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I am writing an action scene in which a character is thrown/falls and while they are flying through the air either the top or bottom half of their body hits an immovable object mid air, causing them to continue in the same direction but with their body at a different rotation now, without starting to spin because of it. It's essentially like a rug pull but happening in mid air if that makes sense? I think I have read this as "jackknifing" in other writing but I'm not sure if that is the correct use case and meaning? Here is a video example except the character spins after impact, which is not desired.

I have included a diagram to help illustrate this as well (side on view, top of arrows are character's heads, grey object is the ground, green object is stationary and immovable):

enter image description here

Example sentence:

Red guy hit blue guy, sending him flying back into a green object, which ______ his body.

FrontEnd
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2 Answers2

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Fun word games are fun . Some options:

  1. Go simple

... which twisted his body

  1. Change the wording

... he hit the object and that caused him to swivel mid-air

... he collided with the object which made his body veer sharply to the left

  1. Chain more than one action

... his body ricocheted off the object and spun.

  1. Find the exact verb you want...?

Overall, if we're speaking about verbs and their synonyms, I think "turn" is a good starting point in this case:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/turn

Or maybe "twist":

https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/twist

In such cases, I usually start general, then click on the synonym that is the closest in meaning to what I'm looking for, and follow the links.

F1Krazy
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Arie
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The motion is a tilt. "to cause to lean, incline, slope, or slant."

so you sentence could end "which tilted his body"

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tilt

Allan
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