How far narrative belongs in factual medical writing
Narrative techniques can shape how readers experience factual medical information, while accuracy, audience needs and the requirements of each document constrain which techniques fit.
Narrative as an approach
Narrative can describe a structural and syntactical approach to presenting information rather than a particular document type. Decisions made by storytellers can be adapted to other genres and formats of nonfiction, including medical writing. A broad storytelling approach holds that presentations, brochures and articles should each tell a story directed to their audience.
Storytelling can improve attention to scientific findings and make them easier to process and remember than dry numerical results. Concrete thinking remains part of the way audiences receive information, including specialist audiences.
Accuracy and the reading experience
The New Journalism of the 1950s and 1960s combined a commitment to factual reporting with literary techniques that conveyed events concretely as stories. The approach challenged the association of literary technique with fictional escapism and subsequently influenced other nonfiction forms beyond the United States.
Accuracy is the first ethic of communication, but accuracy alone does not ensure effectiveness. Specialised language can narrow an audience and focus writers so strongly on precise meaning that they neglect clarity and how even expert readers prefer to receive information. Storytellers attend to how information is presented and how writing decisions shape the reading experience, as well as to what information is transferred. Factual accuracy and attention to presentation can work together to communicate complex subjects clearly.
Different views of creativity
An expansive view holds that medical writing should be creative because engaging attention, simplifying information and tailoring meaning to an audience require more than relaying results. Under this view, creativity remains essential in regulatory writing: the writer analyses, condenses and synthesises reports and connects ideas from different sources despite strict guidelines. Precision and simplification should be balanced so that the message remains factual, accurate and accessible without being unnecessarily complicated or vague.
A narrower view finds little scope for imaginative, inspiring writing in regulatory documents with structured formats, specific requirements and large amounts of data to synthesise. It treats creativity with facts or figures as misleading and unethical, potentially carrying serious consequences. This view locates greater scope in medical communications, including marketing, education and journalism. Even research articles, where the scope may be smaller, need clear and compelling presentation of experiments, data and conclusions.
Constraints of the form
Not every technique transfers: vivid scenes, metaphor and dramatic conclusions may be inappropriate where standards protect a field’s integrity or a document’s established form. Research manuscripts have tried-and-tested structures that narrative techniques will not necessarily improve.
The question is which storytelling commitments can serve the work within those constraints. It applies to abstracts, manuscripts, grant writing, recommendation letters, personal statements and explanatory articles for consumers and lay readers.