Main characters with disabilities - do they make a story unsellable?

montholon

I've had a couple of short stories doing the rounds recently with no success. One features an amputee from the conflict in Afghanistan who finds love again; the other a young man with a learning disability whose supportive family successfully fights discrimination. Are these totally unsuitable characters for mainstream magazines? I'd value everyone's opinions on that and also any suggestions for where I might submit such stories in future.

Carol

Sadly I can see why they haven't had any success, solely because of the subject matters involved.
Even though your amputee is post conflict I'd personally think a mainstream magazine might avoid it because there are sensitivities involved- some readers may be opposed to a 'foreign' soldier being in that country- so they don't want to risk losing readers...
Some learning disabilities you might get away with- dyslexia for example.
Even with an upbeat ending they are probably subjects people would shy away from wanting to read, however short-sighted that may seem.
As for where such stories could be submitted- I'd suggest anthologies.

Dwight

Carol's right, Montholon, in saying that stories with such characters should be perfectly and universally acceptable. Sadly, some disabilities render the disabled person less attractive and even hurtful to sensitivities. Perhaps it's a challenge to the author's skill in getting round this 'unattractive feature', as Mark Haddon did in his 'Dog in the Night-time' bestseller. Perhaps you can work hard at that element. I'm afraid other people would know better than me where you might target your stories.

Rosalie

I agree - competitions and anthologies will probably be your best bet.

It's very sad that mainstream magazines are reluctant to take such stories. I think there's a great need for fiction of all kinds that features people with diasabilities - both where the disability is an issue and where it isn't (i.e. where it's incidental to the plot). I'm currently trying to get a series for children off the ground along these lines but it's not easy.

Carol

And so needed.

Nena

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a main character with a disability, but I think having introduced the disability, you then have to make the reader forget it - make the character so strong in other ways, that the carer sees the person and not the disability. After all, that's what people with disabilities want people to do, isn't it?

Dwight

You're not kidding, Carol. Our son has Asperger's Syndrome and although he has completed the two-year BTEC National Diploma course in Dance, gaining distinction-merit-merit, he could have enjoyed himself more if everyone had understood his condition and had been able to make allowances for him instead of prefering to avoid him. He met with mixed social attitudes, ranging from generosity to the sort of intolerance and even blame that would have been understandable if he had been someone without his disability. Now he's off to John Moore's University for a degree course, where we're hoping for a more across the board understanding.

OH works in an autism specific school as teaching support assistant and is just finishing a related distance course with B'ham Uni. The biggest single outcome she has learnt from her research is the crying need for society to develop a more informed awareness of autism and how to be aware of its effects on those with spectrum disorders. So as to show understanding and tolerance, basically. I know she and I have our part to play here, since we're in a position to do so.

Nena

'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" and "Skallagrigg" are proof that characters with disabilities can be used as main characters - even if they have disabilities that people tend to avoid (autism and severe cerebral palsy). They're both brilliant books.

Dwight

Sorry, Nena, I crossed your post and didn't take your ideas into account. Yes, I think many people with a disability would like to be fully integrated into society and almost disappear into the overall picture along with everyone else. To be treated as a normal person. My son wants this, even though it is unlikely ever to happen. I agree that you would want your reader to see past the disability to the person, but perhaps you would want them to take your character as they are. It would be strange to include a person with a disability and then treat them in scenes as if they didn't have one. With some invasive conditions this wouldn't be possible anyway. What do you think? Have you got an example in mind?

Nena

Dwight, we just crossed again! :D

Carol

So agree with you Dwight.
My oldest has AS, and during his five years at college he had varied reactions from those about him. The students who worked on the courses with him were basically accepting. The problems came from a minority of others who felt they could make fun of him.
Much older adults often don't understand how their disability effects them and the people around them don't realise how big an effect their actions can have on them, and then look at them as if they are an alien with three heads!
So many grew up with the belief that those with a learning disability are stupid, when actually they are often very bright and as your son has done achieve very good qualifications. They just need people to understand that they learn in different ways, and need help and support to do it.

