✍️ Turning Pain Into Plot: How Real Life (and Surgery) Fuels Horror Fiction

Or, how a sling, some painkillers, and a creepy hallway gave me three story ideas before I even left recovery.

They say to write what you know. I used to roll my eyes at that. “What I know,” I’d mutter, “is that pain meds make me cry at cat food commercials.”

But then I had shoulder surgery, and suddenly, “What I Know” looked a lot like the first act of a body horror novella.

And just like that—I had story seeds planted between every ice pack and post-op haze. Because pain? Vulnerability? That weird moment when you look at your own arm like it’s a stranger’s? That’s not just recovery—that’s inspiration.

💀 The Real Horror: Dislocation, Delay, and Discomfort

Let’s rewind: I dislocated my shoulder.

Not in a daring escape from a cursed manor or while wrestling a demon dog—just life being life. The aftermath was not immediate recovery or swift resolution. It was a full year of waiting, of fragile bones and eggshell-laced movement, of trying not to sneeze too hard in case my shoulder tried to abandon ship again.

And then there was the hospital.

Now, I have a phobia of hospitals—courtesy of a traumatic childhood experience I’d rather not unpack without a therapist and possibly a séance. So, the idea of willingly walking into one to let someone knock me out and root around in my shoulder like it’s a kitchen drawer? 

Yeah. That was a whole thing.

But here’s what surprised me: in that painful, awkward, deeply unsettling liminal space between injury and recovery—I started dreaming up stories.

Haunted operating theatres. Ghosts stitched into muscle memory. A cursed sling that tightens when you lie.

Pain, it turns out, is fertile soil for fiction.

🩼 8 Ways to Turn Pain into Plot (Without Just Writing a Diary Entry in Disguise)

So you’ve got an experience that rattled you—maybe emotionally, maybe physically, maybe both—and now it’s whispering, “Use me” from the corner of your writing desk. Good. Let’s sharpen that into a story.

Here’s how I go from real-life ow to fictional “oh no.”

1. 🎯 Pin Down Your Core Fear

Start with the marrow of it. What’s the heartbeat of your story? Is it about being trapped in your own body? Losing control? Watching something familiar turn dangerous? Knowing your central fear helps you slice away everything that doesn’t feed it.

2. 👤 De-You the Protagonist

Yes, the story is inspired by what happened to you—but the lead character isn’t your memoir’s stunt double. Let them evolve with their own flaws, fears, and terrible decisions. This isn’t therapy (unless you count revenge through fiction).

3. 📚 Gather the Ghosts of Research

Just because you lived through something doesn’t mean you can’t learn more. Read up on the medical stuff, the emotional fallout, and the urban legends. You never know when a minor footnote becomes the major twist.

4. 🧠 Facts Can Be Flexible (or Fictional)

A creative licence is your scalpel. Did the light in the ward flicker dramatically? No? Then make it strobe like a horror movie about to climax. You’re not writing a documentary—you’re building dread with whatever bricks you need.

5. 🔍 Fictionalise with Finesse

If your story borrows heavily from real people or places, change enough to make it yours. Especially if you don’t want to spend your book launch dodging awkward questions from Aunt Margie about “that character who sounds just like me.”

6. 🧠 Splice the Trauma Tapes

Got two unsettling experiences in completely different years? Good. Merge them like unholy twins. Fiction doesn’t care about timelines—it cares about emotional resonance. Stitch together what fits.

7. 🏥 Move the Scene of the Horror

A change of setting can electrify a story. Your actual trauma took place in a hospital? Cool. But your fictional one might hum with fluorescent lights, echo with ghostly footsteps, or lock its doors for reasons no one talks about.

8. ✂️ Cut Without Mercy

Editing is where your emotional truth sharpens into narrative muscle. Ask yourself: does this detail serve the story, or is it just me reliving something? Keep what haunts. Ditch what drags.

Final Thoughts: Pain Is Temporary, but Fiction Is Forever

In the end, what matters isn’t the scar or the sling—it’s what you build from it. Pain might not feel “productive,” but it can be powerful. Horrors you’ve lived through can become horrors you write through.

And that, my friend, is the best revenge.

Well—besides haunting the orthopaedic ward forever in a gown that never quite ties in the back.