9 Tips for Writing Physically Disabled Characters in Fantasy
There are two things I would love to see more of in literature:
1. More Batman comic books. Because...Batman.
2. More fantasy books with physically disabled characters. Because...so many reasons. Let's talk about a few of them.
Fantasy is an amazing genre meant to inspire a sense of wonder and courage and hope. Fantasy is capable of being a reflection of our own world, but with unique and wonderful twists.
And, yet, often times it doesn't do these things. It is very rarely a reflection of our world. How can it be? After all, there are a lot of physically disabled people here on earth. But how many are there in the fantasy genre? Barely any. And that's a problem.
Sure, sometimes the physically disabled get represented in fiction that delves into what it looks like to be disabled. That's cool. But can we not be depicted in fantasy novels as well? Do you know how uplifting that would be? Think about it. There's a reason people loved Black Panther so much. After years and years of the African and African American community being featured in books and movies about black suffrage, they were finally represented in an action movie that showed them as heroes and people of power with a rich history and culture. They were finally treated as "regular" characters, not "diverse characters." And that's huge.
We can do the same when it comes to the physically disabled: Show them as humans first and disabilities second. It's not hard.
And, yet, there's something about physically disabled characters that seem to be taboo in the fantasy novel writing realm. Authors are skirting around the subject. Why? I can guess at a few reasons:
Authors find it restricting to write characters that are disabled. They're limited in what they can do: Physically disabled characters can't run, fight, or be badass. They'd probably just die immediately. Right?
Authors don't feel they have the right to write disabled characters. If you aren't physically disabled, you can't write a physically disabled character. I mean, sure. You can write characters that are of different genders, different races, different religions, but a different level of able-ness? *gasps* How is that possible?
Do you hear that? That's the sound of me groaning and rolling my eyes.
Let me help you help me stop rolling my eyes. Here are some tips you can use when writing physically disabled characters in fantasy:
1. Broaden your scope. Physical disability is something that prevents a person from normal body movement, function, or control. Do you know how many different types of disabilities fall into that category? Tons. Which is unfortunate, but guess what? That means you can be as creative as you'd like to be. There's MS, crippled, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, various spinal problems, various types of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and more. On top of that, you are free to make up your own types of physical disabilities.
2. Don't be afraid to make them your main character. Despite what you may think, having a disabled main character isn't impossible. It requires creativity which, surprise surprise, is necessary for any type of novel-writing. So maybe your character has a hard time walking. He can use his cane as a weapon...or perhaps he's can be an expert scholar or magician or equestrian or dragon-rider or griffin-rider or any-type-of-mythical-creature-rider. So maybe your character is in constant pain. Well, she probably has a high pain tolerance, making her a perfect, badass, scary warrior. Don't for one moment think that having a disabled character will limit your fantasy story. Because you know what? One thing your disabled character will certainly have is a unique outlook on life...and also a huge amount of determination. That's perfect material for an amazing character. Go for it.
3. Never lose sight of the disability. Disability shapes a person whether they want it to or not. It determines how they live their day to day life, either because they aren't physically capable of doing things "normally" or because the disability has so influenced their personality that they live differently (either for better or worse). So every time you write about this character, you need to ask yourself: How does their disability enter into the situation? You need to be able to look at things zoomed out: If they have chronic fatigue, how does that play into them being able to captain a ship across an ocean? You also need to see things zoomed in: If they have a crippled arm, would they be able to easily roll underneath a fence to escape a pursuer or would their arm get in the way? Always, always, always pause to think about how your character's disability enters into everything from plot to character development to dialogue to individual scenes.
4. Don't define your character by their disability. While you shouldn't ever lose sight of the disability, you shouldn't get lost in it, either. A helpful tip? Change the way you view your character: As a being (elf, dwarf, human, etc) first and a disability second. This will allow you to create a well-rounded character. Also, understand that their story doesn't need to revolve around their disability. In fact, it probably should not (harken back to my Black Panther commentary above). Give your character hopes, dreams, skills, personality traits, and background outside of their disability. Develop them as you would any other character.
5. Do your research. What, you thought writing fantasy means you don't have to research anything? Ha. That's funny.
Though your disabled character does live in a made-up world, you still have to research to make sure that you are accurately portraying the life of a disabled person. If you are basing their disability after a real one, you need to look into the real disability. Even if you've made up a disability, you'll want to pull symptoms from various illnesses/disabilities to add realness to your character. AND you'll absolutely need to talk with disabled people (either online or in person) to learn about the daily struggles their lives hold. As mentioned above, disability changes everything in a person's life. If you don't do your research, you'll overlook important facts and your character will fall flat.