I do hope Rosalie can get those books going, as there is a great need for them.

Rosalie

Thank you, Carol - I am determined to get them going if I can. I have a story about a non-speaking girl, which Phoenix Yard have the first option on. Once Chloe is published we are going to work on this. I have lots more ideas, but if anyone sees a particular need (as you and otheres have already done), I'd be really grateful if you could let me know. Obviously I would not know much about many disabilities and conditions, but I am very happy to listen and learn, and I think you get the best results from speaking to families and if possible the chilfren themselves, not just looking in books and on the web.

I have two big ambitions which overlap - to be a successful author and to write books that will help kids who for whatever reason feel 'different' or excluded in some way. I grew up feeling like that (though I don't have a physical disability) and would be so happy if my books could help such kids even a bit.

Carol

Daisy could help on the autism research- her book came out in the past year.
So if you can get that other book accepted, I'm sure you will find other subjects to work from.
Good luck with it.

montholon

Mal Leicester's book of 'Stories for Inclusive Schools' is very good. I met her at the Writers' Summer School in Swanwick a couple of years ago and was very impressed with her ideas.

ceka

I think it's high time disabilities were accepted by magazines

Liz

They won't though. Disability makes people feel uncomfortable, guilty etc and women's magazine stories are all about escapism and reassuring and the feel good factor.

It won't change until the whole society view changes and that means starting with children. So well done Rosalie, I hope you get placed, and montholon, i don't think you've got a hope except in specialist magazines... although I'd be very pleased to be proven wrong.

Disability is very seldom treated carefully even in drama... it is used as a plot device.

I've seen countless portrayals of diabetics and I don't think I've EVER seen a realistic storyline, they are always highly and ludicrously ramped up to the level where the story lines/situations are extremely inaccurate. Sometimes the facts are completely wrong.

Dwight

[quote=Liz!]It won't change until the whole society view changes and that means starting with children. [/quote]

We agree, Liz. It's at the level of primary school children, who haven't yet developed strong prejudices, that understanding and tolerance need to be taught and absorbed.

dorothyd

trouble is, Dwight, that is precisely the level when kids are at their worst, picking on others for not wearing fashion label trainers, clothes, having the right bag, the right anything, even the right look sometimes. The horror stories I hear from the carer I bring to work every morning ... they may not have racial prejudices but they sure have prejudices for everything else. One boy (8) had a black front tooth and endured endless bullying over it. Imagine how it is for someone with a real disability! That was all over one front tooth, weeks of aggro and upset.

No, it doesn't start there, it starts in the home, if possible, where parents need to set an example, not call people gimpy or crip or any other offensive term that I know are used for those who can't walk properly, for a start. Schools can 't cope with bullying, let alone impressing tolerance on a bunch of kids who take the pack view 'he's different, let's get him.' Been there with my daughter, who was a perfectly normal child, bullied endless over the most stupid things, her plaits, her left handedness, everything.

Rosalie

Yep, I've been there too. I agree with Dorothy that attitudes learned at home are very very important, but while children are young these can be overcome to some extent by the school environment and by the books children read (etc). So it is not a hopeless task, I believe, to try to introduce postive models of people with diasbilities and other differences into the media, including books.

Another point is that when a child with a disability reads about a kid in a book with a similar disability, if it's written realistically, it can give them hope. I want my characters to be strong and feisty and a great example of what you can achieve, while facing up to the problems. E.g. Mollie in "The Mollie Awards" was born without a voice but is highly intelligent and wants to be a GP. And just reading about someone like yourself can help enormously, can't it?

Maybe I'm naive, but I believe books still can make a difference and I'm determined to try.

dorothyd

there you are right, Rosalie. Books can help the disabled to be stronger, for sure.
I had a serious disappointment with my book Children Of The Moon. I had 3 boys and 2 girls, I was asked to change 1 boy to a girl and make her Vietnamese, West Indian or something. I said ... when a child reads a book, they put themselves in the character's place, I don't want to define the 'third' girl, let the reader make up their own mind which race she is, if any. They illustrated it and made her black.

