Writing Autistic Characters: The Do’s, Don’ts, and Maybes
Did you know that 1 in 59 children has autism (officially Autism Spectrum Disorder)? So, if you went to a high school with about 1,000 students (like my boyfriend), there were probably around sixteen autistic kids in your school. If you went to a school with less than 100 students (like I did), then there were probably only one or two. Hi! I’m — to my current knowledge — the token autistic kid from my high school.
There’s a common misconception that being autistic makes your childhood hard. It actually doesn’t. What makes your childhood hard is being surrounded by people who aren’t autistic and who have no idea how to deal with autistic people. And I can kind of get that — 1 in 59 is pretty significant, but it’s not huge. You almost certainly have met autistic people before; but, with the pressure put on autistic people to act as allistic (non-autistic) as possible, it’s very likely the autistic people you’ve met haven’t felt comfortable advertising that they were autistic. So, yeah, allistic people don’t know how to deal with autistic people. But I think it’s largely because they’ve never gotten the chance to.
But everybody likes stories. Podcasts, books, movies, television, video games, web series — everybody has some kind of storytelling they love to consume. And I think that, there, is the key to helping allistic people develop much-needed understanding and empathy for autistic people. Not everyone can be friends with an autistic person. But anyone can take in a story.
That being said, it’s vital that you ensure that your representation of autistic people doesn’t do more harm than good. To that end, I’ve put forth some suggestions for the do’s, the don’ts, and the maybes of writing autistic characters.
Don’t…
… listen to anything by Autism Speaks. Seriously. You can see a more thorough breakdown of why they’re a bad organization by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) here [link]. But, to summarize:
- 1.6% of their budget goes to helping actual autistic people. Meanwhile, their executives can make upwards of $500,000 per year (that’s about $260/hour, for reference).
- They have two autistic people on their 26-person board of directors. 19 of those remaining 24 people are allistic CEOs and senior executives of major corporations like PayPal, Samsung, and American Express. So, we have a board of directors that’s 7.7% actual autistic people and 73% allistic CEOs and senior executives who think that they’re qualified to say “I know what autistic people need better than autistic people, and that’s why you should give me money”.
- They practice fear-mongering and perpetuating harmful ideas about autistic people. I don’t want to go into too much detail here to save triggering myself any further; but you can do a search for “why autism speaks is bad” if you want to find more in-depth articles. (Just don’t read ones by Autism Speaks. Seriously.)
… infantilize autistic people. Please, god, do not describe adult autistic characters (or real autistic people) as child-like or immature or childish. It may not seem like a big deal; but it perpetuates the idea that autistic people are eternal children, which contributes to the dehumanization of autistic people. Please avoid this.
That being said: autistic characters who are actual children are fine. Though I will add that representation of autistic adults is sorely lacking, so I deeply encourage you to also have autistic adult characters.
… portray autistic people as emotionless. Autistic people feel! No, really, we do! Just because it might be expressed differently than the way you express it doesn’t mean it’s not there. We laugh. We love. We cry. We have deep and loving platonic, familial, and romantic relationships. Portraying autistic people as cold and emotionless, like above, ties into the dehumanization of autistic people. Personally, I can’t see it without thinking about all the parents who cry and sob about how their autistic children are incapable of loving them while they’ve never made even the slightest effort to communicate with their kids in any way besides what’s immediately comfortable for them. Please avoid this one.
… use high-functioning/low-functioning labels. A common way that allistic people conceptualize autistic people is by attaching the labels “high-functioning” or “low-functioning” to our experiences. The point of this, in theory, is to separate autistic people who need a lot of help from autistic people who need less help. I guess. What it really does is categorize autistic people based on how allistic they’re able to act and how they affect the people around them.
The thing about functioning labels is that they do a disservice to everyone they’re applied to. To people labelled “high-functioning”, it puts pressure on them to never ask for help and ignores the areas in which they struggle. To people labelled “low-functioning”, it ignores all of their accomplishments, goals, achievements, and even personality traits by insisting that they’re lesser because they need help and because they can’t conform to allistic standards for how a person is supposed to act.
In lieu of this, just… well, just don’t try to find a substitute, honestly. Instead, describe the individual, nuanced needs and accomplishments of each of your individual characters. You know, treat them like people.
