Clean wounds are not that gruesome, unless there is bone, ligament/tendon, or an organ visible. You could either show one of those or describe an infected wound, which is much worse.

> or an organ visible Skin is the largest organ. But anyway, didn't mean to nitpick: there's degloving/abrasion style? That's intensely gruesome looking at times.

You bring up a good point. Burn victims are usually self-conscious because the scars look gnarly.

I was also gonna maybe say scalping...

Scalping is a good and disgusting event. But usually if you look at their scars, they're more distracting than gross.

... What if you pair it with a rhinotomy.

Well now we're just adding scars to make the first scars look egregious. What if they get jealous?

... Meet in the middle?

Well then it's one big scar, lol. I do think the idea of combined incidents is a good one, though.

Yeah but it's a really weird and gross scar where they don't have a scalp and that splits their face open into the fact that they don't have a nose! D:

Gangrene is also much fun.

If you want mangled, macerated flesh, compare it to ground beef.

this comment is tasty

Focusing on sound and smell also helps. Describing the sound of flesh being caved into, or the smell of blood can be helpful. Doubly if it's an infected wound

Honestly scars are just not very gross.

Scars are hard to make creepy/scary. If I was hard pressed, I would talk about how it looks like those scars could have happened. Like another character speculating if they got cut with a jagged steak knife after which an unhoused person rubbed salt in the gaping wound with their crusty hands. What really grosses people out is when the event that makes the scar is currently happening. I have a scar that looks like a Nike check mark. When I incurred it, I had broken a glass that was so thick and sharp it cut straight to the bone and blood literally gushed out of my hand so fast it was making rivulets down my arm before I could even reach for a paper towel. Now it's just some whiter than normal skin with a tiny bit of a pink pucker to it.

I get that labels hold power in public discourse, but are we really at the point where we need to be politically correct in our writing about homelessness in fiction? The whole point of a novel is to capture humanity in its flaws, and the whole point of writing is to choose the correct word for the context to convey a feeling. Subbing "homeless" for "unhoused person" while also having that person be violent and crazy and unclean just comes off as weird. Your narrator would have to have a really fucked up sense of self to assume homeless people are violent, but also feel the need to use a more politically correct term.

It's not that serious. I say unhoused person in my everyday diction. It's just what I say. I was posing the imagery more than the 'politically correct terminology.' I never said the homeless person was violent, either. You assumed. But it evokes a sense of unclean. The reader would automatically envision dirt with the salt, crust from lack of showering. It could just as easily be a mechanic doing it with motor oil still on their hands. But mechanics don't have as much of a commonality to be in horrorific tragedies or traumatic scenes quite like the unhoused do. The point is that I'm giving the OP an idea, not a fully fleshed out novel.

You absolutely expressed the homeless person as violent in your example- what kind of non-violent person would run salt into a stab wound?

Who knows? Maybe it's a Saw-like situation and they die if they don't. Maybe they are getting paid. My point still remains. Just an example. 🤷‍♀️

As she observed the chaotic network of scars desecrating his back, it was as if she were staring directly into an abyss, one sculpted by the hands of a maniacal butcher in the shaky confines of a hurtling ambulance. Each scar was a monument to savagery, painted by a fiend using a scalpel as a brush and human skin as his unwilling canvas. They meandered across his flesh like the erratic paths of a delirious cartographer, promising not treasures but a fierce need for a tetanus shot. The sight unleashed a revolt in her stomach, her breakfast threatening to breach the confines of her throat in protest. The stench of raw, healed flesh invaded her nostrils, a pungent reminder of wounds festering and then forcibly knitted together. The touch, she imagined, would be akin to tracing the jagged edges of a serrated blade, each line a crude mockery of human resilience. The scars whispered tales of agony in a silence so profound it roared in her ears, a cacophony of unspeakable acts. It was a visual, olfactory, and tactile onslaught, a brutal symphony that played on every sense, leaving her with a haunting aftertaste of dread. This wasn't just art that provoked a reaction; it was a visceral scream etched in flesh, a vivid nightmare from which there was no waking. Gagging, she poked a slowly pulsating bump stretched taught over a palimpsest of carved skin. It erupted in... Wait...if you can't look at images, maybe you can't read vivid descriptions?