6. Take world-building into account. Seriously. Skipping this step would be the equivalent of the 2015 Fantastic Four movie. Translation: It would be really, really bad. This is a fantasy novel, isn't it? World building is important, isn't it? Don't think for one moment that disability shouldn't in some way connect with multiple aspects of your world. A few examples:
Religion. In our world, often times physical disability was (and still is, in some areas) seen as a curse by a specific deity. This may be the same in your world. OR it may be the opposite. It depends. But put some thought into it. Magic. Can magic cause, fix, alleviate, or worsen a disability? Why or why not? Survival. Is your world a place where people with disabilities can easily survive? Are there specific jobs they can have? Or will they be cast aside, shunned, unable to obtain work or food? How disability friendly are various cities and races? Healing. Can your disabled character go somewhere for treatment? A healer? Shaman? Apothecary? Social status. Are the disabled frowned upon or looked up to? Why? Transportation. If a character can't walk, how do they get from place to place? A wheelchair? What is it made of and is it powered by magic? Can they travel by dragon? What about palanquin? A flying carpet? How expensive are each of these modes of transportation? Are some only accessible to the rich? Think long and hard about how disability ties into your world building. This will strengthen character, plot, and world.
7. Don't use the Magical Healing trope. The what? The "Yeah, my character was disabled, but there's a magical cure and he's all better now" trope. That's incredibly unhelpful. I'm not saying that you should never, ever do this, but....You probably shouldn't. What's the point? If you're going to do this, you may as well write an able-bodied character.
8. Don't kill them off. PLEASE. I know this is completely new, shocking information, but it is discouraging for disabled people to read fantasy novels where the disabled character dies just to provide development for another character.
9. Don't worry about not being physically disabled yourself. To answer the question that I know a lot of you are wondering: No, you don't need to be physically disabled to write a physically disabled character. I plan to write an entire post explaining why, but for now: Just write. Write the character you want to write. Bring a new, unique character into the fantasy genre. And don't let anybody tell you that you don't have the compassion, skill, or ability to write a character who is different from yourself.
Have tips you'd like to add? Please leave them below, along with any questions you may have. Also, if you know of any fantasy novels that have a well developed physically disabled main character (or, at the very least, a well-done secondary character), please let me know! I'm always looking for new books to read. Thanks!
Have writing, reading, or writer's life questions? Use the hashtag #ChatWithHannah below or on social media to have them answered on my Youtube channel!
Related articles:
7 Tips for Writing a Character with a Chronic Illness
4 Fundamental Errors in the Diverse Books Campaign (And How to Fix Them)
10 Points to Think About When World-Building
Enjoy this post? Take a look around. If you like what you see, please don't forget to subscribe by email for a new post every week!
Some links are Amazon affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
1. More Batman comic books. Because...Batman.
2. More fantasy books with physically disabled characters. Because...so many reasons. Let's talk about a few of them.
Fantasy is an amazing genre meant to inspire a sense of wonder and courage and hope. Fantasy is capable of being a reflection of our own world, but with unique and wonderful twists.
And, yet, often times it doesn't do these things. It is very rarely a reflection of our world. How can it be? After all, there are a lot of physically disabled people here on earth. But how many are there in the fantasy genre? Barely any. And that's a problem.
Sure, sometimes the physically disabled get represented in fiction that delves into what it looks like to be disabled. That's cool. But can we not be depicted in fantasy novels as well? Do you know how uplifting that would be? Think about it. There's a reason people loved Black Panther so much. After years and years of the African and African American community being featured in books and movies about black suffrage, they were finally represented in an action movie that showed them as heroes and people of power with a rich history and culture. They were finally treated as "regular" characters, not "diverse characters." And that's huge.We can do the same when it comes to the physically disabled: Show them as humans first and disabilities second. It's not hard.
And, yet, there's something about physically disabled characters that seem to be taboo in the fantasy novel writing realm. Authors are skirting around the subject. Why? I can guess at a few reasons:
Authors find it restricting to write characters that are disabled. They're limited in what they can do: Physically disabled characters can't run, fight, or be badass. They'd probably just die immediately. Right?
Authors don't feel they have the right to write disabled characters. If you aren't physically disabled, you can't write a physically disabled character. I mean, sure. You can write characters that are of different genders, different races, different religions, but a different level of able-ness? *gasps* How is that possible?
Do you hear that? That's the sound of me groaning and rolling my eyes.
Let me help you help me stop rolling my eyes. Here are some tips you can use when writing physically disabled characters in fantasy:1. Broaden your scope. Physical disability is something that prevents a person from normal body movement, function, or control. Do you know how many different types of disabilities fall into that category? Tons. Which is unfortunate, but guess what? That means you can be as creative as you'd like to be. There's MS, crippled, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, various spinal problems, various types of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and more. On top of that, you are free to make up your own types of physical disabilities.
