Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
There is a famous and inexplicably popular medical television drama in which one of the lead characters says the line, “It’s a beautiful day to save lives.” After I cleaned up my own sick, I turned off that show and never watched it again.
Now, I grew up on St. Elsewhere, MASH, E.R. and Scrubs and while not perfect, what they did well was tell believable stories. They told medical truths. JD’s first day as a doctor in ‘Scrubs’ was so spot on it kept me hooked for the next four seasons. I stopped watching after that because the medicine got silly and the characters became more like caricatures. And until the helicopter chops the surgeon’s hand off in E.R., I would say it is the best ever medical drama.
House MD was, certainly at times, superb, but it has its own problems–there is no such thing as a department of diagnostics. However, in the first few seasons, the cases are based on real medical cases, and it shows. When they stopped putting that front and centre, the show meandered and eventually became unwatchable.
Recently I read a book by a very successful author whose main character was a doctor (well they call themselves doctor at least).
I kept getting bumped out of the story by the cringeworthy internal monologue of “helping people” and “making a difference”, but worse than that, the diagnosis ascribed to the first killer was not only wrong but grossly misrepresented and, therefore, misunderstood. After that point, I questioned every medical fact in the book. The lack of accurate fact destroyed the fiction and the reading spell was broken.I can only conclude that this famous author had done little more than ‘google’ something medical. Or perhaps read an article about the condition written by someone with no formal medical training. What a pity. The story was compelling but the holier than though-ness of the main character, the unbelievable medicine/psychology and frankly ridiculous twist, means I will not be reading anything further in that series.
‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story’. And there is an element of truth in that, but a good story is engaging, enthralling, and a place to escape to. When medical characters are cliché and cringy I am bumped out of the story, when medical facts and diagnoses are wrong, I am bumped out of the story and when it feels like little or no effort has gone into the research, the only escape I want is from the story.
A family member of mine, a former army major who has seen conflict, got up and walked out of Saving Private Ryan. Not because he thought it was poorly done, but because it was so real, so true, that he started experiencing battlefield flashbacks. And it wasn’t the action that did it, it was the dialogue, the relationships of the soldiers and the perfect portrayal of the burden of command. It was true. And it was because Steven Spielberg had spent years listening to his father and his father’s comrades talk about the war. He and his screenwriter had spoken to experts, and they told a fictional story full of truth.
Truth. It’s so important in a story. It makes it feel real, makes us care, and makes us believe it. By telling the truth! A story can have dragons and magic and time travel and still be true if the characters, scenarios and dialogue feel true.
Gandalf’s reincarnation doesn’t bump you out of the story, but seeing Legolas in the Hobbit certainly does. Assuming you’ve read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
So, get the medicine right, get the doctors, nurses, and equipment right, even if they’re on Mars. Just tell the truth about the people and their experiences. How to do that? You could try to watch reality medical shows, but they’re heavily edited for TV and the mere act of having the cameras present changes the behaviour of the doctors, nurses and patients - the Hawthorne effect. You could ‘do your research’, just remember that there is so much nonsense on the internet, so choose your sources wisely. Make sure the ‘facts’ are evidence based and make sure the evidence is good evidence.
But what really makes something sound authentic and feel true is when an expert has been consulted. You can’t google your way to a medical degree, and you can’t Chat-GPT authentic sounding medical dialogue. So, ask someone, someone who’s been there, who knows what it feels like, who knows when it’s true.
And never, never, ever try to have doctors remove a bomb from someone’s chest!
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