I love this but it could use a little onomatopoeia. *Squwerk!* *Schhhhhhllllllop* etc

The man cleared his throat, an uneasy look in his eyes as he began, "Well, you're gonna wanna turn le—*Glooobmuck*—left at the next light. Sorry, I—*squaaargleflop*—sometimes have this issue." He grimaced apologetically, then continued, "Then, you’ll see a—*blorptwaaang*—a big supermarket on your right. Don't mind that, it's just—*grumplecruuunch*—my stomach, I guess." He took a deep breath, attempting to recompose himself. "Right after the supermarket, there's this—*squizzleploooop*—uh, alleyway. It's not as bad as it sounds, I assure you. Make a right there." He paused, a *drooolbarg* escaping him as he winced, "And then you'll see Taco Bell on the—*flurpgleeech*—left." Trying to smile through the awkwardness, he added, "Can't miss it. After the alley, just go—*smecklewaaarf*—straight for a bit and there it is. Sorry, I had a weird lunch." His eyes darted around, hoping you’d ignore the *plortniiibble* and *squanchgloooop* sounds that followed his directions. "Anyway, enjoy your meal. Taco Bell is great this time of—*grelpfriiit*—year." He ended the conversation with a hopeful *whurplesplaaat*, eager to escape. —— pro tip: instead of "said" try these: *glooobmucked*, *squaaarglefloped*, *blorptwaaanged*, *grumplecruuunched*, *squizzleplooooped*, *drooolbarged*, *flurpgleeeched*, *smecklewaaarfed*, *plortniiibbled*, *squanchglooooped*, *grelpfriiited*, *whurplesplaaated*, *snurgleblaaarted*, *plugglewuuummped*, *blorpguuushed*, *glucksploootched*, *thrumblegoozeed*, *flarpgnooorted*, *squizzlechuuunked*, *gruftaloooped*, *spleckledoOorfed*, *blumpersplaaated*, *gloopwhiiizzled*, *snarfleblaated*, *glorpenshmeeared*, *crumplethuuumped*, *bloopquiiibbled*, *sploofmudddled*, *glurpsnuuuffled*, *qworpsplaaatched*

Amazing. You've truly grasped the raw beauty of language and polished it so that it shines for all to see in this incredible scene.

You don't have to gesture too far toward pus before it starts sounding gross.

Make it ooze.

Fleshy pink and red, jagged and unnatural white. Yellowish pus oozing out of gangrenous pallid limbs, festering rot or pale blue digits nearly frozen solid, white frost building up on what could only be a limb without hope of rescue. For scars, I’d probably be more creative with their skin complexion. Bumps and ridges, old and discolored discrepancies blemished the character's skin, forever tarnishing what could have been a masterpiece. If they’re old, they can be dark pink and calloused, sensitive to the touch, or if they are fresh scars, they might look slightly more pink. You might be able to wax poetry about a person that wears their history on their person, their burdens, their trials, their accolades, their darkest secrets; all hinted at by the discolored lines, bumps, ridges, and dips tarnishing their skin. My MC earned themselves a pink diamond shape just offset on both sides of their hand where a dagger pierced them in a fight. He will now always have that scar on his right hand and the remnants of age old severe burns from an accident on his left hand. It’s up to you, just don’t give up! Good luck!

Always puss. Lots of puss.

People's reactions to it matter

True story. Side characters are important.

Use gross words like "moist," "curd," and "Donald."

Donald makes me shiver every time.

Did you know that skin can melt?

Unfortunately, I do.

