Hi, my name is Divine Walker. I have a question on how to write an accident scene. This accident happens while this family were on their way to the beach. I guess you could said that the car in the opposite lane causes this accident and everyone in the car died. I hope someone could provide a sample or clear direction to help me to proceed.
You're unlikely to get anybody writing your scene for you, and I have to ask what your plan here is. If you give us some more specifics to go on, we might well be able to answer those questions and help you write all of your scenes better, as opposed to us half arsing something on the internet and having you come back with another scene a little later on. Are you struggling with establishing the scene, the dialogue, the general descriptions, formatting, perspective, tense, transitioning from happy family drive time to skiddy bone crunchy time? These are the things we're able (/willing) to help you with.
Just watch some car accidents on youtube, including some with dashboard cams. Read some survivor accounts. Then write the scene and post it to see what people think.
What kind of road is it? A highway with a divider? A two-lane secondary road? How did the car in the opposite lane cause the accident? Was the driver drunk or on drugs? Did (s)he swerve to avoid hitting an animal or a pedestrian? Did another driver cut him/her off? Skid on a slick surface? Create the scene, understand the cause, and write it. Good luck.
I have a fatal car accident in my current WIP, and I did a lot of research along these lines, along with reading in-depth news articles of similar accidents and hunting down interviews with first responders and coroners. I will warn you that this sort of research, especially if you're thorough can be very depressing, and for me it spiked my anxiety temporarily for a while whenever I drove through a major intersection.
In my case I needed to write a scene where one of my MC's goes into excruciating detail about his dead boyfriend's fatal accident to explain exactly why he's been so traumatized and haunted by it (he believes to be his fault, even though it's not). I wanted detail because that's what my character does, obsessively goes over every single detail over and over in his head, beating himself up about it every step of the way. I just wanted to make sure those details were realistic and not blown out of proportion; however, it turns out when a human being not wearing a seatbelt hits another vehicle head on at excessive speed, you don't have to exaggerate - the reality is awful enough.
This has some of the best crash physics I've ever seen, and it's all computer generated so not as upsetting/offensive as real car crashes (although I suspect the sound effects are taken from real crashes)