Maybe…
… refrain from writing non-human characters — particularly robots or aliens — as autistic. This is under the “maybe” category because I definitely think there’s tasteful ways to do this (I’m actually currently writing a fantasy story that includes a half-human autistic character). However, it can be done wrong so easily that I would advise staying away from it until you’re really confident in your ability to write autistic characters.
When you write non-human characters as autistic, there’s two big pitfalls you could fall into. Firstly, you might fall into the “emotionless autistic people” trope I discussed above — particularly when writing autistic characters as aliens or literal robots. Secondly, you risk othering autistic people by implying that the traits that make someone autistic are only present in people who aren’t human. Again, it can be done well; but it’s something you want to be really, really careful with.
If you do this…
- Try to also have autistic human characters. I say “try to” only to account for stories in which this is completely impossible — e.g. in stories with no human characters at all — but, if at all possible, please include at least one autistic character who’s human. By having a human autistic character, you help lessen (if not remove) the implication that your autistic character is only autistic because they’re not human.
- Humanize (for lack of a better word) all of the non-human characters in your story. Make sure to illustrate that they’re real people, so that the character being autistic is read as one of their traits that’s similar to humans instead of dissimilar.
- Get an autistic sensitivity reader. Find an autistic person and pay them to look over your story and give you feedback. And commit to really, actually listening — even if they tell you something you don’t want to hear. (See more on this below.)
… refrain from writing Autistic Geniuses. Now, okay, I can hear the rebuttals here: “But being smart is a good thing! Why would it be bad to portray autistic people as having a positive trait?” Well, hypothetical question-asker, because it’s a stereotype — and one that (like many things here) serves to dehumanize autistic people. Being a genius is often portrayed as the one positive trait of otherwise jerkish, snobby, unlikable, autistic-coded characters (think: Sheldon in Big Bang Theory, Sherlock in BBC’s Sherlock). It others autistic people, puts undue pressure on us to perform well academically to “make up” for our perceived personal faults, and serves to further alienate autistic people from allistic people.
If you do this…
- Try giving them smarts in areas besides science and math. I’d actually be very interested, for example, to see an autistic character who was a genius at sewing. For more information on this, see the entry on “special interests” in the section below.
… refrain from “people first” language. “People first” language means that you put the person before the disability — e.g. a “person with autism” instead of “an autistic person”. Allistic people will insist that this is a good thing because, they insist, “autistic person” belittles and dehumanizes autistic people. But, I have to ask: what is is about seeing the word “autistic” that makes you start to dehumanize that person in your head?
Let me pull from an example I saw online years ago. Do we say “a man who has children” because we need to take an extra step to humanize him? Or do we say “a father” because we know that the act of having children doesn’t imply that the man isn’t a real person anymore?
The exception…
- If you’re writing non-fiction about a real-life autistic person who personally prefers person-first language for themselves. That’s pretty much it.
… refrain from making your autistic characters jerks. Remember when I was talking about unlikable, jerkish autistic characters up there? Yeah, that’s a pretty big stereotype — that all autistic people are huge jerks with no understanding of social cues. Again, it dehumanizes us. And, well… I will also admit that some autistic people (in my experience, almost exclusively white men) may use this trope as an “excuse” to be jerks because they believe they can excuse it by being autistic. No, Random White Guy #243, you’re not a jerk because you’re autistic. You’re just a jerk.
If you do this…
- Have at least 1–2 autistic characters who are nice. They don’t need to be eternally happy, nice to everyone, constantly optimistic characters — that can very easily veer into the whole “infantilizing autistic people” thing we discussed earlier — but just have some autistic characters who are at least averagely nice people.
Do…
… portray autistic people in romantic relationships. As I said above, autistic people are often stereotyped as being “eternal children”, which goes hand-in-hand with our dehumanization. This may seem small, but it’s the kind of attitude that fuels autistic adults having their rights and boundaries violated by allistic parents, friends, doctors, and total strangers who insist that the autistic person they’re “helping” is too immature to know what’s best for them. As a big part of this, there’s a huge misconception that autistic people can’t be in romantic and sexual relationships. I, personally, would love to see more healthy romances with autistic characters.
That being said: personally, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with having aromantic or asexual autistic characters! However, trace your logic. If you looked at your whole cast to find someone to make aromantic/asexual and immediately gravitated towards the autistic character, why was that? What about that character made that seem like the obvious choice? Are there other factors at play? Or — and there’s no shame in this if you own up to it and change it — did you subconsciously associate being autistic with an innate lack of romantic and sexual attraction?