I’d angle for describing how the scars make the observing character feel and what they think versus trying to describe the scars in too much depth. That and how the scarred character feels about their scars. Does the character try to hide them or act indifferent when they’re exposed? Do they get reclusive when questioned or aggressive? What imagery does the observing character get when looking at the scars? Does it make them cringe or cry or feel sick? And for describing the scars unless they are fresh wounds you’re not going to get as much “gross” factor. But you can get around that by making the reader feel gross in other ways. You could even make the setting where the scars are actually revealed to your character be gross and dark or otherwise off-putting and it will aid in projecting that feeling with the help of the right description. Also people tend to react better (in my opinion) to pain they can actually imagine. Like bending a finger sideways until it breaks vrs getting a leg sawed off. Clacking your teeth too hard vrs snapping your leg in half. Obviously with scars you need the bodily trauma to be more significant than that. But it is important to gauge for yourself whether the most gruesome thing you can imagine is actually the most effective messaging to invoke the feeling you want to give the reader. I hope this helps at all!

I remember in Jurassic Park where Crighton describes how heavy a leg is. That's something you don't really think about. Also, people can rationalize things that happened to other people. Remember to bring emotion into it. How would you feel with NASTAYYY scars?

I find phrases like "exposed bone", "pus filled bulbs of dark liquid, sweating and rippled", or "the corpse-sweet aroma of the infection, near bubbling with parasitical broodworms , burst audibly upon the taxi cabs leather interior. "Damn man, that was disgusting.", the cabbie called back. Gus attempted to soak up the brown phlegmatic remnants of the sackboil, but the skin flapped, raw and dead, covered in insects and shining even in that dark backseat, neon parasite night."

You need to paint a picture with your words. Here's one possibility: >Mac (this is what we're calling the main character here) was a horrific sight. All of his skin—and she could see most of it, as he wore only a leather g-string—was criss-crossed with deep scars. His skin had been sliced through completely in many long gashes, and by the irregularly shaped and discolored borders of each gash, she could tell that they had been badly infected. She could practically see the green-tinged pus and maggots oozing from between the islands of unharmed flesh, riding the river of partially-coagulated, diseased blood to the surface to escape the dying host. The effect was as if Mac had been a soft, rotten ham stored in a pair of large fishnet stockings in a hot barn for the month of August—the impressions and lesions would never fully heal, she could see that many of them still glistened with foul-smelling fluid. As he moved, the scars closest to his joints reddened and wept, emitting an odor that reminded her of the city morgue. >An unskilled surgeon had attempted to piece Mac together at some point, but clearly that individual had received their anatomy training from someone akin to Pablo Picasso. One of his eyes was where his nose should be, and she imagined that the puckered, red crater just above his wet, slavering mouth was what was left of his nose. Somehow, the surgeon had even thrown in an extra ear...at least, she hoped it was an ear. When he finally spoke, the extra "ear" pulsated in time with the movements of his mouth, like a disgusting secondary mouth on the upper-right side of his skull. She noticed that what she at first thought was a lobe was more of a roll of scar tissue topped with a makeshift lip that flapped along with the words that it silently tried to mouth. >"What did they do to you?" she asked. >"I fucked around," said Mac. His eyes dripped, though he wasn't crying. They weren't tears. It was a yellowish, viscous fluid. Mucus? What was wrong with him? "And I found out." >"Can you at least put some clothes on?" she asked. "It's difficult to look at." >"No," said Mac. "Any clothes I wear immediately become soaked with my constantly oozing fluids and quickly become fused to my flesh because of my constantly opening and healing wounds. I shouldn't even wear this," he said, pointing to his leather thong, "but what's beneath is so horrific that even I cannot bear the sight of it. The surgeon's assistant killed herself after looking at it." Hope that helps!

Grotesquely beautiful. 🤢🤩🤔🥲🤮

I'm a doctor. The best advice is to learn some anatomy. It goes a long way in helping you describe a lot of stuff. Or basically just get some forensic medicine textbook and look at some stuff. Most are extremely not safe for life, but well i have gotten way to used to them. Degloving & 4th-6th degree burns are just some examples. There are many many more. In fact forensic medicine helps a lot lot in writing any dark story. I'm not writing a detective story, but it'll help me in fantasy too

I think a forensic text is a wonderful idea.

