Lady Geek Girl has a look at the “miswriting” of disabled characters in media which is informative (and predictable if you know the media.), but I find the real impact is how she ties this together to look at two awesome fictional characters with disabilities – Toph of The Last Airbender and Tyiron of Game of Thrones and how they provided opportunities for good writing.
Some food for thought for writers.
So have you written/drawn/created disabled characters, and if so how much research did you do? I confess that upon review, I haven’t, except one memorable case of a character with speech impediment and a minor brain injury (and that actually was part of a larger experience where he got religion and evolved as a person).
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
