Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries (Get It Write) [Paperback]

David W. Page (Author)

Book Description

Series: Get It Write | Publication Date: October 15, 2006

Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This reference book has much to offer many. Indispensable for the novelist, with gore-filled chapters and multiple car crashes spewing limbs and guts, Dr. David Page's opus will also be treasured by medical enthusiasts, hypochondriacs, and those who like lively bathroom reading. From trench foot to crunched legs, massive hemothorax to flail chests, Body Trauma is educational, comprehensive, and a jolly good time. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A fascinating and most helpful reference for any writer of fiction or non-fiction" -- Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Shelf Life

"A valuable resource for writers. I will certainly consult it the next time a physical mishap befalls one of my characters." -- David Anthony Durham, author of Pride of Carthage

"An authoritative guide that delivers diagnosis and plot ideas with a wry bookside manner." -- James Patrick Kelly, Hugo award-winning author of BURN.

"With this helpful guide Ahab's missing leg might have been labeled a traumatic amputation of the fibula and tibia." -- Michael White, author of The Blind Side of The Heart, A Brother's Blood, A Dream of Wolves, The Garden of Martyrs

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Behler Publications; Second Edition edition (October 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933016418
• ISBN-13: 978-1933016412
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #368,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unshocking!, May 5, 2002

By 

M. S. Green (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries (Howdunit Writing) (Paperback)

Amazing -- a book about traumatic injuries that neglects any discussion of shock. I've had to borrow my partner's anatomy & physiology text for that part. There's some good basic info here, but I'll need to look elsewhere (& you will too) for detailed information on the kinds of wounds a character might sustain in sword fights or the treatments your characters might receive before the advent of modern Western medical techniques. Better news if your story takes place in the contemporary urban industrial world, with a modern emergency room or trauma center. But when it comes down to it, for most situations, this book isn't going to replace every good writer's necessary tool: research, research, research.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Generally very useful, October 23, 2000

By 

P. Lozar "plozar" (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries (Howdunit Writing) (Paperback)

Like most of the "Howdunit" series, this is a useful volume that every aspiring mystery writer should own. It's full of helpful, often detailed descriptions of various types of wounds and injuries, how they're treated, and, if they're not immediately fatal, whether they could lead to death or long-term disability. The chapter on torso injuries was especially good: it's not intuitively obvious to a non-medical person (like me) what the consequences of a particular type of wound or blow would be, and this made it much clearer. I liked the author's use of quotations from mystery and adventure writers to illustrate his points. And, although the tone is fairly dry, I found this volume easier going than others in the series, mostly because he used comparisons effectively and included easy-to-understand graphics.
Some quibbles:
1. The book is very uneven. Some chapters are detailed and comprehensive, while I found others sketchy: for example, the description of types of gunshot wounds was a good general overview, but it didn't give enough specific information to answer the question I had. A chapter-by-chapter list of references, or suggestions for further reading, would have been useful too.
2. The author occasionally veers off into "Here's a nifty idea for your mystery novel." Some of them ARE indeed nifty ideas, but I'd never use them, because I'm sure the first person to read this book already has! I think the book would have been more useful to more writers if he'd just stuck to providing the facts.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good on wounds, bad on hospital practice, November 2, 1997

By 

Frank (Stockton CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries (Howdunit Writing) (Paperback)

This book gives a good overview on how an author's character can be wounded, and the expected treatment (often simplified) and course of recovery.

If an author is looking for guidance on realistic hospital practice, dialog, medications, equipment, or lingo, the author better look elsewhere -- these items are either simplified or missing.

Equally missing is any mention of the role of non-MD caregivers in hospital care, in particular nurses. The reader of this book would come away with the impression that the only function of nurses in hospitals is to hand surgical instruments to the surgeon in the O.R. -- especially sad since this is supposed to be a guide to OTHER AUTHORS for them write realistic fiction. For example, when Doctor Page is discussing how suspected belly wounds are monitored during their hospital stay, he says, "The trauma surgeon will return to the bedside over and over to reevaluate the patient until he is certain no injury exists." Not hardly! In real life, it's the nurses who provide the hour-by-hour patient care and monitoring.

The prospective author who is interested in a realistic view of what goes on in an emergency room and other hospital settings would do well to read any book by Echo Heron, RN, including the factual Intensive Care, or Condition Critical, or Mercy (the latter is a medical novel).