forum How do you write a disease?

Started June 18, 2018 by @Blossom_Utonium

tune

Anyone got any good ideas?

It depends on what kind you are going for. One that already exists or one that you want to make up.

So, as far as I'm aware, when you come up with a disease, you'd want to look at three things: Cause, Transmission (How it spreads), and recovery (is there a cure/how deadly is it?) once you figure out these three characteristics, you can come up with symptoms which suit each category. (For example, typically the deadlier the disease, the worse the symptoms are.)

There are some cool sites you can visit if you want to learn about disease. (And I'm assuming you don't mean autoimmune diseases) You could browse through the CDC, or look around on webmd for actual diseases or their symptoms, and if you want to learn about the spread and mutation of disease, you could start with the game Plague.inc, which, though it does not teach about real diseases, it is an easy way to observe how diseases can spread and mutate, either intentionally or unintentionally.

You could also visit ZombietownUSA, a site made by some college students that tracks a fictional 'zombie plague' as it spreads through the United States. Though you may not want a Zombie virus specifically, its a cool way see a disease spreading in a realistic period of time.