Viv

Talking about disability awareness at a very young age/child level, strangely there are lots of early picture books to share with kids that cover all kinds of physical and learning diasbilities - wheelchair users, blind, deaf. autistic, etc. - and in a sympathetic and practical way. I wrote a 2 page article recommending some of them in Child Care magazine not long ago. So young children DO get to see disabled children in books leading fulfilling lives, but somewhere after that these characters drop back out of fiction. I wonder why?

dorothyd

are authors too scared to go there, or not enough experience of the disability to go there?

Dwight

The latter, I think, Dorothy. It would take a lot of research.

Rosalie

That's interesting, Viv.

I imagine a bit of both of what Dorothy says. It's scary because you worry that agents/publishers won't be interested. And because you're scared of getting it wrong, if you don't have direct experience of the disability or condition, or you feel somehow 'not qualified' to write it. (But part of writing is imagining yourself in someone else's place...)

I would hate anyone with a disability to feel I was muscling in on their territory, but maybe that's a risk we have to take. I had this a bit when I wrote about a lesbian girl in Charity's Child, but Charity was so real to me I had to write her story.

dorothyd

what would be good is to have books written by disabled youngsters, who could tell it like it really is. There must be some talented teens out there who could do that.

Liz

I think one of the reasons they aren't in mainstream fiction is that to a greater or lesser extent we all put ourselves into the place of the protagonist when reading.

Call me shallow, but in my dreams I have never imagined myself with a legless boyfriend, and wouldn't want to. My dream man has two legs. He is also perfect in every other way, and if he has slight foibles they are over-come-able.

I am unprejudiced as it is possible to be - I have a disability myself, but I still want my fiction to be free of main characters with disabilities, PARTICULARLY my own.

How do you overcome that? I don't think you can, it's not just about prejudice, it's about something else entirely.

SilentTony

I agree totally with you there Liz. Yes it's awful that disabled people are not represented enough in our culture. Even when they are it's quite often at the expense of their illness as the butt of a joke.

But this is fiction after all, the place we go to to escape real life. Sure there should be ad could be avenues where a disabled protagonist fits in and hopefully this will happen in the future. There is a history of this in American crime shows such as Ironside and Monk. So if it does become invisible or becomes a unique part of the character it seems to work. If the fiction is about the disability then I can't see how it will succeed too much in the mainstream market though.

There probably is a niche market for that kind of fiction and a niche that could be expanded as it really is needed now more than ever. I say that because in recent years disabled people in this country have gone from being a group that are given respect due to their illness to a gang of pariahs. The only way to counter this blatant swipe by the tabloid media is to get people to understand that disabled people are real people and have real lives. But how many of those Daily Mail or Express readers would chose this kind of book off the shelf in Asda than the latest chick-lit or crime novel?

I've always been of the mind that fiction isn't there to preach but to entertain. If it can entertain with a subtle message then fine. So the balance of this with a disabled protagonist is a difficult course to undertake. Is the book about disability? If not then why is the main character disabled? Because as we all know everything you put into fiction has to be there for a reason and to move the plot forward. If it's there just to be there then has it really earned its place in the story or are you trying to preach?

Odd Thomas, Dreamcatcher and a few other horror/ supernatural books use disabled people with ease.

Rosalie

I must be different form everyone else because I don't like books about people who are too 'perfect', whether physically, mentally or any other way. I like to be able to identify with the protagonists, and as I see myself as far from perfect, my heroes and heroines should be the same. It can still be escapist, because you are escaping from your own problems into someone else's.

Am I really the only one to feel like this :( ?

Nena

No, Rosalie, I feel the same. In 'Heart's Blood' which I've just finished reading, the heroine (who is running from a relationship that left her shy and frightened) falls in love with a 'chieftain' who is deformed after having palsy when he was 13. Partly because of his deformity, he hides away in his house and never comes out. I found the whole book absolutely riveting, simply because two such imperfect people appealed to me. If they'd both been perfect, I couldn't have related to them at all.

