The Little Book of Autism (And Other Neurodivergencies)

Writing Autistic Characters

Hey again! Sorry about the inconsistent upload schedule, by the way. I don't do schedules. (Also school just got back so I'm tired.)

So, you want to do some autistic representation. Thank you! Representation is wonderful. But you don't want to make an innacurate, stereotypical and harmful portrayal. This is also great, thank you for caring.
So yeah, I'm 15, but as an autistic writer, I feel like I'm somewhat qualified to make a chapter on this. So, here are some ground rules!
Most of this goes for other neurodivergencies as well, by the way!

1. If in doubt, ask an autistic person.
Seriously. Please ask one or more of us. Ask autistic friends, family members, people online. Most of us would be happy to help, myself included!

2. Base them off real autistic people.
Only do this with the person's consent! If you use autistic people you know as a sort of guide, or take traits/characteristics, it'll make for an even better, more well-developed character. Use more than one person  and consent! Is! Important!

3. Study other autistic media.
I'll probably make a seperate chapter on this, but definitely look at examples of other autistic people in the media! For example, Billy from Power Rangers and Wendy from Please Stand By are both autistic, and Peridot from Steven Universe and Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter are both autistic coded! There are plenty of other examples, and not all of them are official, but they're still good representation.

4. Don't make them emotionless.
Bad. Bad representation. Don't do it. We have feelings, and that will make the autistic community feel pretty mad. We are not robots, or machines, or other unfeeling, unloving things. Don't do this.

5. Do not make them the butt of a joke.
We're real people. This is bad. This is terrible. This is trash garbage, not representation.

6. Dumb or smart?
So, people seem to think we're either megabrain geniuses or we don't understand anything at all. But, here's the thing- that's not the case. How would you write a normal person? That's how smart autistic people are, usually.
We can be extremely perceptive, we can be amazingly intelligent when it comes to our special interests like crystals or science or animals, and also be really, really bad at maths, english, social skills, etc. True, some of us are geniuses and some of us (me) are a bit slower. Have the character be good at some things, bad at others, and average at other things. Like normal people.

7. Emotions (yes, again)
I can't stress enough that we do have emotions, and that we process and show them differently. Some of us, me included, are also really bad at identifying emotions or why we're feeling them. A lot of the times our emotions just feel really big. Does that make sense? No? Try being autistic.
(That was really bitter and salty but I don't care I think I'm hilarious.)

8. Stim!
Have them stim! Stimmy stimmy stim stim aahh. Do you know how much it would have helped me if I'd known what stimming was growing up? A whole lot. Have them happy stim! Have them stim to ward off meltdowns/shutdowns/sensory overload! Have them stim freely! Have them stim to cope! Stim!!! I'll be doing a chapter on stimming at some point because if you couldn't tell it makes me happy, so don't worry if you don't understand that yet.

9. Sensory overload and other things.
Have them experience shutdowns, meltdowns and sensory overload. If they have to be somewhere crowded and noisy, make it visibly obvious that they are uncomfortable and struggling to cope. Have them not like being touched. Give them weird little quirks that wouldn't make sense to neurotypicals, because they're neurotypical. They literally don't know how it feels to be autistic in a loud, crowded space. (It sucks for most of us.) They just know that their autistic friend/partner/sibling has trouble coping in that situation.

10. Speaking and other communications.
Many autistics are nonverbal; they don't speak because they can't, or they don't want to. Have them communicate through sign language, or other forms of nonverbal communication, like writing things down, drawing, etc. They don't have to always be nonverbal, either; for example, when I'm having a shutdown, overload, meltdown or I'm just upset, I don't always want to talk or even feel like I can, whether it's because I can't form the right words or I don't want to speak out loud. Sometimes I just don't feel like speaking. That's okay! Your character can switch between being quiet, really talkative, an inbetween- whatever! No autistic people are exactly the same.

I might make a part two, but that's most of the basics, I think! I'm going to go, in any case, because this is getting long and I need to stop my girlfriend from doing something stupid. Bye!