Writing Excuses 9.46: Disability in Narrative

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Writing Excuses 9.46: Disability in Narrative

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/11/09/writing-excuses-9-46-disability-in-narrative/

Key Points: Write the nuances. Include the humor! Include variety, all the senses. Be aware of cliches, tropes, and media representations. And beware of toys on the sidewalk! Be careful about "resolving" disability, ala the MICE quotient. Handicaps are something you live with, flaws are something that must be overcome. To write about handicaps, talk to someone who is handicapped! Don't let the handicap define the character, make it a dimension of the character.
( Close your eyes and imagine... )

[Brandon] Mary, you had a writing prompt?
[Mary] Yes. This is tied into how to know, how to kind of navigate this. What I want you to do is I want you to go to TVtropes...
[Brandon] Oh. Mary.
[Mary] I want...
[Brandon] There goes a week.
[Mary] You to look up blind people. Read the tropes that are there. Then come up with a plot that doesn't hit any of them.
[Brandon] All right.
[Charlie] Find the blind actor. There was a blind actor for a while.
[Mary] Oh, yeah.
[Charlie] Yeah.
[Brandon] Charlie, thank you so much.
[Charlie] Thank you.
[Brandon] Thank you, Fantasy Con, for having us. This has been... Been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.