Phots Moll

I've not found it to be a problem and have sold several short stories about people with disabilities (blind, deaf, in a wheelchair, birth defect in hip making walking difficult, alcoholic x2, dead) these were all published in women's magazines.

Liz

I'm talking about fiction for women's magazines... in a detective story it wouldn't be the same, you'd be a detective, but a better detective than the one in the story, you'd get the answer before them etc etc. Detectives can be anyone, they are just a sort of facilitator for you to work through the clues yourself, or think about the problem yourself.

A disabled detective would work I think.

I'm getting muddled here as trying to argue the case with low b/s, but i know what I mean!

Liz

Dead people?!?

Nena

Lola, where are you? Your mistress needs you!

Liz

She's fast asleep in her cage in the kitchen. Long may it last, I have eaten a lot of sugar and have to do the vacuuming next!

Smaug

My nephew is is severely disabled with cerebral palsy and epilepsy and has no spoken communication so makes a lot of noises - I've noticed a change in people's attitudes to him over the past couple of years as he's become a teenager (not people who know him, but Joe Average in the street) which bears out my theory that people are less 'bothered' by a child with disabilities, because you kind of expect a 'child' to be a bit messy/noisy etc. Now he's older people are warier, less inclined to look at him etc I guess because it scares them - I would give anything to 'correct' the bit that was damaged when he was born, because I know inside he's a clever, cheeky kid who loves books, music and the pattern's that leaves make in the wind - Nena thanks for mentioning Scallagrigg - I read it years ago - need to go find a copy to re-read

Nena

Good luck, Smaug. It's a bit hard to get hold of. You might find it secondhand at Amazon. We unfortunately lent our copy to someone and never got it back.

dorothyd

Amazon or abebooks.com

Phots Moll

[quote=Liz!]Dead people?!? [/quote] The mc dies in the story (it's not a ghost story, she starts off alive then dies). I know that's not the same thing, it's just that I went through my list of published stuff to check which stories had people with disabilities in them that I noticed it. I was told that no women's mag would take a story where the mc dies - that's obviously not quite true. Some people notice that very few stories in women's mags feature characters with a disability and assume such stories are never accepted, but that's also not quite true.

Phots Moll

btw, none of my stories were actually about the disability.

Dwight

Smaug, I think one of the factors at play with unhappy attitudes in fully able people towards disabled adults is the fear about not knowing how to handle them, how to speak to them, or even the worry that you may offend them in your interaction. Best left alone then.

Liz

One of my best friends has a child with achondroplasia. We live in a village, and to us, she is a character and a wonderful one at that. But she is very, very small. My friend very rarely goes to anywhere else, as she can't bear the people staring.

Rosalie

Just to say that I have a friend and ex-colleague who has cerebral palsy, can only walk with difficulty, has poorly coordinated hand movements and strongly affected speech (understandable when you get to know her). She is an inspirational person, is now a Senior Lecturer and both teaches at university and does research into computer-based systems for people with disabilities. Oh yes and she's a lay preacher. Just an example of what can be achieved...

Hope your nephew does really well, Smaug, and achieves all his ambitions.

Maybe with women's mags, a good approach would be to start small. Get a story accepted with just a mention of a disability, get yourself known and liked by the publisher, and step it up from there?

Carol

Just to bring a good reassuring note to this, one of the children in the year behind my boys has Down's Syndrome, he went to the same nursery and primary school before moving onto to the same senior school. He is leaving the current mainstream school- not sure if he's moving home and school or what.
But at the end of year gathering in the hall when those who are leaving to go elsewhere (pupils and staff) everyone applauded him.

Dwight

Lump in the throat time, Carol.

I think that's a good plan, Rosalie: start by getting a magazine article in your name dealing with the subject, and take it from there. Should help with editors.