So I'm currently writing a medical drama. Basically it revolves around two doctors - one who becomes the victim in a rail accident, the other who is a first responder to the accident. The novel rotates around the way both their lives change following the accident - both physically and mentally - and the way their shared trauma forges a friendship between the pair.
The problem I'm having is because I'm writing this from the point-of-view of not one, but two doctors, is that a lot of medical terminology is slipping into it, just by the virtue of them being doctors. I'm a bit worried if I write too much in medical lingo, that anyone who might read it might be alienated by it. At the same time, I feel like if I alter my language too much, it might not feel authentic.
Does anyone have any suggestions as how to balance the two? How much medical lingo do you think the general populace would understand?
Thanks.
Have you read Robin Cook's 'Coma'? Or Patricia Cornwell? Both those author's seem to include quite a lot of medical terminology without alienating readers.
I understand it is difficult, though. I wanted to try getting readers to feel how necessary to life horses were in the 19th century. Problem is that in those times most people had regular contact with them so there was a lot of what a friend of mine calls 'assumed knowledge' - it was common sense you didn't creep up behind a strange horse and give it a friendly slap on the backside.
We've lost that knowledge today, and you generally wouldn't have one character explain something horse-related to another, and thus the reader, because in real life he wouldn't need to. Since dealing with equines is a fairly physical thing anyway I tried to explain by character action in the narrative rather than in conversation, and that might work in some way for you.
Best of luck :)
Hi, may I add my little bit. I don't know how far you are into writing your novel, or if you have completed it. If it is still a work in progress, then I would say first of all just get it written as it comes, hopefully the redrafts and edits will help out in how it comes over. You will of course be getting some feedback from friends who are not Doctors or nurses, so you will have a better idea of how your language is being understood. When I am getting bogged down with a passage I feel needs to explain why certain things in the plot are the way they are, I will read that to my wife and believe me wives will tell you what they think. If you haven't got a wife yet maybe borrow one, for the purposes of the work I mean!
Regards Paul.
Thanks for the reply!
I am actually a doctor, which is why I'm having trouble as to where I'm pitching it. Medicine is kind of like it's own language, and you're never quite sure how much of it anyone else is going to understand.
I'd like it to be a book that people who just like reading dramas would like reading. I don't want it specifically to be for a medical audience, but I don't want people with a medical background put off, either.