Making the Reader Care about the Physical

Describe what the character feels, how he/she is reacting to the stimuli, what his/her thoughts are about what's happening to them. Make his/her suffering real so the reader can know exactly what the character's going through.

For example: Say your character is being drowned. Talk about the fear, the struggle against the hands holding him down; how his lungs start to burn and the urge to take in a deep breath is almost overwhelming even though to do so would bring death.

Just my humble opinion, YMMV.

Indiana Jones

Readers won't care about a character's comfort, or anything, unless they already like the character before the scene occurs. Build it up before. Make the character sympathetic (there are plenty of threads and books about how to write sympathetic characters). Then, when a character readers love experiences discomfort, they'll care as if he/she was their own family.

Perhaps show us an excerpt, just a paragraph and let's see if we can help.

Emotional turmoil usually resonates more than physical pain. Add some emotional depth or meaning to the discomfort and you'll probably achieve the desired effect.

What you don't show is (IMO) more important than what you do. If you build up the scene right, you won't have to show any actual suffering going on at all. If you think of the scene in Reservoir Dogs, when the character polayed by Michael Madsen cuts off the cop's ear, we don't see the guy's ear getting cut off (at least, not in a clear-focus shot), but because the scene has been set so well, it's absolutely horrifying. I recently read a horror short called 'Proboscis' by Laird Barron, and he does much the same thing. The most horrifying things actually described are someone grinning (only becomes horrible later, when you work out why he's smiling), and a car with a darkened interior rocking back and forth. We get to see one pale hand pressed against the back window--but that's it. And it's a really creepy horrible story. I loved it.) Same applies with monsters (think original Alien).

Short answer: when it comes to suffering, things that people imagine for themselves are much more horrible and likely to elicit sympathy for your character than anything you can actually describe. IMO, I'd think about skipping the actual suffering itself, and focus on the build-up and aftermath--and use the aftermath for the character changing moment. Just my opinion, though, and it may not work in your story.

Personal discomfort doesn't matter so much because readers know you're not going to kill off or seriously harm your protag. They're going to get out of it. It matters when that discomfort also prevents them from doing something the readers aren't so sure about how it turns out. If there's nothing at stake, the situation isn't as compelling and readers want to just skim on to the next interesting part. "Will the protag get X?" will drive a read on no matter what's happening in the story. They want answers to their questions.

So if your character is in discomfort, then let it matter to a bigger picture and have that character worry about that bigger picture. It doesn't have to be summer blockbuster movie stakes, it can be small and personal, but it must matter to the character. If they don't care, reader won't care.

A guy locked in a freezer. Boring.

A guy locked in a freezer while kidnappers run off with his son. More interesting.

I once had a chapter where the MC was being tortured. I mostly focused on the other people, what they said and did, and how the MC reacted to them.

Stunted said:

Hey, guys. I'm having a problem and I wonder if you could help me. I'm trying to write a scene in which my MC is forced to undergo a very painful, stressful, tiring physical experience and it's not working out. For some reason, it doesn't seem as urgent as it should. I know that if I were reading it, I just wouldn't care. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to make people care about a character's physical comfort?

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The reader will care about it if the reason for it is sufficiently important. So, is it?

caw

I think a lot of times, an author may not feel pain of the MC quite as much as a reader will because the author knows when and how it's gonna stop. So it deadens the pain somewhat. I imagine that, when Ian Fleming was writing Casino Royale, he didn't feel the thwack of the rope in Bond's nuts quite as much as his readers eventually would because he knew Bond would be spared in the end, but the reader is sitting there wondering if Bonds balls are gonna be intact, is he going to survive, etc.., and like other people have said, the reader cared deeply about it by then because he could help but root for Bond to succeed. Of course, the major in The Last of the Mohicans is an unsympathetic character, and I still remember being very disturbed by the notion that the Indians burned him alive. Pain, if used judiciously, is painful to the reader. Over-do it, and you get a Die Hard VII in which John McClain has three of his four limbs amputated by a butter knife and the reader doesn't feel it because he's been getting shot all day long. The reader builds up an imunity.

Stunted said:

Hey, guys. I'm having a problem and I wonder if you could help me. I'm trying to write a scene in which my MC is forced to undergo a very painful, stressful, tiring physical experience and it's not working out. For some reason, it doesn't seem as urgent as it should. I know that if I were reading it, I just wouldn't care. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to make people care about a character's physical comfort?

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I found the movie G.I. Jane, very, very compelling in this regard. The main character undergoes excruciating training to become a Navy Seal. In one scene, the sleep-deprived recruits are dragging themselves across a sandy beach (they'd been training in the water for hours on end) to a line of garbage cans. Flies were buzzing around the mess in those garbage cans, but the recruits didn't even pause; they were so starved, they simply dug into the garbage and began eating anything they could find.

That scene, more than any other, brought home the brutal conditions under which those people lived.

If your character is in a desperate situation, he/she will do whatever it takes to survive: sleep standing up or in the mud, eat whatever is available, etc.

Read All Quiet on the Western Front. That might help as well.

Like Miles said. The reader has to know and like the character well enough to care about their discomfort. When writing it, don't focus so much on the the physical - put more emphasis on the mental. Do they hallucinate? Talk to their dead mother, apologising for mistakes they've made? Dream of banana splits? Hear a favourite piano concerto? Think about what they could have done that could have avoided the situation? Don't get into their body so much, get into their head.

Hm. Interesting dilemma.

My suggestion would be to use unique imagery. Make the scene stand out in the reader's mind by creating unexpected combinations of words that will feel like something they've never encountered before.

Or, just get really visceral and graphic. I tried reading Snowflower and the Secret Fan recently. The foot-binding scene was so visceral that I got nauseated several times while reading it and couldn't pick the book up again for a few days. Turned out that this scene was all the book really did well. The rest of it was an utter disappointment; but I still recall that scene vividly. It was quite detailed.

Cassiopeia said:

Perhaps show us an excerpt, just a paragraph and let's see if we can help.

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Agreed.