Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 240: Writing Characters with Disabilities

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 240: Writing Characters with Disabilities Fable & The Verbivore

This week on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re talking about writing characters with disabilities.

We open by unpacking the difference in the definition of sympathy vs. empathy. Mirriam Webster’s definition of empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”  It’s being able to step into someone else’s shoes — both mirroring their emotions (affective empathy) and taking their perspective (cognitive empathy). We feel that the best characters are written from a strong sense of both these kinds of empathy — whether you’re writing from someone else’s experience or your own.

For writing about our own experience, we suggest doing some of the following exercises:

  • Journaling about your current thoughts and feelings

  • Free writing about a range of your specific experiences. For instance: one where your disability dominated the memory, one where you really struggled, when where you had fun or could joke about it, one where it was a mundane day and you barely even remembered it was part of your life

  • Getting into your body and thinking about how it feels now, how it felt in the past, and imagine what it would be like if your circumstances were different. For instance: your last pair of glasses broke, you ran out of medication, or if the pain you’re feeling worsened.

  • Talking openly and honestly about your experience with a trusted friend and not filtering what wants to come out of your mouth however vulnerable

  • Connecting with others stories and voices and seeing how your experiences differ

For writing about someone else’s experience, we suggest doing some of the following exercises:

  • Review the ADA Guidelines about writing about people with disabilities

  • Reading an article written directly by someone with that lived experience

  • Look for dedicated websites that share articles and individual stories

  • Listen to an interview of someone sharing their personal experience

  • Ask if you can interview someone you know who has that experience and get their perspective

  • Explore and challenge your biases and assumptions

  • Explore and challenge the stereotypical view

  • Check to see if any members belonging to that community applauds a book/film/show as positive representation and lean in to understand why

  • Check to see if any members belonging to that community critiques a book/film/show as bad representation and lean in to understand why

For bad representation, we acknowledge the legacy of things like Shakepeare’s Rochard III, Bond villains, and even Disney characters like Hook and Scar that often equate having outward disability and/or injury to having evil intent within and that representation is still very much present in the market and we have a long way to go. 

But we note that wishing to avoid something doesn't give you something to strive to achieve. So, we talk about our desire to do the characters justice by treating them with love and care and trying to make them as authentic as we can. Noting that when you give yourself that goal, you can then take the steps you need to make them feel like fully fleshed out characters.

We also talk about some positive forms of representation where a disability is just one of many aspects of a character. Our examples come from Star Trek, comic book films and shows, the fantasy series The Hunger Games, and even the world of Bridgerton. Specifically, we mention:

  • Star Trek The Next Generation - Geordi La Forge (vision impairment)

  • Daredevil - Matt Murdock (vision impairment)

  • Hawkeye - Clint Barton (hearing impairment), Maya Lopez (hearing impairment)

  • Iron Man III - Tony Stark (PTSD)

  • The Hunger Games - Katniss (hearing impairment, PTSD) and Peeta (mobility impairment, PTSD)

  • The Eternals - Makkari (hearing impairment)

  • Bridgerton (Season 3) - Lady Stowell (hearing impairment), Lord Remmington (mobility impairment), Francesca Bridgerton (possibly autism spectrum coded), John Sterling (possibly autism spectrum coded)

  • Queen Charlotte - King George (possible mental disorder)

  • Finding Dory - Dory (short-term memory loss)

As we bring this episode to a conclusion, we hope that if you decide to include disabled characters in your work that you approach them with care and empathy and a desire to connect with the spectrum of those experiences. The world absolutely needs more positive representation in our stories and we are here for them and cheering you on!

We hope you enjoy this episode! As we announced last week, we’ll be going on a short hiatus from the podcast for the month of July, but will return with new episodes starting in August.

Until then, keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Though we don’t directly mention them by name, these previous episodes are connected with this series:

As part of this discussion, we use the CDC’s definition:

  • “A disability is any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).”

  • “There are many types of disabilities, such as those that affect a person’s: Vision, Movement, Thinking, Remembering, Learning, Communicating, Hearing, Mental health, and Social relationships.”

  • “Although ‘people with disabilities’ sometimes refers to a single population, this is actually a diverse group of people with a wide range of needs. Two people with the same type of disability can be affected in very different ways. Some disabilities may be hidden or not easy to see.”

Here are a few articles we consulted in preparation for this series:

In this series, the Verbivore talks about her experience with learning about dyspraxia and mentions that she’d never even heard the word until several years ago and that it’s a type of neurodivergence that’s not as well known. Here are some of the resources that she‘s found helpful in her journey:

If you’d like to learn more about neurodiversity, here are a few articles and videos to get you started:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)