Writing Disabled Characters - Tumblr Posts

Writing Advice: Disability And Infantilization

Here Is Life Lesson To Take Into Everything: Disabled Adults Are Adults

In My Multi-Part Series, I Will Be Talking About The Different Ways That Writers Alike Mess Up This Phrase.

Disabled Adults Are Children?

This is a common mistake that authors make when attempting to write distabled characters. This is especially common when representing intellectually disabled characters but it definitely appears in the representations of the physically disabled.

Infantilization is a form of ableism where an individual talks/thinks/acts with a disabled person the way you might interact with an infantile child or dumb dog.

This type of infantilizing tends to impact those

If you want to understand how infantilization impacts real humans living in the real world and not characters, there are a ton of resources online and on Tumblr.

For disabled characters, love interests, allies, and the narrative itself relegate these characters to "funny animal sidekick" or "symbol of innocence".

I'm going to go through a rapid fire list of how authors infantilize and downplay how amazing their characters could be if you gave them something to do. Ok? Ok!

Never Giving Your Disabled Character Something To Do In The Story Besides Sitting There And Looking Innocent

Portraying Your Disabled Or Disabled-Coded(autism-coded) Character As Ignorant Or Unwanting Of "Adult Things" Like Sex, Problems, And Unhappiness

Assuming That Your Disabled Character Couldn't Do [THING] Despite Not Asking Mommy Google About It

Not Treating A Disabled Person's Desires, Beliefs, And Opinions Are Serious Which Often Leads To Characters Violating Their Boundaries

Having Your Likeable Characters Treat The Disabled Character Condescendingly Like Patting Their Head Or Acting Disapprovingly Shocked When A Character Goes Outside This

Refusing A Character's Ability To Be Independent By Having Them Only Rely On Others To Do Everything

When you, author, treat your intellectually/physically disabled character as a symbol of innocence or a child, you deny audiences the ability to see well-developed characters on screen! Disabled adults are adults who do things that adults do!

They drink if they want to

They have sex if they want to

They identify as [Something] if they want to

They date if they want to

They swear if they want to

They believe if they want to

Caretaker/Friend/Love Interest characters should not be romanticize when they disrespect this character, desexualize this character, and violate the boundaries of this character.

"When you deny the humanity of certain characters, you deny the humanity of certain people. "

Writing Advice On: Relatability

Hot Take: Make you characters relatable, not like that!

When people hear the world "relatable", a certain image comes to mind of the early to mid 2000s where the most important thing for a celebrity to be was "authentic" and "down to earth" in the most superfluous and superficial way possible.

Using this jumping off point, I will talk about what I hear when people advise to write "relatable characters" and what naysayers for relatability hear! Because it isn't the same thing.

When people read stories, they are looking for an immersive experience into the lives and emotions of others with the word "other" highlighted in order to make a point against relatability. Most naysayers of relability think that "relatable" means:

"has all of my superficial personality traits and life"

Obviously, the most popular characters in western media such as drug lord Walter White in Breaking Bad or disabled Ryan in Special aren't relatable to the majority of people.

And with that last paragraph, I have already pointed out a problem in "relatability is pointless". Walter White and Ryan are relatable.

Walter White is the story of corruption as his lust for power drives him further away from the man he once was. While this isn't the trajectory most follow, many can relate to being or knowing someone who went down a bad path paved with good intentions.

Ryan is the relatable "coming of age" story of a gay man with cerebral palsy who decides to go after the happier life he has always wanted. Ryan is the relatable protagonist who is awkwardly going after what he wants which is something that all of us have either tried or wanted to do.

These characters are relatable, not because of their specificity, but universality which is a made-up word probably.

"Sympathy Is Caused By Relatability And Understanding"

We sympathize with people not because we always relate to the individual circumstances but because we relate to stories about personal suffering which is universal.

It the belief that characters are only relatable when they have superficial traits that are similar to our own superficial traits that has prevented minorities such as Ryan O'Connell and Walter Jr. from taking the spotlight!

It comes from the belief that being a white cishet neurotypical abled-bodied man is the default and everything else diverse should be marketed toward a specific member of the populus.

