Paul’s spinal cord was damaged in a car accident, so now he uses a wheelchair for mobility. Timothy has intermittent muscle spasms and weakness after the magical attack that nearly killed him. Alison’s acute synesthesia leads to panic attacks when her senses are overloaded. Eulalie spends hours in the washroom with irritable bowel syndrome. And Ivy was born without wings, a congenital amputee.
Did you know that July 14th is International Disability Awareness Day? In fact, the whole month of July is about raising awareness of the needs, concerns, and experiences of people with disabilities. Since disability is one of the themes that comes up frequently in my books, this seems like a great opportunity to talk about reasons to include disabled characters in fiction, some stereotypes and clichés to avoid, and ways to portray people with disabilities more accurately and thoughtfully in our writing.
Why should I include disabled people in my stories?
Traumatic injuries, congenital disorders and chronic illnesses are facts of the world we live in, and millions of people deal with those issues every day. If we want our stories to feel real and well-rounded, it’s important to include disability along with other kinds of diversity, and not just make all our characters able-bodied and healthy by default. Even if we’re writing about a technologically or magically advanced world that has eliminated illness and injury, that’s a choice that readers with disabilities will notice—and find disappointing, or even painful, to read.
Why? Because historically speaking, people with disabilities have not been well represented in fiction. If they aren’t languishing in bed, shut up in the attic, or otherwise left behind while able-bodied characters get all the attention, they’re often treated as objects of pity, disgust, or even mockery. So leaving disabled characters out of our stories doesn’t solve that problem. We need to write better, more thoughtful stories, ones that acknowledge and include them.
What stereotypes should I avoid?
Have you ever noticed how many villains are described as physically deformed or injured, with bodies that supposedly reflect their twisted souls? Captain Hook’s prosthetic is a deadly weapon; the Phantom’s mask hides scars we’re meant to see as horrific; and every other bad guy in comics and TV cartoons has an eyepatch or a claw hand. Even gentler stories like L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon series include characters like Dean “Jarback” Priest, whose hunched posture foreshadows a selfish, grasping spirit. And there are many more books for children and teens, including recent ones, that perpetuate the idea that people with disabilities are monstrous, sinister, or untrustworthy.
But there are supposedly “positive” portrayals that are just as harmful, like the saintly sufferer who lives to inspire the able-bodied people around them. Think of Tiny Tim in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, for instance. He’s not a real boy with a personality, he’s a sweet little angel on crutches who exists solely to move Ebenezer Scrooge to pity. If you’re including a character with a disability just so your non-disabled hero or heroine can become a better person by caring for them, you’re not treating them as a real character, you’re using them as a prop.
Another problem with disabled characters in fiction is that their stories often end in one of two ways: they receive a magical (or medical) cure for their disability, which makes it seem like other disabled people just aren’t good enough to deserve healing, or they die in some noble, bittersweet way to create melodrama. Sometimes they even kill themselves to make the MC’s life easier (as in the movies Gattaca and Me Before You), and it’s portrayed as a noble sacrifice instead of a tragedy. Either way, the author’s message is clear—being disabled means never being able to lead a full or happy life, and if you can’t get rid of your disability then you’re better off dead.
So if you’re thinking of rewarding your heroine with a magic spell to replace the arm she lost to the dragon, or having the hero’s chronically ill mother commit suicide so he can go to college, please don’t. Try thinking of creative ways that those characters can adapt to their disability and make a better life for themselves and their loved ones instead. Yes, there are significant legal, medical and practical challenges that disabled people face, and it can make their lives difficult. That’s why it’s all the more important not to sweep those issues under the carpet by eliminating them from our stories.
How can I write realistic disabled characters?
Keep in mind that people with disabilities are people first and foremost, and that they’re just as complicated, flawed and talented as any other human beings. They have desires and dreams, feelings and frustrations like everyone else. Don’t get so distracted by the devices they use for mobility, or the techniques they use to cope, that you fail to give them the same depth as your other characters. And don’t be quick to assume that they’re fragile or helpless, either. If you’ve never watched wheelchair rugby or other Paralympic sports, check out some videos on YouTube—those athletes are tough!
