29 Ways to Describe a Headache

Because I suffer from chronic, unrelenting headaches, I have characters in my stories who do. And, I like to see how other authors describe this sort of pervasive, life-altering pain. How do they effectively communicate a misery truly only understood by other people who get them? For example, I had a neurologist once tell me that he worked with headaches so I could too. Clearly, the unrelenting monster in his skull had chewed through his bedside manner.

A note: These are for inspiration only. They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly from an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted when published).

Here’s my list:

• It all made her head ache
• The world’s spinning and I want to vomit, but yeah, I’m okay. His head pounded, sharp and heavy.
• Migraine threatening at the back of his head
• Head throbbing
• A headache ground into her temples
• Concussed by a headache
• Awakened with a monster headache
• Said without interest
• Jane rested her head in her hands and began to rub her temples, trying to massage away the headache.
• He laughed. The pain in his head flashed hard and hot.
• If only her head would stop pounding.
• She closed her eyes, fighting off nausea. Trying, even through the pain, to remember how she could have arrived at this strange, dark place where nothing seemed familiar.

• Stomach heaved
• Wave of nausea
• A headache flared
• The headache, a familiar electric pain behind his eyes
• Hangover gathering strength like an oncoming storm
• a throbbing headache was developing beneath his temples
• muscle in his right cheek flexed
• Living with her headache
• My headache had returned
• Thrumming/buzzing/purring/vibrating/drumming headache behind her temples
• She winced, brows furrowed tight with pain
• A needling headache behind his right ear
• The rhythm of blood throbbing in my temple
• Skull pounding
• Stick hot needles in her eyes
• temple twitched
• She finally got to the edge of her headache
• Head felt like it was filled with straw
• her heartache had gone numb
• belligerent hangover
• aspirin bounced off his headache like it was armored

More descriptors:

How to Talk Like a Southerner

57 Ways to Describe Talking in a Novel

55 Interesting Intel Devices

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of dozens of books on integrating tech into education, webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning. 

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