Cancer Treatment Options Forum - January 10th, 2011 - 6 Comments
If I'm writing a book where a girl has cancer, should i have indepth descriptions of the chemo?
im not sure of whether or not i should have a description, like laying in the bed still doctors doing this and that type of description or just have her talk about it afterwards saying that she couldnt take the stillness and reference like that?
thank you!
Do research, definitely, but don’t get too bogged down in the detail that you lose the story or bore your readers.
A concrete example I always think of, and my friends tell me "It’s too red october" when they want me to change some of my writing… In the Hunt for Red October, which is a fantastic story, the author goes into excruciating detail about the control room of this nuclear sub. From things I have read, yes, it is very accurate. But it is also very boring to the average reader. I almost stopped reading the book because i couldn’t give a rat’s patooey about where each control was or how it all worked. I wanted the story to proceed. i finally decided to skim through that and get to the action, and ended up loving the book. But I know several people who gave up on the book because of it.
My point is, you need detail to make the story real, but most of your readers don’t have medical degrees and won’t care exactly how many cc’s of each drug are administered at what times. The detail should be basically what the doctor says to the patient, how the patient feels and some side effects. I don’t want to read chater upon chapter of how much she’s vomiting, but since that’s common in chemo, it needs to be mentioned. Hair loss, weight loss, weakness, inability t be in public or have many visitors because they have wiped out her immune system- realism like that, and how she feels about it- those are necessary.
Just don’t turn your story about this girl into a research paper that could be published in medical journals.
Good luck!
It’s completely up to you.
But I would say that you should do some fairly extensive research on it either way. Not just go with a few urban myths.
Yeah you’re thinking about it backwards…If that is central to the content of the book then yes, describe it as necessary.
I like books to have as much detail as possible.
I agree with Matt. Work out whether it’s important to the story. Every scene in a story has to move the plot forward, or reveal something important or interesting about one or more main characters – preferably both. A scene that doesn’t do either doesn’t belong in the story, no matter how much it makes the reader feel sorry for the patient.
Do you actually know anything about it? Can you say anything about it that isn’t padding?
Or will every person who ever went through chemo, say "this ***** is a liar" and toss your book in the garbage?