Research is key. Find out as much as you can about the specific disability your character is dealing with, and read books and articles by real people with that disability. What coping strategies do they use? What frustrates them about the way their disability is perceived and treated by others? What language do they use when talking about it? What do they dislike about media portrayals and news articles about their condition? If you can, find a reader or fellow writer who has experience of disability to read your story and suggest ways to make it more accurate. I learned a lot about how to portray my paraplegic character in Knife by talking to a couple of fellow writers with spinal cord injuries, for instance. Because I’d read and commented on their work they were happy to do the same for mine, but if you don’t have that kind of relationship you should be prepared to pay your reader or negotiate some other return for their work instead.
That being said, there’s no guarantee of getting every detail right, and not everyone with experience of disability may feel you’ve written about it perfectly. But if you take the time to listen, learn, and think carefully about what you’re saying, that thoughtfulness should come through in your story. At the very least, it will keep you from spreading misinformation or harmful stereotypes.
Ultimately, though, the very best portrayals of disability come from first-hand experience. If you’re an author who lives with a disability, but until now you’ve shied away from putting that aspect of your life into your stories, please reconsider! The world needs more good books featuring disabled people in every genre, not just contemporary fiction. Let’s have more romances, mysteries, and epic fantasies that highlight people with disabilities, and that will help readers respect and identify with them instead of pitying or fearing them.
Thanks for this post! It was super helpful.
I love Paul in Knife. I think he was one of the first characters I read who had a disability.
I really want to write a fantasy novel where the protagonist is chronically ill. In fantasy, it’s expected that the protagonist is super athletic and healthy all the time. But what if you struggle just to stand up without fainting and you have to defeat a powerful wizard? I think we need more stories like that.
I would definitely read that book, Rachel! 🙂
Thank you, Rachel — I’m happy to hear you enjoyed KNIFE! And I think chronic illness is a great thing to include in a story. There are many people with less visible disabilities like M.E., Crohn’s Disease, and other conditions that affect their lives every day, but people who haven’t experienced that kind of illness often don’t realize how difficult it can be.
Thank you for writing this post, R. J.! It gave me some new ideas to think about.
Thank you, Adi! I’m glad to hear it!
My favorite book about someone with a disability is the autobiography Joni.
I read JONI and saw the movie at an early age and it left a huge impression on me! I think that’s one of the reasons why I felt so strongly about including a major paraplegic character in my first novel (the other one being Madeleine L’Engle’s book A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET).
Ooh this is great! I personally have a disability, but I don’t think about it all the time. I know some people struggle a lot more than I do, but I think we could write characters who don’t really see themselves as disabled or “different”, ya know? I think this is easier for a person when you’ve had a disability from birth, since you’ve never known anything else.
I haven’t read too many books with disabled characters, but I do like the dyslexia and ADHD rep in Percy Jackson!
Oh, and Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry has a great MC with a disability!
I love Gathering Blue, Bethany! And the Percy Jackson portrayal of dyslexia and ADHD are really good.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experience, Bethany! I think well-meaning authors who write disabled characters can easily make the mistake of thinking they should be consciously thinking about their disability — when as you point out, it’s quite possible they’ve lived with it long enough that it hardly comes to mind. It certainly doesn’t need to be the whole focus of their story!
This is amazing! So helpful and definitely agree on giving people with disabilities actual characters to look up to.
Thank you so much, Acacia!
Thanks for this post R.J.! So far, I don’t think I’ve had any characters with disabilities in my stories so far, but you’re totally right. People with disabilities deserve better representation. I’ve read a few moving and thought provoking stories centered around the main characters’ disability and their journey towards success despite it (the first two that come to me are “Out of My Mind” and “The Running Dream”), but you make a great point about the need for disabled characters in other genres. It’s definitely something I’ll keep in mind for my reading and writing selections going forward.