If you do have an autistic aro/ace character, I would highly suggest also having at least one autistic character who isn’t aro/ace — that makes it clear that you’re not implying that autistic people can’t be in relationships. Which leads me to my next point…
… have multiple autistic characters. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received for writing characters from marginalized groups you’re not in is to have at least two characters from each group you’re representing. This really, really helps with a lot of issues. By doing this, you help to ensure that nothing you do with your character comes across as saying “this is true for all people of this group”.
E.g. if you only have one autistic character and that character is a jerk, it seems like you’re implying all autistic people are jerks. But if you have three autistic characters, two of whom are nice and one of whom is a jerk, it’s much more clear that being a jerk is a personality trait for that specific character and not for all autistic people.
… give your characters special interests. A special interest (sometimes called a hyperfixation, though I see that term used more for ADHD) is an interest in a particular topic or field of study that an autistic person really, really latches onto. It’s something you’re incredibly interested in, something you can spend hours and hours researching or practicing, and something that you get really, really happy talking about.
For example: as a kid, I had a special interest in horror and folklore (particularly vampires). I spent hours out of every. Single. Day. Reading through Wikipedia articles, books from the library, and websites hosted on Angelfire where all the buttons were shaped like headstones. And reading all of that was like… you know that warm feeling you get in your chest when someone you have a crush on compliments you, or when you eat your favorite childhood food, or when you come in from the snow and curl up with a mug of hot chocolate? Imagine all of those feelings rolled into one. That kind of happy.
This ties into the “maybe” part of writing Autistic Geniuses. The thing about being hyperfixated on one particular thing is that you often get very, very good with it just by nature of spending countless hours with it. So, it is very common — in my experiences — to find autistic people who have a particular field they’re quite good at because they’ve fixated on it so strongly for years. If you want a character who’s a genius at something, try picking one specific field, making that one of their special interests, and saying that they’re very good at it because of that.
Special interests can be broad categories (e.g. “musicals”) or specific interests (e.g. “the musical Cats”).
Example broad special interests: automotives, painting, drawing, animals, marine life, musical theatre, video games, tabletop roleplaying games, podcasts.
Example specific special interests: cars from the 1990s, watercolor painting, digital drawing, dogs, coral reefs, the musical Falsettos, the video game Fable 2, the tabletop RPG system Dungeons & Dragons, the podcast Girl in Space.
… let your characters infodump. You wanna know the best part of special interests? Infodumping. Infodumping is the act of telling someone about your interests, but turned up to 100. In essence, it’s just getting to talk to someone about something you’re interested in — usually a special interest, but sometimes just stuff you think is cool — and telling them every. Single. Detail. Of that thing that you can possibly think of.
It feels amazing, genuinely. I’ve seen people think that it’s autistic people being know-it-alls or trying to brag about how much they know, but it’s really not. It’s just like… hm. I guess the best way to describe it, for me, is that you’ve found something that makes you so happy — so deeply, incredibly happy — and now all you wanna do is share it with other people so that it’ll make them happy, too. That doesn’t sound like bragging, right?
Let your autistic characters go on and on and on about their interests to the people close to them. Now, the audience may not necessarily be interested in hearing your autistic character go on for half an hour about their favorite neolithic monument (and you might not feel confident enough in your knowledge on the topic to write that); but you can get creative with fade-outs, fade-ins, or summaries to show that your character was infodumping without necessarily needing to convey every single exact word.
… let your characters stim. Stim — short for “stimulation” — is any kind of tactile, physical, visual, or audio input that feels extremely pleasurable and calming to autistic people. You know those “highly satisfying” videos of stuff like cookie decorating, soap cutting, and playing with slime? Those are all examples of visual stims.
Stims are really, really important to autistic people. All kinds of stims help us calm down when we’re overwhelmed, and physical stims are an expression of the emotions we’re feeling.
I want to specifically touch on handflapping — any kind of repeated hand movement as a stim (I do mine by holding my hands up at about chest level, letting my wrists go limp, and repeatedly moving my arms so that my hands flap back and forth). This is one of the most common forms of stimming… and one of the forms that allistic people seem to hate the most. I don’t think I know any autistic people who haven’t been scolded for handflapping by authority figures who tell them that it’s wrong and bad and they should feel embarrassed for it.