Women protagonist = Woman story

Disabled protagonist = Disabled story

Etc. Etc.

But because people are learning simultaneously that "universal relatability is important" and "human stories are human stories which are universally relatable" which has allowed movies such as Barbie and shows such as Special to be such hits.

Obviously, Barbie is steeped in the existence of womanhood and Special is dedicated to representing disable existence BUT this doesn't remove their non-disabled and non-female audiences.

TL;DR: Relatability is important in the sense that relatability is not the "stories of people who look and act exactly like me" but instead "stories of people who live, thrive, and struggle just like me"

Writing Advice Part 2: Disability And EVIL

Disabled adults are adults and because they're adults they have a wide variety of morality and characters since humans are an exceedingly diverse group with even more diversed existences.

WRONG!

No. No. In reality:

👿👿DISABLED ADULTS ARE EVIL, ALL EVIL!!!!!!! 👿👿 According to certain writers!

When writers take communities and existences such as the facial difference gang or the intellectually disabled doers this results in horrific portrayals of "demonization". Obviously, people with physical disabilities are often portrayed horribly. I will mention them in the facial differences saga. The only reason I am specifically talking about facial differences and intellectual disability is because physical disability and facial differences tend to overlap while intellectual disability is a common yet undertalked form of representation.

Demonization: it's just like what it sounds like. Disablity always equals evil

However, the ways that facial differences gang is demonized is different to how intellectually disabled doers are demonized.

THIS BECAUSE OF A COMMON ASSOCIATION aka

Good = Beautiful/Handsome, Evil = Ugly

For future reference, when I say ugly I mean "not conventionally attractive" and when I say beautiful I mean "conventionally attractive". Afterall, Harvey Dent is attractive. That's a fact.

A popular example of this is the James Bond franchise which has stocks full of villainous characters with various limb differences, scars, and other such things. These ugly and bad characters fight against the cool and handsome James Bond

Literally, the association between evil and "ugly" is so ubiquitous that when a character becomes disabled they also become evil. The transition between being law-abiding handsome attorney Harvey Dent and evil insane "ugly" Two-Face is marked by fire/acid.

Let me tell you, there is no link between being a bad person and being not conventionally attractive. I'm not saying you can't write bad people with facial differences but they're not bad people because of their facial differences.

Secondly, Facial differences aren't only scars. They are often congenital. There are hundreds of different kinds of facial differences. This was just to talk about the fact that most people hear "facial difference" and think "scar".

FOR INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED DOERS, their evilness comes from their supposed "mental status as a six-year old". For the purposes of clarity, I am just going to say that's not how intellectual disability is labeled and move on.

Because of their supposed "mental status" 🤢, they have no ability to guage morality. They're " *derogatory term* who does evil out of ignorance"

Firstly, intellectually disabled people can learn things, like morality. Especially, if we are talking about the majority of intellectually disabled people who have to mild-to-moderate intellectual disability. Either way, there are hundreds of education prgrams designed to help people in learning about things from periods to childrearing to reading to everything necessary for life.

Secondly, intellectually disabled people aren't children. I talked about that in Part 1 named Writing Advice: Disability And Infantilization. Check it out, it's fun.

Thirdly, intellectually disabled people exist in the real world. If you want to write a character who is intellectually disabled, you can ask them for assistance. There is nothing stopping you.

CONCLUSION: No matter what disability someone has, that shouldn't stop them from being human. You can write disabled characters as evil but disabled characters should be evil not because of disability but regardless of disability. Evil Doesn't Equal Not Conventional.

Part 3 Writing Advice: Stop The Self-Hating Narrative Around Disability

I'm BACK! I was working on some other Tumblr posts but i've decided to fulfill my promise to talk about the common associations people seem to have between disability and self-hatred.

You remember my own slogan "Disabled Adults Are Adults", right?

Well, here is the slogan for the majority of writers who are bad at writing good disability representation "Disabled Adults Are Tragic :`(

This association comes into everything so we'll go from the small chunks of ableist LOOORE~ and then move onto the really big ticket items? Right!

Assistive Aids Are Traps Designed By The Illuminati!

