Characters with Disabilites

I'm a big believer that writers should push boundaries. Both personal and professional, in their writing and in their life.

One of the boundaries I saw in my own work was a lack of diversity. We tend to gravitate towards what we're comfortable with. I'm of European/Jewish heritage, so I tend to write characters of similar background to my own. I wear glasses, I have characters who wear glasses.

I try not to push specific traits onto characters, I want things to come naturally. I'm a character driven writer, so I want to make sure everything comes out smooth and doesn't feel forced.

So when I realized I was writing my very first deaf character, I wanted it to be right. Writing him from first person POV is a challenge, but a good one. You get the opportunity to explore other avenues, and it pushes you to write in different ways. He can't react to things the way someone who isn't hearing impaired would react. Initially I wrote from third person, but it felt too impersonal.

In the very beginning of the book his circumstances are such that he doesn't know sign language, his hearing impairment being caused by trauma.

After writing a character like that, I wondered if it would be possible for me to write a visually impaired character. I got my opportunity when a character I was developing turned out to be blind. That is a challenge to write, and one I'm still struggling with.

I find that it's important to incorporate main characters with disabilities. In both cases, the character in question is the protagonist of the story. From my own school days, I can only recall one instance of a blind character being the protagonist of a YA book. I'm not saying there aren't more, but in school we only read the one, and I've not stumbled across another one since.

As writers we have the opportunity to present heroes of a different sort. If we present heroes who overcome not only their villain, but their own physical limitations, we get to show kids that no matter what, they can do what they set out to do. That's one of the things I love about writing YA fiction.

No matter how challenging it is to get it right, no writer should ever steer away from a character with a disability. What sorts of limitations have you discovered in your own characters? How did you deal with it?

Cheers,

Missouri