How do you describe pain in a story?

Absolutely depends on the type of pain. Throb, burning, sharp, stabbing, etc.?

One word that comes to mind as part of the description is “surprising” or a synonym, because every time I’ve accidentally poked, stabbed or slashed myself with something sharp, my first reaction was that.

Wouldn’t it depend on how badly Person B was stabbed?

If it wasn’t life threatening, the first response could be anger fueled by pain.

If an artery started squirting, the pain might very quickly be dulled by shock.

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Most often I think I see pain described by analogy or simile: The pain was like… what?

Stabbing pains, for example, are often described as akin to a burn. Sometimes, when the implement is sharp enough and the shock great enough, the pain isn’t even felt so much as the effect: sliced leg tendons cause us to topple, fall or collapse in a heap; arms weaken so that we drop things when the cut is made there. Having cut myself with dull knives a few times, I can tell you the worst part about that is that the knife sort of “drags” in my flesh, and I was pushing hard on it in the first place because it was dull when I lost control of it while I was attempting to do something useful.

You’ve already described it- sharp, stabbing. “He was surprised how sharp the pain was and also how it was just a slice, but deep into him, deep in his muscle.”

excruciating might work?

Pain is a physical feeling, and it’s hard to get a reader involved in physical sensations when they’re sitting comfortably on the couch reading a book.

It’s easier for them to make the jump with emotional feelings. If someone was just stabbed in the neck, they’d be feeling stuff like panic, adrenaline, desperation, struggle, etc. That’s the true conflict in your situation- the struggle for life and death. Caring about what happens to your character, and suspense, is what will get the reader really involved. Descriptions, like pain, are sort of the cherry on top.

Or you could go with Person B being in shock (describe the symptoms of shock), and what it was like to have his clothes soaked with blood while he tried to defend himself.

Figurative language might be your best bet.

It helps to know anatomy and how much force is used. Is it a stabbing motion or a slicing motion? What type of knife? Kitchen knife? K-Bar? Is the attack from the front, back, or side? Is the attacker a smaller, shorter person than the victim, or larger and more powerful?

The neck is vulnerable. In the front there is the windpipe, to each side near the surface are the jugular veins, a little deeper in that small crevice on each side of the Adam’s apple are the carotid arteries. In the back is mostly muscle and bone, running down the center of the vertebra is the spinal chord.

If the windpipe is slashed open, then one or both of the jugulars will empty blood down into the lungs. The victim will feel pain, but their main concern will be air. That person will be in shock and grabbing at their throat.

If the attack is to the side of the windpipe and deep, one of the carotids may be affected and the person will bleed out, lose consciousness quite quickly. There will be pain, but I believe the arterial blood squirting from the wound at the same tempo as their heartbeat will concern them more. They will be holding the wound and in shock.

If the attack is from behind and it is a stabbing by someone with great upper body strength, the cervical vertebra could easily be separated and the spinal chord severed. This would cause the person to collapse to the ground and depending on how far up the neck the blow, they could lose control of their lungs and suffocate, quietly because they wouldn’t be able to contract the required muscles to exhale. But there most certainly would be panic on their face.

Remember also that attacks from the front or the side more than likely will sever the sternocleidomastoid or thyro-omo-sterno hyoid muscles and the person will probably lose the ability to lift or control their head and keep their airway clear. They will be making an awful noise while trying to get air.

The rest is about local pain, which isn’t all that big a deal considering these other problems. If you’ve ever experienced severe pain, it helps. It radiates throughout your whole body from the point of origin, let’s say a gunshot wound through the femur. Your vision can appear to be filled with blood as the world turns red with searing pain. Your thigh is both on fire and aching as if it will explode. You grab onto it with both hands to contain the radiating pain and feel the wetness down there, the warm arterial blood pouring out of you, and you realize if some Samaritan hasn’t already called 911, you are probably going to die on scene. If you aren’t ready to go, this will scare the shit out you more than the pain, make your heart pump faster, and cause you to loose blood quicker. You are incredibly cold and shivering. About the time you realize this, black spots appear in the periphery of your vision and quickly close in like the finish of a Looney Tunes cartoon as you go numb first in your extremities then your trunk, then you go to sleep.

It’s easier to describe the actions and the wounds, then let the reader imagine the pain. They often can do a much better job of it than the writer.

Sorry, I think you must have edited your question after my post. Thanks for clarifying the type of pain.

I find it difficult to describe pain that I haven’t myself experienced. I’m guessing you’ve never been stabbed, particularly in the neck (I hope!).

There were a lot of electric shocks received by characters in my novel. I’ve never been shocked, so I googled accounts from people who have been and read their descriptions of the experience in order to write those bits of my story.