What do these common literary phrases have in common?

Confined to a Wheelchair

Forced to Use a Cane

Cursed To Always Use [Assistive Aid]

The answer: they are exceedingly negatively charged which incorrectly imply that mobility aids such as wheelchairs are horrible fates to be falled upon! This implication that living with disability is such a curse tends to be most forced upon "understandable" villains and sympathetic "tragic" figures who are "unbearably cursed" with a horrid fate

Those phrases are horrible not just because they incorrect imply that devices such as wheelchairs and other mobility aids are curses when, in reality, the individuals who use these assistant aids desperately need them in order to exercise their full potential but also due to the fact that it's an able-bodied centric perspective!

People who actually use these devices don't see them as unbearable weights bringing them down but tools of freedom and autonomy. Obviously, independence is not necessary to lead a fulfilling life but it's a nice cherry on top!

This "able-bodied centric perspective" will come up again!

Curing Disability

At the end of the story i'll cute and sweet protagonist/main character will be forcibly mutilated into an able-bodied person either by machinery in a sci-fi setting or through the gods.

p.s that's just eugenics. eugenics is what the nazis did

Curing disability doesn't just mean a literal cure but also the overall narrative of "overcoming" disability tends to be here.

"Overcoming disability" is when an author implies that through a character's dedication they have "overcame" the limitations of their disability and are functionally no longer disabled.

Basically, if you have a disabled character whose jokes tend to center on "wow, I always forget you are disabled" or "I am the author and I keep forgetting this character has a disability", you have this trope.

The reason why this is shitty is because you, able-bodied author, have disabled readers. Disabled readers of various different types of disabilties who are reading your story.

Can you imagine if every single story of an able-bodied character involved them being forcibly turned disabled as a "reward" for their good behavior?

Can you imagine if every story involving a queer character involved that singular queer character being turned into a cishet individual?

"Disabled people still exist even when your character stops being disabled"

All you have done is tell disabled and non-disabled audience members that disabled people don't deserve to exist. That's bad.

Final: The Self-Hating Narrative

"Disabled Adults are Adults"

When I was inventing that phrase, I knew it needed to be universally applicable. The only reason I specificed "adults" and not "people" was due to the fact I was talking about infantilization in the first part and I didn't want someone to be like "well, obvi special needs kids are going to be treated delicately".

Anyway, the phrase needed to be universal because disabled adults are just people at the end of the day. They struggle with some not universal things like chronical illness or disability. They also struggle with the universal things like: can I support my family, am I ready, will the bank be closed by the time I wake up, can I be a good person?

They also succeed. Sometimes this success is in the form of gaining more mobility then before. Sometimes this success will seem minor to not disabled people or even to disabled people who have never struggled with that particular thing before.

They also succeed at things we succeed at. They create what has never been created before. They prove to themselves that they can be relied on. They laugh when they struggle.

Yes, they sometimes hate themselves. But even then, they continue on. They struggle with their symptoms day-to-day on top of succeeding in the daily struggles we all deal with. They deal with ableist remarks while also having fun.

Disability Is Normality

Many disabled adults and children are fighting for the right to see narratives in which their lives aren't plagued by melodramatic angst about being disabled.

Many disabled adults and children go about their daily lives with an overwhelming confidence about their disability and don't give a shit about what ableist remark you have to say.

And one of the most important things an author needs to be if they ever want to write true, inspiring, and universal works is to listen to voices of those they wish to represent.

If an author wants to represent disabled people living disabled lives in fantasy and reality, they need to listen to the perspectives of those who are actually living those lives. Sure, they may be lacking in terms of how to fly a dragon but humanity is humanity with or without the added uniqueness.

If an author just takes a ableist-covered crap-filled myths of what disability is like, expect backlash! Or maybe expect nothing, disabled adults have way too many concerns to be dealing with your sorry ass.

open question about writing pnes

i've been writing a fic for a while about a character having a psychogenic non-epileptic seizure due to being under a lot of stress (dan egan s3e7 special relationship iykyk) because i love to project onto characters :) i only have experience with non-epileptic seizures due to serotonin syndrome tho, and i've never had a psychogenic seizure. i've obviously done some reading but its not super easy to find tons and tons of info because its decently rare, so i am reaching out to the tumblr community :)

specific qs below the cut, tw emeto+brain damage

does vomiting happen during pnes seizures

is it possible to get cerebral hypoxia from not breathing during the seizure

is it even possible for it to be a one time thing due to severe stress

can you remember what happened during the seizure/around the time of it

after waking up is there disorientation and if so how bad + for how long

thank you!!!

