whatever you have on hand?