I’m glad to hear it, Em! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I actually didn’t ever even think of including a character with a disability until yesterday, when I read a blog post about disabled characters in fiction being underrepresented, which just goes to show how much we need awareness posts and days like this. I’m now considering including a character with chronic pain in my fantasy WIP– thanks for bringing more awareness about this!
Chronic pain is definitely underrepresented in fiction! And that reminds me of a blog post I’d meant to link to in comments, which goes into the subject of disability representation in even more detail and brings up some additional points worth thinking about. For those interested, you can read it here: https://paperfury.com/5-things-i-want-more-disabled-ya-books/
And yet another great post on representation of people with disabilities! Thanks for linking it 🙂
I love this post, Rebecca! I just finished a YA write-for-hire in which the main character’s little brother has autism. I did quite a bit of research and feel pretty good about how it turned out. Part of his storyline was showing his parents that he was far more independent and capable than they were giving him credit for.
Also, one of my favorite books, which was written for adults but always felt like a YA novel, is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, which tells a story from the deep POV of a boy with autism as he tries to solve the murder of his neighbor’s dog.
I read and enjoyed that book myself a few years ago! But not having personal experience with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, I didn’t realize that a lot of people in the autism community have concerns and criticisms about the book’s accuracy — and that the author has admitted to not doing any research into autism before he wrote his story. There’s an interesting (and I think quite fair and gracious) article about it here: https://researchautism.org/book-review-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/
Interesting, Rebecca. I hadn’t heard that. I remembered finishing the book and reading the author’s bio, then being disappointed that he didn’t have Asperger’s. Right then it made me wonder how he’d come by the information to create Christopher’s character. I thought his bio had said he’d worked as a teacher, but it was so long ago that I read it… Thanks for the link!
As an autistic person myself, I have mixed feelings over this book. On one hand, I felt that some symptoms of autism were kind of portrayed in the book. (I also really loved the quirky voice of the narrator, Christopher, and the fact that all the chapters were named after prime numbers, but that’s just me.)
However, there are some harmful stereotypes in the book, such as “the detective” stereotype. Many commercial fiction features autistic detectives, and the fact the book’s title was inspired by a Sherlock Holmes story DID NOT help. (Okay, to be fair, I personally love mysteries a lot, but still.) Plus, I could not really sympathize with a white boy from England who went to a special school, especially when the majority of autistic kids in my Asian country go to mainstream schools. Here’s an article by a parent of an autistic kid who felt Mark Haddon should have much more responsibility to educate others on Asperger’s. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/curious-incident-dog-night-time_b_1099692
Lastly, I would like to say that autism isn’t just defined by Asperger’s. There are many different autistic people with different forms of autism and different levels of “intelligence”, whether they have mental disabilities, high intelligence or average intelligence. 31% of children with ASD have an intellectual disability (intelligence quotient [IQ] 85). Now medically doctors don’t use Asperger’s but just one umbrella term for these conditions: autism. You can find out more here:https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-statistics
Thanks so much for your perspective on the book, Lucinda, and the links to learn more. Yes, it was Christopher’s voice I so loved in the book (the prime numbers and his math equations! <3), and the fact that I felt like I was reading from the perspective of a character with autism. I'm sad that it wasn't entirely authentic, yet I appreciate that this author tried to meet a need that has been for too long neglected. Like Rebecca said, it's important for authors to do thorough research, and too often authors rely only on research and neglect to also get the perspective of sympathy readers. (A mistake I've made too.) Have you ever read Randy Ingermanson's Double Vison? I always wondered how accurately he portrayed his main character Dillion (who is a genius with Asperger’s syndrome).
I can’t say I’ve ever seen disabled characters represented poorly in fiction. Some of my favorites are Jayfeather, the blind cat in the third and fourth Warriors series, and Marcus, who suffers from a half-lame leg in The Eagle of the Ninth. Both of them are even cooler for their disabilities, which serve the plot in interesting ways. Disfigured villains, I think, are not villainous because they’re disfigured and shouldn’t be construed as such–I’ve never found that Captain Hook or other such characters give me a bad view of disabled people.