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

Overused Disability Tropes

Woohoo here we go. I expect this one to be a bit more controversial because I am using specific media as examples. I would really prefer if, when critiquing this post, you avoid defending specific media, and focus instead on what’s actually being said/represented about disabled communities. If you feel I’ve done a really grave injustice, you can come into my askbox/DMs/replies to talk to me about it, but I might not answer.

One more time: I am not interested in getting into a debate about whether something is a good show/movie/book/whatever. I’m not telling you it’s bad, or that you shouldn’t enjoy it! People can like whatever they want; I am only here to critique messaging. Do not yell at me about this.

Newest caveat aside, let’s get into it!

Inspiration Porn

Without a doubt, our biggest category! Term coined in 2012 by badass activist Stella Young, but the trope has been around for literal centuries. There are a few different kinds that I will talk about.

Disabled character/person is automatically noble/good because of their disability. A very early example would be A Christmas Carol’s Tiny Tim, or, arguably, Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Real life examples include the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, or children’s hospital ads that exploit sad-eyed kids with visible illness or disability.

Having a disability does not automatically make you a kind/angelic/noble person. This many not seem harmful, and may even seem positive, but in reality, it is condescending, inaccurate, and sets bizarre standards for how disabled people should behave.

This portrayal is often intended to elicit pity from abled audiences, which is also problematic.

In these portrayals, disability is not something to be proud of or identify with, only something to be suffered through.

Disabled character person does something relatively mundane and we all need to celebrate that. This is less common in writing, but happens in the real world when people do things like post pictures of disabled people at the gym captioned “What’s your excuse?”

This is condescending, and implies that anything disabled people are capable of, abled people are automatically capable of.

Makes it seem like it’s an incredible feat for a disabled person to accomplish tasks.

Uses people’s actual lives and actual disabilities as a reminder of “how good abled life is.”

The “Supercrip” stereotype is a specific kind of inspiration porn in which disabled people are shown to be capable of amazing things, “in spite of” their disability.

The Paralympics have been criticized for this, with people saying that advertisements and understandings of the Paralympics frame the athletes as inspiring not because they are talented or accomplished, but because their talents and accomplishments are seen as “so unlikely.”

Other examples include the way we discuss famous figures like Stephen Hawking, Alan Turing, or even Beethoven. Movies like The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game frame the subjects’ diagnoses, whether actual or posited, as limitations that they had to miraculously break through in order to accomplish what they did. Discussions of Beethoven’s deafness focus on how incredible it was that he was able to overcome it and be a musician despite what is framed as a tragic acquisition of deafness.

The pity/heroism trap is a concise way of defining inspiration porn. If the media you’re creating or consuming inspires these emotions, and only these emotions, around disability, that is a representation that is centered on the feelings and perceptions of abled people. It’s reductive, it’s ableist, and it’s massively overdone.

Disabled Villains

To be clear, disabled people can and should be villains in fiction. The problem comes when disabled people are either objects of pity/saintly heroes, or villains, and there is no complexity to those representations. When there is so little disabled rep out there (less than 3.5% of characters in current media), having a disabled villain contributes to the othering of disability, as well as the idea that disability can make someone evil. There are also a few circumstances in which particular disabilities are used to represent evil, and I’ll talk about how that’s problematic. 

Mentally ill villains are colossally overdone, particularly given that mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators of it.  This is true of all mental illness, including “””scary””” things like personality disorders or disorders on the schizoaffective spectrum. Mental illness is stigmatized enough without media framing mentally ill people as inherently bad or more suspectible to evil. This prejudice is known as sanism.

Explicit fictional examples of this include the Joker, or Kevin Wendell Crumb in Split.