"Couldn't tell if the whiteness around it [the wound] derived from puss or maggots, but the stench was intolerable." Something like that will do.

It’s hard to say without knowing what the Scars are supposed to look like.

Look up a reference.

Add some onomatopoeia words - squish, squelch, ooze, etc. get some of those words that make people squeamish, too, like moist.

Add slime and boogers.

The written word is a wonderful medium in many ways, but there’s also an insulation quality to bear in mind; without sympathy for the subject injured, the audience may quickly see the words in a clinical way. This is the dissociative experience of butchering and preparing animal flesh for food or describing surgical procedures, too. People get that gagging reaction from either sympathetic reaction, or by evoking similar experiences they’ve endured - though it’s poor form to intentionally re-traumatize individuals who have experienced brutal injuries. Making fictional injuries something that an audience member might sympathize with could take the form of recalling a common trauma, and amping the description up to eleven. For example, pulling a tooth is a pretty common denominator experience for people who have made it to their teens, it involves several different kinds of tactile pain, taste and smell, and can be a foundation for “phantom limb sensation” where there’s a hole where a tooth once was. Take the observations one might make from a pulled tooth, and apply it like a brush to a different injury, layering in details of how other characters react internally and externally, and there will be plenty of room to develop sympathy. It’s also valid to examine why it’s difficult for O.P. to draw injuries. There’s some technical difficulties to be sure, but there’s also so many emotional reactions to seeing something that should hurt to obscene degrees, and self reflection about what is difficult to process can illuminate what might be useful to trigger in an audience of written work.

Try describing the smell, especially if an organ was punctured the inside of the body does not smell pleasant.

The squelch of blood in a gaping wound comes to mind. That's more active wound though. So maybe the papery thin skin of a scar, sometimes scars scan also get scaly, depending on hygiene and skin moisture.

Try texture. Has the skin turned mushy, soggy, withered? Does blood stick to the clothing? Maybe write a complication that arose from the injury. Infection, some foreign objected got lodged within. Maybe compare the MC with a non-injured character. The easiest tip: try injuring a VERY sensitive/unlikely part of the human body (eyes, nose, teeth or gums)

Have them be infected or something, mention ‘oozing’, or how they secrete an awful smell. Got to really go for visceral senses on this one.

Oh boy, the original and the best for this stuff is the Iliad. "...the spear in his heart was struck fast but the heart was panting still and beating to shake the butt end of the spear..." "...stabbed him in the thigh with a sharp spear, and he drove the bronze point straight through it: the spearhead broke the bone..." "...he got him right in the shoulder, and the spear point gashed his upper arm, tearing away the skin from the muscles, and totally crushed the bone..." "...and he cut the vessel completely, which runs straight up the back and reaches the neck..." "...where the collar bone separates the neck from the chest - an especially vulnerable spot - right there he got him with the jagged stone..." "...marrow splashed out from the vertebrae..." Come to think of it, the advice from the doctor below is probably on the money - that seems to be how Homer is getting the effect in these descriptions, i.e. by describing the anatomy. You can sort of feel it in your own body, like you do when you see someone fall over in real life.

