Writing a Medical Thriller Part One

What makes a thriller a medical thriller?

What makes a thriller or a suspense novel a medical thriller? A successful novel in this genre needs more than a few scientific terms tossed in at random. Placement of the plot points and the medical aspects must be carefully spaced. How does one weave these together to make a coherent work? For the framework, you need a sound storyline. The plot must build and pull the reader along. The scientific/medical aspects of the story should be sprinkled through the manuscript like breadcrumbs; a literary trail for your readers to follow.

One caution to the writer: Don’t hide anything. Leave your clues or your verbal tidbits along the path, though not necessarily staring the reader in the face. Whether the reader notices them or not depends on how savvy they are, as well as how expertly the story is constructed. It is all part of the adventure of reading. The writer’s task is to entice readers to look, but the clues must be there to find. Some of the writers of the past century would pull out a new character or reveal some hitherto undisclosed major clue in the final pages, but for today’s reader this is considered poor practice and highly unsatisfying.

Where does one get inspiration for their medical suspense/thriller novel? Scan the titles on the shelves in your local bookstore. The phrase “ripped from the headlines” can be applied to many. When an unusual cause of death or public health issue hits the news, expect to see it in the next wave of bestsellers. With the rise of serious infections with scary acronyms such as MRSA and VRE (not to mention “flesh-eating bacteria!”) it is no surprise that these have followed AIDS into the areas of medical fiction. One key to a successful thriller is that it incorporates scientific fact. The story must be plausible, not matter how unlikely. Picture a “perfect storm” of one bad event leading to another, which might be nearly impossible to replicate in reality, but nevertheless is possible.

Medical professionals who turn to writing fiction have a wealth of experience and personal cases to draw from for inspiration. By making composites of situations and characters, one can weave a fascinating case study from real life into a fictional story without compromising confidentiality. Doctors, nurses and medics spend much of their day listening to people with a variety of problems and this knowledge can serve as a background against which one can paint a story. All writers can find ideas from the media—taking a bit of this and a dab of that to add to their verbal canvas to create an original work.

Writing a medical thriller requires mastery of two worlds: constructing a good story and finding interesting medical points to thread into that story. This is a difficult task, but one that when done well, is extremely satisfying both for the author and for the reader.

Part Two: When to know when enough is enough.

Barbara Wilhelm (Mela Barrows Bennett) is the author of Murder Makes the Rounds. Click here to read an interview with Barbara Wilhelm.