And, like I said, physical stims are often an expression of emotion. I do it when I’m happy. Can you imagine how it would feel to grow up being told that you’re never allowed to smile because your smile is awful and embarrassing and makes people ashamed to be seen with you? Can you imagine how that would feel? Autistic people do feel that.
Anytime I see autistic characters being allowed to handlfap, I tear up. Seriously. It’s such an important and stigmatized part of being autistic, and I would love to see characters be allowed to do it more.
The other big purpose of stimming is to calm down from sensory overload (more on that below). They trigger this deep, calming sensation — like getting into a warm bath or eating freshly-baked cookies.
Stims can be:
- Physical (rocking back and forth, hand flapping, jumping, running)
- Tactile (petting a dog, playing with a fuzzy sweater, fidget spinners, fidget cubes)
- Visual (videos of things like soap cutting, slime making, and — my favorite — cookie decorating)
- Auditory (music, white noise, nature sounds)
Or a combination of some of the above (e.g. playing games on your phone may be a physical, visual, and auditory stim all in one).
… show your characters experiencing sensory overload. Sensory overload happens when an autistic person is in an overwhelming situation and, suddenly, every single sensory experience they’re having gets multiplied by the dozens. Imagine this:
You’re at the mall with your friends. It’s a Saturday afternoon — a day you usually avoid coming to the mall on — and it’s very crowded and very, very loud. The noise is really getting to you, and then… you feel it. You’re getting overloaded.
Every sound feels amplified, like everybody in the mall is crowding around you and screaming in your ears. Your friends are trying to talk to you, but you can barely understand them.
Every tactile experience is painful. The seams of your pants and the tag on your shirt feel like pins and needles stabbing into your skin.
Everything feels too hot — the room feels like it has to be at least 100° F.
Every single sense you have feels completely overloaded, and you can barely think because of how overwhelming everything feels. It’s very common to go partially or totally nonverbal here: to completely lose your ability to speak. It’s not that you don’t want to speak — you usually do, very much so — but you can’t.
In these kinds of situations, the cure is to remove as many sensory experiences as possible. Go to a quiet space, shed some layers and drink something cold to get your temperature down, and find a way to stim (I like watching stim videos on my phone). After a while, the world feels less on fire.
Every autistic person I’ve ever met deals with this. In my opinion, showing an autistic character experiencing sensory overload would do a lot to make them feel authentic to me.
… listen to advice from actual autistic people. Not friends of autistic people. Not parents of autistic people. Not doctors who work with autistic people. Autistic people.
Who would give a better description of what being inside a house on fire is like: a firefighter, or someone who’s read a lot of books about firefighters? The firefighter, right? Because there are some things about certain experiences that you can only really learn about by talking to the people who really live them.
Seek out more information and advice on writing autistic people after you’re done reading this — but please, make sure you’re listening to real autistic people. (I mentioned not listening to Autism Speaks, right? Yeah, let me mention that one more time.)
And, finally…
… hire an autistic sensitivity reader. Reading existing articles and blog posts written by autistic people is a great way to start; but, ultimately, you might find yourself with questions or issues that you really need to ask an autistic person about directly. When this happens, the best way to go is to find a sensitivity reader.
A sensitivity reader is somebody part of a marginalized group hired to read over something involving that group. So, in this example, an autistic sensitivity reader hired to look over a story or article involving autistic characters or people. This gives you invaluable insight into writing this group as well as answers to specific questions you may have.
Sensitivity readers can be brought on at any point in the process. You can hire them at the beginning, to talk over your plans and concepts with; or you can hire them later in the process, to read your first draft. (I, personally, would recommend bringing them on by the first draft at the latest; later than that, and it may be hard to institute any changes they suggest.)
If you want more information on sensitivity readers, I highly recommend reading “Why And When To Hire A Cultural Consultant For Your Podcast” by Elena Fernández Collins [link].
The Bottom Line…
Writing autistic characters may seem like a daunting task; but, ultimately, you just want to approach it the way you would approach writing any other character: with empathy, kindness, and a commitment to writing them well. If you do that, then you’ll get pretty far.
Hopefully, this guide has helped you feel a little more confident in writing autistic characters. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at @cassjosephs on Twitter. And please, if you can find room in your stories, begin writing autistic characters. The world is sorely lacking — and you, as a writer, can help.
