Body Trauma : A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries

When your fiction calls for a character to get hurt and live to tell about it, this book is the prescription.
Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent. You'll learn about agonizing injuries and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Use these facts and bring a new realism to your stories and novels.
Dr. David W. Page, a surgeon and trauma expert, takes you in close to reveal the four steps in trauma care; details of skull and brain injuries; what the Glasgow Coma Scale is, and why it's important; specifics of penetrating and blunt neck injuries; the "dirty dozen" dreadful - but survivable - chest injuries; what blunt trauma, blades and bullets do to abdominal organs; effects of injuries to arms and legs, hands and feet; the facts about bites and stings; what happens in impalement injuries; the truths of abuse of elders, women and children; how organ donation works.
Here you'll find graphic explorations of serious bodily damage. You'll be able to work backward, deciding how severe a character's wounds should be and then writing the action that causes the pain. You'll put your characters in harm's way and mistreat them - believably - to within an inch of their fictional lives.

David W. Page, M.D. is an associate clinical professor of surgery at Tufts University's Baystate Medical Center. He is also Director of Student Programs in Surgery at Baystate Medical Center.