Posts Tagged ‘medicine’
On using metaphors and irony—carefully
The metaphor of modern medicine as a tower anchored a draft piece of fiction that we workshopped this month. In the story another tower appeared through the mist, too: alternative medicine. This text used concrete visual drama to take an idea and, as the screenwriting teacher Robert McKee puts it, wrap that idea in an…
Read MoreReaching resistant readers
How do you get your message to the audience that needs to hear it—especially if they are likely to resist? For that matter, as writers, how do we learn enough about our intended audience that we can meet them where they are? The author of one of the draft texts we workshopped this month faced…
Read MoreRevealing problems in medical research in psychology
One of the most-read columns this month in the Finnish Medical Journal (Lääkärilehti) was authored by NeuWrite Nordic board member Jussi Valtonen, an award-winning novelist and a researcher in psychology at the University of Helsinki. You can read the column in Finnish here or in English machine translation here (PDF).
Read MoreMedically and genetically engineered dystopias
Science fiction is an especially creative kind of science writing, one that can show us the present in imaginative and emotionally charged ways while also anticipating possible futures. Amidst hopeful talk of scientific and technological progress, science fiction can also reveal injustices, risks, and dystopian futures to correct or avoid. On the other hand, some…
Read MoreFighter moms support vital research into mitochondrial diseases
Describing science through simple stories and metaphors helped Brendan Battersby, a University of Helsinki research director in mitochondrial biology, connect with the parents of a child with Leigh Syndrome, which led to a new collaboration on research funding. The family felt that Brendan was the first medical expert who’d explained their child’s disease to them…
Read More