Writing an autistic character

I’ve hesitated over whether to talk about this in public. In particular, I spent a lot of time trying to work out what the rules are for this conversation. Am I hurting someone or taking space away from someone else if I discuss this in public? Self-diagnosis is valid but is my tentative self-diagnosis valid? What if I’m wrong? It’s good to be authentic, but will this be yet another case where people don’t believe me about my experience? In the end I’ve decide that because I want to talk about it in relation to my novel, I will – my blog, my rules – and readers can decide for themselves whether this perspective affects their view of the book.

In my new novel, Carving a New Shape, one of the characters is autistic. Perhaps I should say at least one of the characters, because readers might find signs of different presentations of autism in other places – but I knew when I was writing Bokka that I was crafting a character with a profile of autistic traits. She doesn’t have that language to describe her experience, and even today she might well not be diagnosed (a 2002 found that 80% of autistic women are undiagnosed at 18). She does struggle with communication and friendships, have distinctive sensory needs, and approach forming a relationship differently to other people.

When I create a character, I always draw on myself. Not every character reflects all of me, of course, but the larger the role a character has the more of my own experience they are likely to include, and when I was writing Bokka I was aware that I was choosing aspects of my experience which fit an autistic profile. Am I autistic? I don’t know for sure, and probably never will – formal diagnosis is and will probably stay out of reach – but I do have some of Bokka’s traits. It’s often difficult for me to recognise and express my emotions, for example, especially in what other people consider a timely way. (I get better with practice, but when something completely new happens it can be hours or even days before I know how I feel about it – and even longer if I don’t have some time alone.) I can get a very fixed idea of how things will be, and find it difficult when reality doesn’t match up – and, like Bokka, I do better when I’m in charge of my own circumstances rather than trying to fit in with other people’s expectations. That’s partly about being able to follow where my attention wants to go – as Bokka’s often goes to her stone carving project. Her experiences with her peer group, especially of being excluded and bullied, are also modelled on my experiences, especially at school, with some poetic license in the form of exaggerations for effect (but not that much exaggeration). 

After I wrote my first full draft, I found I wasn’t sure whether Bokka was ‘really’ autistic or not. In some ways, that also mirrors my experience and the place I’m in at the moment – going back and forth about whether I count as autistic, whether I’m too good at X to be really autistic, whether it’s only that I’m too anxious or a terrible person or if I just tried a bit harder… In the end, a friend read a polished draft and as well as making some suggestions, commented – without prompting or knowing what I’d intended – that the depiction of autism was welcome. So if readers can tell, it’s really in the book, whatever is or isn’t happening in my life! 

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Carving a New Shape will be published on 4th September 2023 and you can read it on kindle or in paperback.

I have found this report from the Autistic Girls Network, