You Can Write Characters with Physical Disabilities

By Dev Love Press

The information you need to write characters with physical disabilities effectively!

You’re writing a book and one of your characters has a physical disability. Maybe it’s crucial to the plot. Maybe you thought it would be nice to give your character a more unique and unusual back story. Maybe you just want a realistic book and in real life sometimes people have disabilities.

Even in a fiction book, you're going to want to get the details right. Is someone with a vision impairment really going to walk up to a stranger and start feeling his face? Can someone with Muscular Dystrophy feel their legs? How does someone without legs drive a car? How does a spinal cord injury really impact sexual function?

This book has the answers. It is divided up into sections for nine common physical disabilities you may want to give your characters. Each section includes...

*An overview of the disability
*An explanation of the causes of this disability
*The physical effects of the disability
*Adaptations and equipment a person with this disability might use
*Common misconceptions

The second part includes helpful essays about disability in fiction, including common cliches to avoid and playing with stereotypes.

The information in this book will guide you in creating a unique and compelling story where physical disability adds to the richness of the book you are creating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dev Love Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301211050

Dev Love Press

Dev Love Press was founded in June 2012 by award-winning romance novelist Ruth Madison in order to fill the void in the industry regarding the portrayal of individuals with physical disabilities. Her debut novel (W)hole (now in its second edition) was an award finalist in the romance category of the USA Book News’s National Best Books Awards in 2009.Dev Love Press is looking to fill a hole in the world of books. There are so few novels where characters who have real flaws and real struggles, such as physical disabilities, are able to achieve love. We at Dev Love Press think that needs to change!We’re building up a stable of books with love stories where the characters struggle physically against great odds to find love and acceptance with their perfect match.

Book preview

You Can Write

Characters

With

Physical Disabilities

Other Titles From Dev Love Press

The Boy Next Door

Harvard Hottie (FREE novel)

(W)hole

Breath(e)

Stewart’s Story (FREE short story)

Devoted

Paradox

Coming Soon

Love In Touch

Unlock My Heart

The Time Traveler’s Boyfriend

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 Dev Love Press, LLC.

Cover art by Carolyn Moir

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Visit our website at www.devlovepress.com

Table of Contents

Why Include Characters with Disabilities?

The Disability is Crucial to the Plot

The Disability Differentiates Your Character

Bringing Attention to a Disability

Just Because

Ensuring Your Story is Accurate

Notes on Specific Disabilities

Blindness

Deafness

Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Multiple Sclerosis

Cerebral Palsy

Muscular Dystrophy

Spina Bifida

Amputation (congenital and trauma)

Spinal Cord Injury

Misconceptions to Avoid

Disability Shouldn’t Be a Surface Metaphor

Disabled People Have Just As Much On Their Minds

Disability Isn’t a Great Conflict

Get the Sex Right

Diversity and Community

People with Disabilities are Biased Too

Not Everyone Has the Perfect Set Up

The Disability Isn’t the Story

Disabled Villains Should be Believable Villains

Check Your Privilege

Look Deeper

Playing with Stereotypes

Prompts for Playing with Stereotypes

Integration is Always Important

Clichés in Fiction

Conclusion

Resources

Why Include Characters with Disabilities?

As a writer, you know the importance of populating your world with a believable, diverse cast of characters. When all the people in your story look, walk, and talk like you, there's not much story going on. Your characters should have varied personalities, different weaknesses, and unique strengths. Sometimes, your character may need to have a disability. Here's a look at a few reasons to include disabled characters in your story.

The Disability is Crucial to the Plot

Consider the 1999 film At First Sight. Val Kilmer plays Virgil Adamson, a character who has been blind since he was three years old. The movie, which is on one level a simple romance, draws plot points from the activity surrounding a radical surgery that returns Virgil's sight. The story explores Virgil's ups and downs as he struggles to live in a world he can suddenly see, then struggles with that fact that his sight might not last forever.

In At First Sight, the inclusion of the main character's disability is crucial to the plot. There is no story without the main character's blindness. Other stories that depend on a character with disabilities to drive certain essential elements of plot include Rain Man, Emlyn Chand's recent "Farsighted" YA series, Cynthia Voigt's award-winning Izzy, Willy Nilly, the classic Flowers for Algernon, and Alison Winfree Pickrell's Unto the Least of These.

Plot involves a character changing through the course of events. In each of the above stories, the character's change is irrevocably tied to his or her condition. Without the loss of her leg, Izzy would just be another cheerleader—without her disability, there's no struggle to fit in, no challenge to do normal things, no friendship with Rosamunde. In short, there's no book.

The Disability Differentiates Your Character

Maybe your plot gets by without the disability, but you think it benefits your character. If you're writing a teen romance, then writing the leading young man in a wheelchair or writing the heroine with a shorter arm adds texture to the story and gives you a unique place to write from. It's important to make the disability organic to the story, though. You don't want the reader to be cognizant of the fact that you wrote a book and then transposed a disabled character onto the plot just to pull at the heartstrings.

Bringing Attention to a Disability

In some cases, the author has a very personal struggle with a disability. The desire to share her struggle and success is what drove Helen Keller to write her autobiography, for example. Others may have loved ones with a disability and want to bring education, information, and awareness to light in the form of fiction. Although there's nothing wrong with having a message behind your story—almost all authors have something of the sort—make sure the disability fits within the story and that there is, in fact, a story being told.

Just Because

The best reason of all is because some people have disabilities. It doesn’t have to be the center of the plot. It doesn’t have to even be part of the plot at all. Some people have disabilities and it doesn’t have to be the central focus of his or her life.

When you create a story that has a diverse cast of characters, you make your book more realistic and believable.

A person in real life doesn’t just have a disability in order to make a point. She just has it and then gets on with her life.

Telling a story that isn’t focused on disability where some characters happen to have disabilities makes for a richer and more realistic book.

Ensuring Your Story is Accurate

There's nothing that will set a scientist off faster than the misrepresentation of his field in literature. If you're a police officer reading a crime novel where the author hasn't done a lick of research, you may be offended or put off by the inaccurate portrayal of the police force. It's easy to alienate readers when you include inaccurate information or portrayals, even though your work is fiction.

When you include a disabled character in fiction, you could be helping to spread stereotypes and myths. Unless you're personally involved with a disability, you might not even realize that you're including inaccuracies; especially