Writing A Blind Or Visually Impaired Character

Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character

A Multi-Step Guide Written by a Visually Impaired Writer and Blogger

I’m hoping this blog will over time develop its own following, and when it does people will inevitably see my bio and notice what I included: I’m visually impaired.

Yes, a visually impaired writer, and I’ve written with two blind characters before so I have some practice in the field.

So, inevitably, someone is going to ask how to write a blind character.

Or, at least, I hope you’ll ask someone who’s actually blind or visually impaired about writing a blind character before you get too involved with your new WIP.

I started writing this guide two hours ago and it’s gotten away from me. It make it a more manageable read, I’m going to separate it into X many parts, and each part will be linked.

Part One: Crafting the Blind Character

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185123396964/writing-a-blind-or-visually-impaired-character

Part Two: Writing the Blind Character, including narrative choice, visual description, verbal description, social interaction

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185125198184/writing-blind-or-visually-impaired-characters

Part Three: Tropes and Cliches to Avoid

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185124340794/writing-blind-and-visually-impaired-characters

Part Four: What Your Blind Character Needs to Survive and Not Die

[Not written yet, but this is the reserved spot for it]

Part Five: Small Aspects of being Blind You Never Thought Of

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185134862519/writing-a-blind-of-visually-impaired-character

Part Six: Should You Cure Your Character’s Blindness? (Short Answer: No)

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/185125880559/writing-a-blind-or-visually-impaired-character

-New- Writing Blind Characters Falling in Love, an Advice Post:

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/186276022234/writing-blind-characters-falling-in-love-an

-New- Writing Blind Jokes (Should You Do It?)

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/187906205649/writing-a-blindvisually-impaired-character-blind

-New- A small essay addressing the frequently asked question on giving your blind character a superpower to help them “see.”

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/187913512454/blind-characters-and-superpowers

-New- Mourning My Vision, it’s More than Depression. A small personal essay addressing the nuances of the mourning period you experience with a new disability. The mourning period is mentioned in other guides, but this is more detailed.

https://mimzy-writing-online.tumblr.com/post/188649694569/mourning-my-vision-its-more-than-depression

All parts will be tagged #blindcharacter in my blog, and I will add links to every post as I finish each part. Follow my blog for more writing advice.

all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

I never finished season eight because of this, it just fell apart

Things I’m Still Not Forgiving VLD For And Prolly Never Will

Slowly stripping every ounce of confidence, authority and autonomy from Allura’s character

Having the joke I-have-a-crush-on-you-and-treat-you-like-a-prize dynamic being an endgame relationship

U-turning Allura’s opinion of Lance out of nowhere, as she had been at least not pleased but most likely disappointed when finding out from the mice that he liked her

Framing a WoC having trouble coming to terms realising that one of her teammates is part of the extremely-coloniser-coded race that literally destroyed her planet, nearly wiped out her species and killed her father as though she’s entirely in the wrong and is being judgemental and overly harsh

Slowly stripping every ounce of confidence, authority and autonomy from Shiro’s character

Using a disabled, LGBT PoC as torture porn

Literally not caring about Shiro in the story to the point that they actually forgot to draw him in some group frames and giving the teleportation powers that were almost certainly originally intended to be his… to a dog

Having a white (and coloniser-race-coded) character usurp said disabled LGBT PoC in terms of ability and authority when he really didn’t actually do anything in the narrative worthy of taking over

Keith stealing the cathartic “I have risen above what you did to me” and badass victory moment of Shiro over Sendak and instead pushing a narrative of “he will always need someone to come save him” BITCH?? GLADIATOR CHAMPION??

In general just giving Keith all the bells and whistles (he gets to have 2 years of bonding with his mum, he gets a cool pet space wolf, he becomes a BoM and BP, etc, etc) and stealing development from other characters (so many of his lines were clearly written for Shiro) to the point that I actively disliked him 

Treating Kuron as just a wholly evil thing despite him expressing emotions including fear and guilt and eventually just basically using him as a soulless vessel

Never finding out anything at all about Shiro’s family, despite the fact that every other major character (except Coran I guess, but even then we got stories about his grandfather and his time with Alfor) had their entire family shown on screen

The Lion Swap remaining permanent leading to some truly unpleasant colour combinations, and also tearing up any importance of the personal paladin bond that had been so crucial in the first 2 seasons

Not making Allura, the one person who is explicitly linked to all the Lions and the one in charge alongside or even above Shiro, the new Black Paladin

Having Allura’s only other explicit love interest be a member of the coloniser race who was also personally committing atrocities at the time

Not having Hunk and Pidge develop past s2. Like… what did they do, character arc wise? How did they change? 

Letting the woman who almost completely destroyed reality itself get to live out in a happy fantasy with her husband and son

That entire scene with Shiro’s new arm. It was ugly. It did not need to hurt him. Allura had to give up her last remnant of her home planet and authority.

Not seeing Shiro’s bayard form (it! should! have! been! his! new! arm!!)

Scrapping the explicitly romantically-framed dynamic between Allura and Shiro and thereby ruining their team-leader positions (which were stolen from them) even more

Trivialising every Voltron-related achievement Allura/Shiro ever managed by making everyone super-duper-linked paladins out of nowhere instead of slowly developing it over time like they started off doing in s1 (and s2 a bit)

KILLING OFF ALLURA

Or: killing her off in all but name but then seriously telling me that Slav, Pidge, Matt, etc, couldn’t have found a way to pull her out of the in-between?

Not letting Coran, the person Allura saw as a second father, say goodbye

Thinking the vaguest flashback scene ever and a marriage to a character who’s never named on screen counts as good LGBT representation (Zethrid and Ezor were…. better…. still not great….)

Making Lance, a character who never expressed any real interest in Altean culture or history (at least Pidge tried to learn the language)…. trans…racial????

He is s u f f e r i n g.

This is how far into the earth humans have dug so far.

@sirgeist420 ADD is still used in some places but in the DSM-IV and the DSM-5, which are the two most recent DSM’s, there’s only adhd which is split into three subcategories. You can still get diagnosed with ADD but only with older criteria’s and only in some places. Also i’m not american lol

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