People can also be coded as mentally ill without it being explicitly stated, and that’s also problematic and sanist. In the Marvel movie Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda’s appearance and behavior are coded as mentally ill. This is used to make her “creepy.” Horror movies do this a lot - mental illness does not render someone creepy, and should not be used as a tool in this way.

Visible disability or difference to indicate evil is another common, incredibly offensive, and way overdone trope. This is mostly commonly done through facial difference, and the examples are endless. These portrayals equate disability or disfigurement with ugliness, and that ugliness with evil. It renders the disabled villain in question an outcast, undesirable, and uses their disability or difference to dehumanize these characters and separate them from others. This is incredibly prevalent and incredibly painful for people with visible disability or facial difference.

An example of visible disability indicating evil is Darth Vader’s prosthetics and vastly changed physical appearance that happen exactly in time with his switch to the dark side. In contrast, when Luke needs a prosthetic, it is lifelike and does not visually separate him from the rest of humanity/the light.

Dr. Who’s John Lumic is another example of the “Evil Cripple” trope.

Examples of facial difference indicating evil range from just about every James Bond movie, to Scar in the Lion King, Dr. Isabel Maru in Wonder Woman, Taskmaster in Black Widow, Captain Hook in Peter Pan, and even Doofenschmirtz-2 in Phineas and Ferb the Movie. Just because some of the portrayals are silly (looking at you, Phineas and Ferb) doesn’t make the coding of facially scarred villains any less hurtful.  

A slightly different, but related phenomenon I’ll include here is the idea of the disability con. This is when a character fakes a disability for personal gain. This represents disabled people as potential fakers, and advances the idea that disabled people get special privileges that abled people can and should co-opt for their own reasons. 

In The Usual Suspects, criminal mastermind Verbal Clint fakes disability to avoid suspicion and take advantage of others. In Arrested Development, a lawyer fakes blindness in order to gain the sympathy and pity of the jury.

In much more complex examples such as Sharp Objects, a mother with Munchausen by proxy fakes her daughter’s illness in order to receive attention and pity. Portrayals like this make Munchausen or MBP seem more common than it is, and introduce the idea that parents may be lying or coaching their children to lie about necessary medical treatment.

Disability as Morality

Sometimes, the disabled character themselves is a moral lesson, like Auggie in Wonder. Sheerly through existing, Auggie “teaches” his classmates about kindness, the evils of bullying, and not judging a book by its cover. This also fits well under inspiration porn. This is problematic, because the disabled character is defined in terms of how they advance the other characters’ morality and depth.

In the “Disabled for a Day” trope, an otherwise abled character experiences a temporary disability, learns a moral lesson, and is restored to full ability by the end of the episode/book/movie. Once again, disability is used as a plot device, rather than a complex experience, along with more permanent disability being rejected as impossible for heroes or main characters.

Examples include an episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye is temporarily blinded, an episode of Law and Order: SVU where Elliott Stabler is temporarily blinded, and an episode of Criminal Minds where Agent Hotchner experiences temporary hearing loss.

Real life examples include sensitivity trainings where participants are asked to wear a blindfold, headphones, or use a wheelchair for a given amount of time. This does not impart the lived experience of disability. It should not be used as a teaching tool. 

Disabled people as inherently pure. This is related to inspiration porn and disabled people as noble, but is different in that it is usually appears in combination with developmental, cognitive, or intellectual disabilities. These characters are framed as sweet, “simple,” and a reminder to other characters to be cheerful, happy, or grateful.

Examples include Forrest Gump, Rain Man, I Am Sam, and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

No matter what the stereotypes of a given diagnosis are (yes, I’m thinking of the automatic cheerfulness associated with Down Syndrome), disabled people have personalities. They are capable of being sad, angry, sarcastic, irritable, annoying - any number of things beyond good/sweet/pure. It is reductive to act otherwise.

Disability as Surreal

Less common than some of the others, but still worth thinking about!

Disabled characters are framed as mystical, magical, or other than human, a condition that is either created by or indicated through their disability status. This is especially common with little people.

