I showed a friend my outline for the talk on autistic protags in fantasy I wanna do in October and she liked the angle of how the protag being autistic informs/should inform their reading. And then she asked, if I didn’t wanna do a bit on autistic writing style. How the autism informs the writing.

I am excited and devastated.

Because, yes, yes! It exists. I have seen it. I was privileged to read it. I totally want to talk bout that.

But I don’t know if I should because it never survives into published books. Autistic traits in writing are generally considered bad writing. And in the books I will talk about, those traits were not noticeable to me. (I shall definitely do a re-read with an eye out for that.)

I’m not saying the traits are all good or even useful. I am saying they exist and are informed by how we process and experience things differently. How we look at the world differently and translate those differences into the way we write.

So, what is it that I noticed?

1) Descriptions

We often don’t describe things. We focus on what is important and display that. In conversations, we have “talking head syndrome”, our characters walk and act in white rooms. I totally get that because when I focus on a thing, everything else might as well not exist.

This can be difficult to follow. I understand this when I read other people’s work. The author knows exactly how the surroundings look and filters out that noise. Thank you. Unfortunately, as a reader, I do not know what is around, so a leg up is appreciated.

I don’t think this is a characteristic that will ever make it into published work wholesale because while common, it is confusing. What I do think, though, is that we can get by on a lot less description than is currently expected. And a floating head or two hasn’t killed anybody yet.

I’d love to get to a point where “just enough description to keep you tethered” is a valid writing style.

2) One Word to Say it All

Tied to the above, when we try to describe stuff so our readers don’t get lost, we repeat words. A lot. Because we like to be precise and concise. I have a scene where a mage draws magic lights onto walls in swirling patterns. I use the word pattern about every other line. Because that is what it is.

We’re all trained to catch word echoes. This is not a helpful trait for keeping the vibe of the description. If I add another descriptor, that one has to be pertinent and significantly add to what the thing is. And the thing may not even be important

Which leads to another reason we repeat words, often generic umbrella terms: the thing we describe isn’t really important. We’re in a city. There are many houses. So. Many. Houses. It doesn’t really matter what the houses look like (see point 1). So we say “house” and move on.

I don’t see why this should be a problem when the things described are unimportant according to point 1. If anything about the house was important, we’d tell you.

3) Focus Words

I know you prefer to call them something else, but I have found them in the writing of autistic people and since you assume they are there because of untrained writing, I may as well assume they are there because they have a function. For us at least.

Ever heard how things can get overwhelming for autistic people? That there can easily be too much especially when there’s people involved? I find it very hard to focus when there is a lot going on. I know I may chose the wrong thing to concentrate on.

Enter the focus word. It will let me know exactly where to put my effort. Expressions containing “hear, feel, see, notice” point me in the direction of the important thing going on. (For me they also work like a close-up.) The party may be loud and overcrowded, but when I “feel a hand descend on my shoulder” I know this is where the focus should be.

Something I have no insight on outside myself, is tied into point 1 again. If I don’t consciously focus on a thing, it’s not there. So saying something is a thing I hear/see/feel makes it real and turns it into something that exists and that I consciously notice.

Motivation and Agency 😤

We don’t really need it. “Because it was the right thing to do” goes miles and miles. “Because it seemed like a good idea” has a lot of legs to stand on. As does the belief that this is something is the Done Thing. We may not understand why because it comes from neurotypical rules. Accordingly application may be more or less successful.

Many of us have learnt how be reactive. Our instincts of what to do were proven wrong (for NTs) too often and there were repercussions. We react. We let the other side start the script because that gives us a leg up on successfully getting through the interaction without crashing it.

Agency is a big deal in publishing. But it is also a privilege and that needs to be considered.

I’m sure there’s more if you look closely. But these were the ones that immediately came to my mind. And I’m not saying this needs to be in our books 1:1. But we should be allowed to write less descriptions, more constructions that reflect our experiences, and protagonists whose agency is closer to our won.

Angy nd out.

Not so long ago I wrote books with protags that I kept getting the feedback on that they were not relatable. I cried. Because those characters were like me. In lieu of finding protagonists that were like me in SFF, I wrote them Only to be told that they were not making sense, nobody would be/think/act like that.

And that hurt immensely because while those characters are not me, the things pointed out often were things that made them more like me. Especially the way they experience and process the world and emotions. (Not that I haven’t been told that I’m doing that wrong before.)

I have learnt a lot about me and about publishing since then. Do I write character that are more relatable now?

But no I do not cry about it the way I did before any longer. I have learnt that the things that make my protagonists stand out (like a sore thumb), the things that make them like me, are traits of my autism ADHD.

And agents have been no more trained to interact and relate to autistic characters than normal people. Of course they have difficulties relating. What am I expecting?

Truth be told? I don’t even know any longer.

Of course I could just reign it in and make my protags palatable. I thought about that, naturally, since I want to get pubbed really bad. Right now, I’m like, fuck it! With each book, my protagonists get more autistic. Maybe being blatantly obvious about it will work better.

But I want to be unapologetic about who I am. And I don’t want to have to justify and explain why I am the way I am. If you need an explanation to accept that I like eating the same thing over and over and love to bury myself under 13kg of blankie at night – fuck you.

People are weird. People are different in all directions. I don’t need to know why. (Unless they ask for help being less weird. Which generally, we don’t.) You can’t tell me people can’t relate to my character because they are like me, when I related to characters that were not like me my whole life.

I am also certain that there are people out there just waiting for more autistic protags in SFF. We want to see ourselves in the main character. And as it takes one to know one? We know. Better believe we know. We see it, when it’s there. And we want it. Want more of it. (Please rec me SFF with autistic protags. 🥺)

To circle back to writing unrelatable characters. I thought it was a me-problem, that I was incapable to write characters that readers can identify with. I have made it into a you-problem. I am writing characters you were not confronted with before. I am refusing to spoon-feed you the autistic experience. I am offering it to you in the form I experience the world (and it’s reactions to me).

I understand that tradpub doesn’t like it because it is new and untested. I understand that my voice is not seen as marketable. While some readers will easily identify with my characters, the majority is not used to them and will have to put some work into relating to them. Don’t worry. It gets easier over time. I’ve been doing it for over 40 years now and barely notice any longer.

This will not improve with more books. I am veering away from traditional, tightly-wound, fast-paced, three-act structure stories. I write what I want to read. And I know by the time tradpub deigns to publish some of that, I will be long dead.

Being relatable is a non-measure for a character. It is usually cut down to how much of a background you share with the person portrayed. And how much work you are willing to put into understanding them. I get now that for many people this amount is none. I feel I should be less surprised because it’s exactly what happens most times in life.

It was probably naive to think that things will be different in publishing just because it is allegedly a creative business looking for the fantastic. It’s still a business and what it looks for first and foremost is selling books.

My characters aren’t unrelatable. They are unprofitable.