How to write realistic injury scenes?
I'm currently writing an apocalypse themed story. As with the territory, death and/or injuries happen. I'm wondering how other writers write these scenes realistically as far as science, medicine, and biology are concerned?
Meaning, if I injure a character's eye, knowing what happens if I do that, what methods can be used on the injured character when there is no sufficient medical expertise available, or the consequences of not having that medical treatment. Do writers just go by reading other materials of the same theme, looking into medical articles? I'm not really sure where to go to research this.
Google doesn't seem to be sufficient because if I look up an injury, it's going to tell me, "Seek medical attention" on some medical site and well, if this is the end of the world, what's going to happen to this character who can't seek this medical attention?
Thanks in advance for any resources or tips. :-)
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Since doctor appointments cost actual money, which not every writer has, 'successful' (according to someone's standards - what a snooty, elitist response!) or not, let me point you to this excellent resource I found while writing character injuries. From a range of normal reactions to pain, to how fast a person will bleed out without immediate medical intervention: http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~leiafee/ramblings/realistic_injuries.htm
I didn't see any specific info on eye injuries (hopefully your EMT cousin can help!) but there's plenty of useful info there. I hope that helps you as much as it helped me. Just remember that every writer is successful - by actually writing! And all of us - even the published ones - are 'wannabe' writers. We all started that way, and we never stop wanting to write!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24605. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Seek medical advice. Find a medical or health care professional who will answer your questions. If you can't figure it out from a book, find a doctor, nurse, EMT, etc. who is willing to sit down with you for half an hour.
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