#AtoZChallenge Diverse Characters

This is Jim Bob. He wants to write a young adult novel with an Autistic protagonist while he, himself, is neurotypical. He starts by thinking of all of the Autistic characters he’s seen in media, but he’s only read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” and watched “The Big Bang Theory.” His only exposure to Autistic characters has been that of Christopher Boone and Sheldon Cooper, but he thinks that he’s got a good enough grasp of what Autism is.

Jim Bob creates a character named Harold, who is a (in Jim Bob’s words) “high-functioning” Autistic white cishet male super genius who is smart enough to qualify for Mensa but doesn’t have any friends because he is intellectually arrogant. Harold lacks empathy for other people and is obsessed with trains and solving mysteries.

Jim Bob sits down to write his novel and brainstorms on a situation that he can send his little insufferable genius through. He is filled with the burning desire to write about Harold’s journey to leave his hometown to ride a bunch of trains to find a cure for his Autism and gets into wacky shenanigans along the way. Jim Bob writes his magnum opus during NaNoWriMo without editing the first draft. He sends it into the query trenches without any real Autistic people reading his work beforehand.

Unbeknownst to Jim Bob, he was writing an extremely stereotypical and frankly offensive portrayal of an Autistic character because he didn’t do his research. Jim Bob missed a lot of steps in attempting to portray Harold in a way that would not harm others. For one, he did not do research on his own about what Autism is or the fact that there are many different types of Autistic people in the world besides Christopher Boones and Sheldon Coopers. He created a “curing” plotline, which actively harms Autistic people and would be especially touchy for a neurodivergent teen to read. He then didn’t bother to consult Autistic people about how he was portraying Harold and did not ask for feedback or do revisions. Don’t be Jim Bob.

Instead, do your due diligence. The consequences for portraying a marginalized character incorrectly have been on all of our minds, particularly in today’s online climate. Most people want to write marginalized characters, and they want to write them well. However, that cannot be done without, A. Doing proper research and B. Consulting real people who belong to that group. This could mean hiring a sensitivity reader, a person who belongs to the same marginalized group as the character(s) who can scan for stereotypes, microaggressions and offensive material. It could also mean consulting a friend or pairing up with a critique partner who falls under that category.

Do you have to be marginalized to write these types of characters? In my opinion, no. You just have to make sure that what you are writing is not going to actively harm others.

As a sensitivity reader, I appreciate all of my clients because they are taking a big step in hiring me. They have the self-awareness to know that they may not know everything about their character and are prepared to receive feedback that may communicate to them that they have unconscious biases toward marginalized people. That, I’m sure, can be terrifying.

But I will say until the day I die that making stereotypes and microaggressions in the first draft does not make you a bad person. As long as you read as much as you can about the group that you are portraying and communicate with members of that group to fix any offensive elements in the second draft, you are automatically caring more than most writers today.