Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy - Posts Tagged "asperger-s-syndrome"

How would a person feel if she revealed her most secret self, her strangest quirks, in print for all to see? Some writers will not go there, fearing that someone will see their most secret self through the fiction. I have personally found that to be the case--the first novel nearly everyone writes is the one I wrote--the semi-autobiographical coming of age novel using a first person point of view. That is difficult to successfully pull off, and I was aware of that while writing. I have a "quirk" that is part of my ordinarily secret self, and I allowed the main character, Jeffrey Conley, to reveal that quirk in both my novels (End of Summer and Unpardonable Sin).

Since a psychologist has diagnosed me with Asperger's Syndrome, it is not surprising that I have obsessive interests. One of those interests is the human (biological) heart. Someone might yawn and ask, "Is that all? That doesn't make your character stand out." So I "took the plunge" and revealed that Jeffrey is sexually aroused by the sound of a woman's heartbeat. Including my quirk as part of Jeffrey makes an unusual character and one I could develop in unique ways. In my second novel, I make greater use of Jeffrey's heartbeat interest as well as adding more fictional elements, and Jeffrey comes to life more as a character independent, though closely related, to me. Jeffrey's fetish/fascination with the heart grows and colors his other actions, especially his reactions to women--and their reaction to him when he reveals his quirk. There is no judgement, just an imaginative showing of how Jeffrey's life might be in the particular world created for him in my imagination.

Authors should not be afraid to reveal their secret side through a character. That will both add depth and edginess to the character as well as give the author a grounding in the one who knows the character's quirk firsthand--the author himself.

The main character in both my novels, Jeffrey Conley, is based to some extent on me and my own experiences as someone with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD)--what used to be called "Asperger's Syndrome." It is clear, especially in the horror novel, that this is a fictionalized view of Jeffrey, but even when Jeffrey experiences the extraordinary, he experiences it from the standpoint of a child with HFASD. Thus, he has obsessive interests (in the physical heart and with death and the afterlife), is socially awkward, does not fit in well with "normal" people, has above-average intelligence, finds it difficult to understand other people's feelings, and lives inside his head. As a writer, the most difficult thing to communicate to people without ASD is that persons really exist who are like Jeffrey in their behavior and emotional makeup. Sometimes I get comments from people saying, "I found Jeffrey unrealistic--people just don't act that way." They respond in that manner even though I make it clear in the frame story surrounding the main plot that Jeffrey has HFASD, and I show how he does through the story. To say that this is frustrating puts it mildly. Of course every writer puts part of the self into writing, and I put my own quirks and ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving into Jeffrey. Even when Jeffrey does some bad things that I never did in my own life, he does these in a way that fits his HFASD, especially his naivete concerning other people and his inability to read people well.

A book I would recommend to writers and to anyone interested in ASD is Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The main character in Haddon's novel has more severe ASD than I, but his character rings true to life, and any person on the autism spectrum will see part of him or herself in that character. The purpose of my own work is to tell a good story--in End of Summer, a good Southern fiction coming-of-age story, and in Unpardonable Sin, a scary horror story. Even though my purpose in writing is not to give a lesson on ASD, I hope that readers will learn something in the novels about how it is to grow up as a child with HSASD.