Disabled Characters
- suzie2672
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Disabled Characters
What book have you read that featured a disabled character?
- DATo
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The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, by Mark Haddon
I don't necessarily think that a writer who writes about disabled characters is "superior" to his peers. I do think however that to do this successfully, especially if the author has no direct experience of the disability of which he writes, bespeaks a talented author. Of course many talented authors write about subjects of which they may have little or no personal experience, that's why a good author employs a great deal of research before beginning his project.
― Steven Wright
- moderntimes
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Right now, he's a secondary character, son of the neighbor across the street from where my private detective lives, and they are pals. In my next novel he'll be a hero and save some people from a vicious killer.
- I-Need-a-life
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Mockingbird by Katherine ErskineLivreAmour217 wrote:As someone with a minor disability (Asperger Syndrome), I would love to read more books that feature disabled characters. I've read autobiographies and self-help books written by people with my condition, and they've all been wonderful, but I haven't read any fictional works featuring characters with high-functioning forms of autism.
I haven't read it, but I've come across it.
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
I couldn't get into it and don't think it was one of her best novels, but it featured Asperger's.
Maybe you could write one?
-- 19 Jan 2015, 16:53 --
I have a comment on the original post: if writing about being disabled makes an author talented, would it also make a disabled author talented to write about being non-disabled? Like, if someone lived their whole life with a horrible illness or condition, but he or she wrote a brilliant book about regular people living normal lives?
- gali
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"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you." (Mortimer J. Adler)
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It kind of makes me think of books I like about teenagers who have a special psychic or medium-type power. They feel "different," like a freak, because they talk to the dead, or whatever. (Secretly I get mad at those characters, because I think it would be awesome!) A lot of the best books in that genre have a mystery surrounding what the psychic power even is. The Fingerprints series by Melinda Metz (I think she's the author?) is a great example of that.
Sometimes, though, the disabilities that we have do wind up seeming like a third eye. If you've experienced a health condition that most people haven't, then you learn things that other people don't know. Like... for example, if you're blind, your other senses get heightened and incredibly reliable. Or if you're a juvenile diabetic, then you might know about the importance of diet, and you might learn to feel the effect of every single food you eat. Etc.
I thought of a book to add: Envy by Sandra Brown. One of the main characters is in a wheelchair. I really liked that book.
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- gali
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Get out! I was going to name that book, but I didn't.gali wrote:Another book with disabled characters is "Whip Hand" by Dick Francis. The main protagonist Sid Halley is crippled. It is a series of 5 books actually and I loved it.