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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Optimally, you will find all the answers you need via medical journals, medical dictionaries, doctors, and the web, however, this is unrealistic. You will find that some 'injuries' you write about do not have an explanation because they are too specific or esoteric; in this case, it is important to use prior knowledge and critical reasoning to infer what might happen in such a case. This being said, make sure to do as much research as possible before resorting to inference.
Read a textbook on forensic science. They cover all the fun topics like:
if ripped apart with a nail, which direction does the skin shear
was she really raped
bullet exit wounds
hacked apart cadavers
this was the first 20 pages.
Find it at a bookstore near a medical doctor university or online.
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.
Considering you are describing situations where serious injuries happen without the proper equipment (or people) available to treat them, there is a field of expertise very familiar with this problem: military field medicine. Soldiers get injured all the time on patrols or in the heat of battles, sometimes very far away from the medical facilities that can treat them in time.
That's not post-apocalyptic setting, but it is as close as it gets.
Start your research with keywords like "battlefield medicine" or war-veteran stories. That may give you the insight you need before having to dive into medical jargon.
The difference between a successful writer and a wannabe writer is that the latter says that "unfortunately I don't know anyone in the field," whereas the successful writer grabs a copy of the yellow pages, finds a doctor, and makes an appointment.
A further difference is that the wannabe writer uses Google to find information, and that the successful writer knows about publication databases such as PubMed or Google Scholar and uses these from within a university library that has access to the paywalled content.
The successful writer also knows that there are medical libraries full of books that teach medical students about injuries, what they look like, what effects they have, and how to treat them, and he has the confidence that if first semester medical students can grasp this information in the few weeks they learn for an exam, he can do so too, so he finds the next medical or university library and takes the next bus to read a copy of The Wills Eye Manual: Office and Emergency Room Diagnosis and Treatment of Eye Disease or something similar.
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: 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!
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