RETROGRADE AMNESIAS Recently, I got the privilege to assist Denise Hunter with her latest book “Before We Were Us” (just released in September, it’s great – go read it!) where the heroine suffers a severe head injury and gets amnesia. Denise needed to use temporally-graded retrograde amnesia for this story. The heroine forgets her current boyfriend (the hero had the …
Amnesia, Part I A tale of three worlds. If you plan to use amnesia in a novel, it’s important to know what type of amnesia your character has, how they got it, and what differences exist between the types. Writers often use amnesia as a device to strip a character of important information and/or put them in a new situation. …
This time of year, people love to be out hiking in cooler weather or participating in winter sports such as skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing and ice fishing. Normally, nothing bad happens. But what if someone is unexpectedly injured? Like you cross paths with a bear, or miss a step and break your ankle? When humans wander out of their normal …
In all honesty, at times the writing about coma (disorders of consciousness) in television and movies can be laughable. A character on a soap opera awakens dramatically after years in a deep coma and talks perfectly with no confusion. Right. Robin Cook’s second novel Coma is considered the genesis of a new suspense genre called medical thrillers. I might argue …
Recently, author Deena Adams asked me to help with some characters in her novel who were injured in a fire and suffered severe burns. The situation was a younger man had run into a burning building to find an older fellow in his 50’s. The young man had very mild asthma. The older man was dying from lung cancer. He …
Wow, has this summer ever been hot, hot, hot! I hope you’re staying cool. The opposite of hypothermia, if you’re writing about heatstroke, excessive heat can cause your characters a variety of problems. Our bodies release heat mainly by sweating (perspiring for the romance writers). When sweat can’t evaporate to cool your character’s skin, core body temperature will rise fast. …
Have you, as an author, committed “novel malpractice”? Can you write authentically about medical issues? Most writers without a medical background struggle with that. Writers, television shows, and movies often get it wrong. If the writing and story are good, readers may overlook mistakes, but I want to help you improve your skillsets. Over the last two decades, as a …
As a physician for four decades, I’ve worn many hats. From a busy Family Practice office, to an occupational medicine clinic (workers’ comp) to onsite health centers in local industries. Then a medical school mentor called and asked, did I know how to use a computer? That call launched my thirty-year career as a medical director starting at Anthem. The …