Abraham Nussbaum

Physician, Teacher, Writer


Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane Alison

What if medicine had the equivalent of craft books? Alison offers alternatives to the Freytag triangle– exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement– for writers. Instead of triangles, she looks to nature and finds patterns–waves, wavelets, meanders, spirals, radials, cells, fractals, even tsunami–which some narratives are patterned upon. Breathtaking stuff which left me wanting to experiment in writing…. and in how doctors narrate patient stories– imagining a case report which spirals is easy, but one which fractals might better illustrate some illness experiences.