Personally I feel no compulsion to add disabled characters to my stories just for the sake of representing disabled people, but it’s worth considering how disabilities could further the plot and/or character arcs.
Hi, Colin — it’s not that the disability is being presented as the *cause* of certain characters’ villainy — I agree, in many cases it’s not. But their disability is presented as a monstrous trait that makes their villainy all the more fearsome.
So the message being sent isn’t necessarily “All disabled people are bad and evil,” but it’s definitely “Disabled people are broken and creepy to look at.” When the protagonist and his friends are able-bodied and the only disabled characters are villains, it’s particularly evident that the author associates disability with ugliness and unpleasantness and ability with goodness and beauty.
I absolutely believe in portraying disabilities in fiction, but just like any kind of diversity, I don’t believe in throwing it in just to check a box. It gives you that much more responsibility, and if you’re not going to devote yourself to portraying it properly, better not to than to do it wrong. I’ve seen books portray things I’m passionate about completely wrong, and I would’ve been more than happy for the authors to just leave that aspect out. It’s more hurtful to portray it wrong than to not portray it at all.
I write characters with disabilities—although that’s not how I think of them, they’re just my babies; even if their physical or mental struggles are a huge part of their character arc, I wouldn’t say they’re my “disabled characters”—and yeah, it scares me to death sometimes to write them. I want to do them justice. I don’t want to mess up their stories. And I am going to do my level best to tell their stories as they deserve to be told.
Hi, Kassie, I quite agree that nobody should sit down with a checklist and say “Do I have a disabled character in this book? No? Guess I had better put one in then!” 🙂 But if authors don’t have a disability themselves, it’s easy either forget that possible option or include it thoughtlessly when we’re creating characters and telling their stories.
I don’t think there’s any value in scolding or shaming people into writing disabled protagonists or major characters against their will. But I’d certainly like to encourage and help authors who are already interested in doing so, or would be interested if the idea was ever suggested to them.
Thank you so much for this inspiring post! As a person with special needs myself (autism), I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this timely post on disabled characters in fiction, and the need to include more of such characters who are dynamic and well-rounded. As a young Asian writer, I have encountered very few books about disabled kids in children’s and young adult fiction, and almost none for Asians, or basically non-white kids. But I am doing as much as I can about including people like me in the stories I like, and I always keep researching about disabilities and finding out how others live their lives. If you want to write a book with an autistic person (we are super fun), I suggest you read books like The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time and The London Eye Mystery. Reading the memoirs of disabled people with special needs are also an insightful way to find out about their lives. Now I’m writing a book with multiple disabled characters, and I hope more teen writers will be inspired to write about them too.
So excited that you’re writing such diversity and truth into your stories, Lucinda. You will be an inspiration to many, I’m sure. I’m adding The London Eye Mystery to my TBR right now. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thanks for commenting, Lucinda! I’m so happy to hear from you and wish you all the best with your manuscripts! I’d love to read see a book featuring an Asian character with a disability. I’ve heard good things about The London Eye Mystery too, so thanks for that recommendation!
Anne Ursu’s MG book The Real Boy and Francesco X. Stork’s YA novel Marcelo in the Real World are favourite books of mine that feature protagonists on the autism spectrum.
Thank you so much for this post Rebecca! As I was reading it, I instantly starting thinking of all the inspiring stories I could write about characters with disabilities… I’m excited to explore my ideas more!
That’s great to hear, Isabella! Cheering you on!
I needed to read this post! I have several characters with disabilities, and one of my biggest fears is misrepresentation. Plus, it’s been a real experience learning to write in the POV of a blind main character! I enjoy reading characters who struggle with disabilities but still have uniquely individual traits. There aren’t enough of those in fiction!
I’m glad it was helpful to you, Merie! I think that if you’re worried about getting it wrong, that’s a good sign — it means you’re not going to write your disabled characters thoughtlessly or without doing the research, which is where many authors in the past have gone wrong. I wish you the best with your story!