The Importance of Disabilities in Writing | Writing Talk #2

This week we are going to be talking about physical disabilities in writing, which I have some very strong feelings about as I am myself, disabled. People with disabilities is a massive part of the world, only being taken seriously relatively recently. I want to dive into a few things with this. In this video, I'm talking about the importance of disabilities in writing. Disability is an important part of our world and we need to be mindful of how it affects our work.
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0:00 - Intro
11:20 - Outro
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[@EmmaBennetAuthor]

Do you sub to Joey Paul? She has some very interesting thoughts on this topic.

[@ianhyatt]

I do not! I’ll have to take a look

[@eniawrites]

Hi, really intersting topic. I'm intersted, since you said you don't have written many disabled characters yourself, why that is? Since a lot of writers when first starting out tend to create self-inserts as their protagonists. Did you never do that or was it because of genre/type of story, like you said, that some genres just don't make a physically disabled protagonist likely? Or is it for a different reason? I hope I'm not being too nosey and if so, please feel free to tell me so. It's just really interesing to me what your viewpoint on this is 😃

[@ianhyatt]

I haven’t written many disabled characters because growing up I never really saw any disabled characters in books I read so I grew up thinking I shouldn’t write people like me. When I figured I could, I was not sure about how to put them in and was scared that my work would be scorned for having a character with a physical disability. Recently I’ve been writing the same series so the characters haven’t changed. I’ll probably end up finagling a disabled character in there somewhere! Though, that’s just me and others probably have different reasons! You aren’t being too nosey it’s a fantastic question. I am currently planning a contemporary with a disabled main character so we’ll see how that turns out

[@millacernemusic]

I’m currently writing a character with epilepsy and a mild intellectual disability. She also develops PTSD in the middle of the series. I’m diagnosed with none of these conditions, so making an accurate depiction isn’t very easy, but I’m doing my research, no, not Sia’s four years of autism research. Anyway, I think it’s really important to represent these disabilities, especially the intellectual disability, because I’ve never really seen a character with an intellectual disability that isn’t apparent straight away. I want my readers to feel like they can see themselves In my characters. For instance, I want to document this character’s school struggles. This series also has other disabled characters, including a griffin with a mystery medical condition that has taken away her eyesight, given her a non-traumatic spinal cord injury and makes her very lethargic, sometimes sleeping for days. The other griffins are extremely protective over her. She’s an adult, but they all treat her like a child, and after she became disabled, she’s pretty much given up on all of her interests. I wanted to include her, to show the not so pretty and inspirational side of disability. I want to write about the tragic side of disability, that isn’t tragic purely because you’re disabled, but tragic because of societal expectations. Also, I thought it would be fun to include a blind Griffin, because I’m a blind human, and I imagine that griffins and humans have vastly different accessibility needs.

[@ianhyatt]

I completely agree it’s important to write about these kinds of characters! It seems like you are really into representing these characters