In school I recently started to learn how to write fiction. I am disappointed by the lack of autistic characters in my books, disabled too.
Why is that? Are we so useless that they can not construct a plot around us? The world is full of imperfect people. Why do our imperfections create more of a challenge to portray for writers? I want to see AS as protagonists in writing, to allow the NT world to explore our reality through a book, not as villains but as victors. Let us come together proudly on paper as well as the internet. Too many speak of writing stories of AS who snap. I want to read about those who persevere and succeed despite and even because of AS...our strengths realized. To believe it is to become it. Just my opinion.
hrick
I think it's hard for an NT to write something in an autie's perspective because they can't see what it's like to be like them, especially a non-verbal autie.
Like...if I were to write a book I probably wouldn't make the main character be a(random examples) schizophrenic or a homosexual because I have no first hand knowlege of these things. And If i were to write about these things, some people would be insulted because of my lack of knowlege about these certain types of people.
Not specifically complex fiction like spy novels or the like but... Aimed at school children and parents.
Ben & His Helmet
I haven't read any of them myself, but comments seem positive.
There's also an excellent scifi YA book called Putting Up Roots (I think) with a nonverbal autie named Dawn as one of the main characters. She's a savant who draws scenes perfectly from her memory.
There are a ton of autistic characters in books, they're just (if actually identified as autistic) rarely very realistically written.
There are fiction books in the world with characters that have Autistic traits. No one I know about has just wrote right out "so and so is a (whatever catagory)" because it's pointless to do so unless the story is based on what they are. Readers are usualy supposed to figure out the character's traits and their intentions. Otherwise, it spoils some of the plot.
I always wondered about the kids in the Wrinkle in Time series.
(And for that matter Mrs. Who, who was one of the first book people I identified with because she spoke entirely by quoting people. And semi-ironically I used to describe echolalia, before I knew the word echolalia, by quoting Madeleine L'Engle's descriptions of Mrs. Who.)
I'm wanting to write something soon. (Some kind of sci-fi or fantasy scenario which I'm still working on.) But I don't want to write it too soon or it will be crap -- and then everyone on sites like this would say, "did you read that new book with those autistic characters and wasn't it crap?" So I wanna try and write something that's not crap first.
Thank you. I will see if I can't get copies of some of these books for him. Mom
I think Kurt Vonnegut's brother and sister characthers in "Slapshot" are a symbol of AS or something like it. They are twins who share a brain's left and right hemispheres. It is satirical but they are the reluctant heros. I also think that Billy in "Slaughter House Five" has many AS traights. Maybe some of these writers that have written characther's that seem to have spectrum tendencies were if fact on the spectrum themselves and never dxs?
hrick, you are a good writer. Maybe you should write something.
Pick a deeply obscure TV show (or radio series, or series of movies), and have him be able to list every one in order with year of production and full cast and crew listings.
It's a skill I've certainly never found remotely useful. I'd be good value at a Marx Brothers convention, if such a thing existed...
I'm working on a novel that has some autistic characters. It's in early stages, though.