2. Don't be afraid to make them your main character. Despite what you may think, having a disabled main character isn't impossible. It requires creativity which, surprise surprise, is necessary for any type of novel-writing. So maybe your character has a hard time walking. He can use his cane as a weapon...or perhaps he's can be an expert scholar or magician or equestrian or dragon-rider or griffin-rider or any-type-of-mythical-creature-rider. So maybe your character is in constant pain. Well, she probably has a high pain tolerance, making her a perfect, badass, scary warrior. Don't for one moment think that having a disabled character will limit your fantasy story. Because you know what? One thing your disabled character will certainly have is a unique outlook on life...and also a huge amount of determination. That's perfect material for an amazing character. Go for it.
3. Never lose sight of the disability. Disability shapes a person whether they want it to or not. It determines how they live their day to day life, either because they aren't physically capable of doing things "normally" or because the disability has so influenced their personality that they live differently (either for better or worse). So every time you write about this character, you need to ask yourself: How does their disability enter into the situation? You need to be able to look at things zoomed out: If they have chronic fatigue, how does that play into them being able to captain a ship across an ocean? You also need to see things zoomed in: If they have a crippled arm, would they be able to easily roll underneath a fence to escape a pursuer or would their arm get in the way? Always, always, always pause to think about how your character's disability enters into everything from plot to character development to dialogue to individual scenes.
4. Don't define your character by their disability. While you shouldn't ever lose sight of the disability, you shouldn't get lost in it, either. A helpful tip? Change the way you view your character: As a being (elf, dwarf, human, etc) first and a disability second. This will allow you to create a well-rounded character. Also, understand that their story doesn't need to revolve around their disability. In fact, it probably should not (harken back to my Black Panther commentary above). Give your character hopes, dreams, skills, personality traits, and background outside of their disability. Develop them as you would any other character.
5. Do your research. What, you thought writing fantasy means you don't have to research anything? Ha. That's funny.
Though your disabled character does live in a made-up world, you still have to research to make sure that you are accurately portraying the life of a disabled person. If you are basing their disability after a real one, you need to look into the real disability. Even if you've made up a disability, you'll want to pull symptoms from various illnesses/disabilities to add realness to your character. AND you'll absolutely need to talk with disabled people (either online or in person) to learn about the daily struggles their lives hold. As mentioned above, disability changes everything in a person's life. If you don't do your research, you'll overlook important facts and your character will fall flat.6. Take world-building into account. Seriously. Skipping this step would be the equivalent of the 2015 Fantastic Four movie. Translation: It would be really, really bad. This is a fantasy novel, isn't it? World building is important, isn't it? Don't think for one moment that disability shouldn't in some way connect with multiple aspects of your world. A few examples:
Religion. In our world, often times physical disability was (and still is, in some areas) seen as a curse by a specific deity. This may be the same in your world. OR it may be the opposite. It depends. But put some thought into it. Magic. Can magic cause, fix, alleviate, or worsen a disability? Why or why not? Survival. Is your world a place where people with disabilities can easily survive? Are there specific jobs they can have? Or will they be cast aside, shunned, unable to obtain work or food? How disability friendly are various cities and races? Healing. Can your disabled character go somewhere for treatment? A healer? Shaman? Apothecary? Social status. Are the disabled frowned upon or looked up to? Why? Transportation. If a character can't walk, how do they get from place to place? A wheelchair? What is it made of and is it powered by magic? Can they travel by dragon? What about palanquin? A flying carpet? How expensive are each of these modes of transportation? Are some only accessible to the rich? Think long and hard about how disability ties into your world building. This will strengthen character, plot, and world.
7. Don't use the Magical Healing trope. The what? The "Yeah, my character was disabled, but there's a magical cure and he's all better now" trope. That's incredibly unhelpful. I'm not saying that you should never, ever do this, but....You probably shouldn't. What's the point? If you're going to do this, you may as well write an able-bodied character.
8. Don't kill them off. PLEASE. I know this is completely new, shocking information, but it is discouraging for disabled people to read fantasy novels where the disabled character dies just to provide development for another character.
9. Don't worry about not being physically disabled yourself. To answer the question that I know a lot of you are wondering: No, you don't need to be physically disabled to write a physically disabled character. I plan to write an entire post explaining why, but for now: Just write. Write the character you want to write. Bring a new, unique character into the fantasy genre. And don't let anybody tell you that you don't have the compassion, skill, or ability to write a character who is different from yourself.
Have tips you'd like to add? Please leave them below, along with any questions you may have. Also, if you know of any fantasy novels that have a well developed physically disabled main character (or, at the very least, a well-done secondary character), please let me know! I'm always looking for new books to read. Thanks!
Have writing, reading, or writer's life questions? Use the hashtag #ChatWithHannah below or on social media to have them answered on my Youtube channel!
Related articles:
7 Tips for Writing a Character with a Chronic Illness
4 Fundamental Errors in the Diverse Books Campaign (And How to Fix Them)
10 Points to Think About When World-Building
Enjoy this post? Take a look around. If you like what you see, please don't forget to subscribe by email for a new post every week!
Some links are Amazon affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
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