Autism and deeper character development may not sound like they work together. In this blog, I’m going to break down how you can use the understanding of autism to deepen your understanding of your own characters.
1. Special Interests
We’ve all seen those representations of autism where the individual has a special interest in a topic, right? It might be trains, a TV show, a book, a world they love getting lost in. As a writer, this is the best place to start understanding your characters. When you know your story, you’ll understand what skills your character needs.
This is the perfect point to delve into how your character gained this knowledge. Maybe they love everything to do with archery or weapon training or learning code. There would be a reason behind what got them into their topic and it snowballed into making them really knowledgeable about that topic. Not only do you give your characters a skill, you give them an emotional pull towards it if it helped them bond with someone else.
2. Relationships and Communication
When thinking about how your characters connect to one another, using the autism lens brings a new layer to it. You may be someone who has a shorthand with a certain someone in your life. When you’re an autistic person, how you communicate with that person may be very similar. When you start character development, knowing how your characters communicate and connect may give you a new insight.
As an autistic person, when I communicate with those closest to me, I may not communicate in the ways you expect. I may not use words at all. It might be through gifts I know they’d like from listening to them express their love of something. It could even be little touches like resting my head on their shoulder. Knowing how your characters communicate with each other could even give you a layer of story to play with.
3. Memory
It may come across as a joke, but I often refer to myself as a “walking encyclopaedia of weird”. And this is oddly accurate. Whether I mean to or not, if I hear something interesting I’ll often remember it and be able to recall it. I’m also unable to sit through British Crime Dramas without recognising actors by their faces or faces and names. I just can’t sit there without blurting out what show/s I’ve seen them in, especially if they’ve been killed off or were a murderer in Midsomer Murders.
Understanding what kind of memory your characters have is really important in your development. If they need to remember something for later on, you need to make sure your character has the capacity. They don’t have to be autistic to remember. It’s all about making sure they’re able to go about picking up the clues they’re meant to.
4. Flawed
We all have flaws. As an autistic person, it may come across as something like our inability to cope with change. It could even be how much we limit our world down to certain fabrics or foods. Once we make that limitation, it’s very hard to break it.
When you’re heading into character development, finding that flaw of your characters can give you the drive moving forward. Maybe their flaw is they can’t see what’s in front of them. So, to get them to see it they have to go on a journey to learn how blind they’ve been. Finding what holds them back can add to the drama when they have to confront that flaw.
5. Danger
Not all autistic people can sense danger. They are more than likely to walk right into it without realising how close a call it was. When developing your characters, understanding how close they can get to danger is important. If they’re meant to help someone else mitigate the dangers, do they have a blind spot that puts the other person or themselves at risk?
Knowing what your characters can take and whether they can recognise a threat to their safety even if it dangles in front of their face is crucial. If nothing else, it adds to your drama if they can’t see the danger but your audience can. This is a peeking-through-the-fingers moment. Balance that and you’re more likely to keep your audience hooked.
Understanding what character development you need to do can be hard. Finding new ways to delve deeper into your characters can also be really helpful in adding depths to your work. So, I wish you the best of luck in delving deeper into your work.
Happy writing!