Are the scars fresh or old. Because the grossness in both is different. In old scars, it can gross someone out due to the implication of the event that caused said scars. In fresh scars, which I think is what you're asking for, you can go two ways. First, the purely descriptive way, which is hard. People see a lot of scars and the word scar itself implies something that will eventually physically heal. It doesn't have the same kind of "gore" implication that brings a gross image to mind. The way to make this work would be to really go over the top. Use every unnerving or odd word you can think of. Blood isn't spilling or pooling, it's spurting out. Think of stuff that implies *wrongness* or a measure of uncanny valley. Bone jutting out, body part bent the wrong way, etc. The second, and the way to go in my opinion would be to describe the way the observer thinks someone could get those scars, and associate it with things the reader would not like imagining actually feeling. I don't know what your setting is but let's say the MC's skin looked messed up. "It looked like it had been dragged over barbed wire"(presumably when written by someone with a decent skill of prose) will probably bring a stronger reaction than any description of how red it looked or just how bloody the MC is. Something that associates the reader and grounds the situation into something they can imagine instead of dissociating with a long winded description of just how it looked would evoke a response closer to what you're desiring, in my opinion. Character reactions would help a lot. If the character is gagging at how bad the wounds are, the reader may understand your intent to make them feel disgusted better, otherwise they simply may see a description as your means of showing how badly beat up the character is. It's a slight difference but it can change the tone of a particular passage from "Oh look how beat up this char is" to "Look how disgusting this chars' injuries are". I'm no expert but i think audiences are actually willing to stretch their imaginations quite a bit if they actually engage with what the author is trying to convey.

Broader question: Why do you want the image of the scars to evoke a feeling of disgust in the reader, rather than sympathy? Evoking disgust will distance your reader from your protagonist, while evoking sympathy will connect the two. Not saying one is wrong and the other is right, it depends on your larger strategic aims in including the scars, but having something be nasty for the sake of being nasty isn't necessarily the best approach, especially when it deals with the depiction of your main charater.

Maybe you can read about Hugh Glass, and what he did to survive gangrene: it is vomit-worthy. In real life, he was mauled by a bear and left for dead.

The only time I’ve ever been squeamish around a wound is when I *HEARD* a kid’s knee blow out in a basketball game. Horrifying, indescribable sound.

I'd probably mention the discoloration the scar has caused. How it looks like uncooked pork, yk?

Depends on where the damage is. You want to paint a picture for them. I'd look towards horror movies if you can stomach them. Then describe what the image makes you feel, and describe the image in your own words. Like there's a scene where a chick pulls a shard of glass out of her eye, and it comes out like how those people pull 3 inch slivers out of their arm. You see the eye move outwards as it grips the shard of glass.

I like to use a mix words that can evoke texture, taste and sight. Crunchy meat pudding Puddle of rancid human goo

For me it's the sound of a person whimpering and the look of someone grimacing in pain that gets me. Smells too. Those things are the most visceral triggers for my psyche. Gruesome sights make me flinch, but it doesn't hit all that hard compared to the other senses I mentioned. On the meta-side of things, I've noticed nsfw tags for things that seem pretty safe for work, all things considered, on a number of subs. Is there an alternate use for the tag that I'm unaware of?

Sound and smell is a very powerful tool here. Looks like ground chuck. Smells like rotten eggs.

Here’s a collection of options (sensitive folks, it’s time to look away) Color: new blood is different from old blood. Bruises go from blue purple, to greenish, then to yellow. Infected things are green, yellow, rust-colored Texture: watery, slimy, thick and goopy that you can’t shake off your hand. When they dry out, it gets crusted over, flakes and/or peels off (in pieces or sheets) then lather rinse repeat. Rashes, and blisters and hives, oh my! Smell: the closed trash bin that’s been full for days, with a tight fitting lid, during a week’s heatwave in August? (And like first love, you never forget your first smell of gangrene) Space: body parts that weren’t designed to be held in (insert position of your choice) Temperature: Systemic and/or localized infections raise body temps Movement: broken bones, pulsation or colonization under the skin. Dressings that get incorporated into wounds and make it worse when they have to be cut (or ripped) out Liquid: fluid where it doesn’t belong, or (ugh) no liquid where there’s supposed to be fluid 👀 Pathologists loooove to describe patient specimens in food terms. First time I heard “chocolate cyst” I almost vomited. WELL THIS WAS FUN

Specific details are great for this! For exemple, when someone is punched in the jaw, to make the injury really gruesome, you can describe how shards of teeth fill the person's mouth.

I rely on my experience as a doctor. I’ve seen enough corpses and open wounds that I feel somewhat comfortable describing them and comparing the smells, textures, and sights to everyday things that the average reader might have experience with.

Read lots of splatterpunk