Thread: I’m told this is unrelated to my story & can’t be used as an introduction. Comments?

To fill you in, the story proper is about a guy who comes across a small town up in the hills, a town on the verge of becoming a ghost town. He pumps life back into it by turning it into a replica 19th Century town, as a tourist attraction. There’s more, but that’s all you need here.

I needed a way to bring the guy and the town together, a way for him to learn of the existence of the town in the first place.

To do this, I decided to use some stuff from real life as an introduction. At the end of the introduction, the guy meets a nurse* who lives in this town but works elsewhere, and she tells him about the town.

(It may help to remember the preceding sentence when the end of this post is reached)

* Don’t get confused. This is not the nurse in the second paragraph of the introduction.

One other person has read this, and although it’s less than 600 words, I’ve been told it’s too drawn out, and besides, has nothing to do with the story.

Maybe it has nothing to do with the story per se but what about its other purpose? Should I scrub the entire thing and find some other, fictional, way to bring the guy and the town together?

Here ‘tis:

"I had a total thyroidectomy recently. Using the word total makes it seem more complex than just a thyroidectomy, and perhaps it was. I do know I finished up with prosthetic devices (2) inside me. So perhaps I’m a candidate for the robotic hall of fame, once I discover exactly what these devices are. I learnt about them only from a brief reference in my health insurance paperwork. The surgeon, Dr Haddock, never mentioned them.

He caught up with me in the CCU the day after the operation, while the critical care nurse was extracting a catheter from my bladder. A CCU is like an ICU but without the same degree of concentrated diligence in the air.

‘G’day, Mickey,’ he said as he entered my cubicle. He cast a quick glance at what the nurse was doing between my thighs. ‘I do hope Nurse is using lots of TLC down there.’

The nurse shook her head, with a despairing look toward my eyes. I gained the impression his witticisms left her unmoved. I wished I could say the same for her ministrations. Having seventeen centimetres of rubber tubing pulled slowly down my urethra will never be high on my list of enjoyable activities.

I wondered briefly how they got it in there in the first place. Then I put it out of my mind. I didn’t really want to know the details.

The surgeon continued. ‘They’ve sent the results of your biopsy back from Pathology. They found a tiny speck of malignant tissue. It’s possible that’s where the nodule in your lung originated.’

The nurse straightened up. I relaxed against my pillow as she left.

‘It probably won’t kill you, because it’s treatable. One drink of radioactive iodine should be all you need.’

That sounded easy when said quickly.

#

Eight weeks later I attended the thyroid cancer clinic in the big city.

‘Dr Haddock may’ve told you something of what we do,’ said the Professor of Endocrinology.

‘Mmm.’

‘We have you swallow a capsule of radioactive iodine, and put you in an isolation ward for three days. The RAI kills thyroid tissue. Once the radioactivity subsides, we let you go home.

‘Before any of this, you need two injections of thyroid stimulating hormone. TSH makes any remaining thyroid tissue eager to absorb iodine. I’ll give you a prescription for it. It’s in powder form and needs to be reconstituted with sterile water. Your local doctor can do this and give you the injections on the two days before you return here.’

‘Are there any side effects?’

‘They’re intramuscular injections, in your buttock. The only side effect might be some soreness.’

Oh, great.

My local quack is both hopeless with needles and overworked. On bad days he’s short-tempered. I’m sure we’re both going to love this.

I was right.

When I spoke to him, well in advance, he’d never heard of the product. I produced an Administrator’s Information Sheet from the manufacturer, which he glanced at briefly before tossing it back at me with the remark, ‘That’s not exactly rocket science.’

‘Erm, do you have sterile water to use for reconstituting the powder?’

‘I don’t need sterile water. I use saline solution.’

Some days later I called the Professor about this.

‘Well, I say we should follow the manufacturer’s instructions. This is a four thousand dollar treatment we’re using here. You go back and tell him what I said.’

I wondered if there might to be an easier way.

Perhaps a nurse at the local nursing home could give these injections. I decided to call in and ask."



And that’s the point at which the MC meets the nurse who, it turns out in conversation, lives in the town where the story is set.

Over to you.

In my humble opinion, if this is part of a novel then there is no reason not to include this. Apart from leading to the meeting which leads to the knowledge of the town, this passage also tells the reader a little of the narrator's history and adjusts the reader to his voice. Keep it, I say.

I would say that it was ok if the medical procedures and/or outcomes are going to be relevant in the rest of the story. If its simply a vehicle to introduce the MC to a nurse I would tend to agree with the other person and think 'why do I need to know all this?'
Sorry!

Aye: 1; No: 1

Actually if it is related to the story then I have absolutely no problem with it. If it helps the reader understand the story then even better, I say yes!

I agree you need a reason for the man to meet the lady, and you probably need more than just: "I met a nurse awhile back who told me about a town..." Will the man's thyroid condition come up again later? Or his relationship with/opinions of doctors, nurses, and hospitals? If the answer to both is 'no' then you might be going into to much detail in your introduction. If the lady who told the man about the town was a school teacher, would the rest of the story change? You don't want to lead your readers into thinking the story is about a man going through a health crisis when, in fact, his health never comes up again. It could lead to your story leaving your audience feeling unfulfilled because their expectations have not been met.

C.M.Aaron, you've raised the bogey of whether to outline or not outline. Previously the story only existed in the briefest form, and only in my head.

I suppose I could now do a written outline that includes later connections with this guy's health.

Or not.

In which case the content of my OP becomes redundant.

Who'd be a writer???

In a one semester creative writing class about a hundred years ago I remember the instructor dwelling on the point that if you show a gun in the desk drawer, somewhere later in the story the gun should be used, and if somewhere in the story someone pulls a gun out of a desk drawer, we should already have seen that it was there.

I quit the class after one semester because of harassment by the art for art's sake crowd who were offended because I sold my writing. 'It's like selling your children' I was told. My reply that I knew nothing about art but I did know what editors like further offended them. Whether that rule is really valid I never had a chance to find out. That may have been covered in the second semester.

The way I heard it, it related to three-act plays, and said if there was a gun over the fireplace in Act 1, it had to be used by Act 3.

But, yep, you've made your point. I'd forgotten.

Like most everyone said, it is good that you give background information of how the man found the town in the first place. But it is kind of strange that someone in the medical field would convert to becoming a builder of a tourist attraction? I believe you should at least make it to where he creates a tourist attraction/medical school or something to that effect.

Can't he also find the town by accidentally taking the wrong turn on a country road in the dead of night?