GUEST BLOG: Jeannie Davide-Rivera on Writing From Our Strengths: Autism's Insights Into Fictional C

Autism is my worst writing enemy, and my best writing friend.

Writing characters is a challenge in my fiction writing because I am autistic. I have great difficulty writing believable, consistently inconsistent characters. These are the kind of characters that say one thing but do something opposite, whose motivations and actions do not match; in other words, who act like real people. 

What does my autism have to do with my character writing problems?

Everything.

Conventional writing wisdom says that characters need arcs; they must change over some way. This makes no sense to me. Why does a character need to change? I don’t change.

I’m told to write believable, realistic characters—consistently inconsistent characters. Inconsistent? That’s not how my mind words. I’m a “Say what you mean, and mean what you say, please” person.

           What motivates your characters? What causes them to act, or react in a certain way? How do other characters respond to her? What motivates a character? I don’t know, in fact, what motivates people. People are strange; they make no sense.

Struggling to understand character’s motivations highlights how much I don’t understand people. How completely and totally mind-blind I really am; how I can never figure out what makes people tick. Although my mind-blindness hinders my ability to write effective characters, my autism gives me many writing advantages.

There are aspects of the autistic brain that are wired perfectly for effective writing.

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