“Disability superpower” is when a character compensates for, or is uniquely able to have a superpower because of, their disability. Common tropes include the Blind Seer, Blind Weapon Master, Genius Cripple and Super Wheel Chair.

Examples include Pam from Supernatural, Charles Xavier from X-Men, or the grandpa in Spy Kids.

Disability as Undesirable

Last and least favorite category here. Let’s go.

Disabled people as asexual or not sexually desirable. Disabled people can be asexual, obviously. When every portrayal is asexual, that’s a big problem. It frames disabled people as sexually undesirable or implies that it is impossible for people with disabilities to have rewarding, mutually satisfying sexual relationships.

Examples include The Fault in Our Stars or Artie in Glee.

Abandoned due to disability. Hate this trope. Often equates disability with weakness. Don’t want to talk about it. It’s all right there in the title. Don’t do it.

Examples: Quasimodo in Hunchback of Notre Dame, several kittens in the Warrior Cat series, several episodes of Law and Order: SVU, Bojack Horseman, and Vikings.

Discussed in 300 and Wolf of Wall Street.

Ancient cultures and animal nature are often cited as reasoning for this trope/practice. This is not founded in fact. Many ancient civilizations, including Sparta, cared for disabled people. Many animals care for disabled young. These examples should not be used to justify modern human society.

Disabled characters are ostracized for disability. Whether they act “““normal”““ or odd, characters with visible or merely detectable disabilities are treated differently.

Examples include pretty much every piece of media I’ve said so far. This is particularly prevalent for people with visible physical disabilities or neurodivergence. Also particularly prevalent for characters with albinism.

This is not necessarily an inaccurate portrayal - disabled people face a lot of discrimination and ableism. It is, however, very, very common.

Bury your disabled. What it says on the label.

Examples: Animorphs, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, American Horror Story, Criminal Minds, Dr. Who, Star Trek, The Wire.

Mercy killing is a subtrope of the above but disgusting enough that it deserves its own aside. I may make a separate post about this at some point because this post is kind of exhausting and depressing me.

Examples: Me Before You, Killing Eve, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Of Mice and Men, and Million Dollar Baby.

Disability-negating superpowers imply that disability is undesirable by solving it supernaturally instead of actually portraying it, and giving their character powers instead.

Examples include (arguably) Toph from Avatar: the Last Airbender, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Legend of Korra, Dr. Strange, and Daredevil.

Overcoming disability portrays disability as a hindrance and something that can be defeated through technology and/or willpower.

Fictional examples include WALL-E, Kill Bill, The Goonies, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Heidi, The Secret Garden, The Inheritance Cycle, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, The Big Bang Theory, Dr. Strangelove, Sherlock, The Witcher.

Real life examples include videos of wheelchair users standing from their chair to walk down the aisle at a wedding, or d/Deaf children “hearing” for the first time through cochlear implants.

What Does This Mean for Your Writing?

First of all, congratulations for making it this far!

Now, as I have said again and again, I’m not going to tell you what to write. I’ll ask some questions to hopefully help guide your process.

What tropes might you be playing into when writing disabled characters? Why do you find these tropes compelling, or worth writing about? How prevalent are these tropes? How harmful are they? What messages do they send to actual disabled people?

Just because they are common tropes does not mean they are universally awful. Cool fantasy or futuristic workarounds are not necessarily bad rep. Showing the ugly realities of ableism is not necessarily bad rep. It’s just a very, very common representation of disability, and it’s worth thinking about why it’s so common, and why you’re writing it.

As always, conduct your own research, know your own characters and story, and make your own decisions. If you have questions, concerns, or comments, please hit me up! Add your own information! This is not monolithic whatsoever.

Happy writing!

Disability Writing Guides

Collecting all of these in one convenient place! If you have any requests, questions, comments, and especially concerns about what/how I’m writing these, please let me know!

Writing Chronic Pain

Writing Deaf Characters

Writing Disability and the Idea of Cure

Writing Wheelchair Users

General Disability Etiquette for Writers

Overused Disability Tropes

Writing Blind/Low Vision Characters

Writing Facial Difference

Writing Seizures

Writing Visible vs. Invisible Disabilities

Writing Disability and Eugenics

Asks!