Discussion: Warning Flags and Turn-Offs
Clichés, ableist language … what kinds of words, phrases, or situations used in book or character descriptions send up warning flags for our contributors?
Clichés, ableist language … what kinds of words, phrases, or situations used in book or character descriptions send up warning flags for our contributors?
Writing about characters with mental illness can be challenging in various ways. How do you accurately convey a character’s state of mind, without compromising on clarity or excitement? How do you show a character’s skewed perceptions of the world?
If our contributors could tell an author writing a character with their disability one thing–besides “do your research”–what would it be?
To help authors make informed decisions about what language to use, we talk about disability terminology–from outdated words and cringe-worthy phrases to straight-up ableist slurs, and everything in between.
We take a close look at the state of recognizable representation of visibly disabled characters on book covers.
Magic and technology often minimize disability in SF/F. How can authors meaningfully engage with disability and the ways that speculative elements can affect disabled characters?
While I don’t think disability metaphors are sufficient disability representation, I do think that they’ll come up naturally in many stories, and that they’re relevant to the discussion of disability in SFF.
For disabled characters, being cured is a common trope. What’s more, in most of these narratives, the characters are cured because they’re better than they were at the start of the book: kinder, gentler, braver. And finally, finally, they’re normal and whole.
At its core, the Mystical Disabled Person trope is about a disabled character—frequently mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and/or blind—with some sort of unusual ability. This trope is varied, flexible, and depressingly common.
We’re looking to expand the Disability in Kidlit team, as the website has grown in popularity in recent months and we’re working on exciting new projects.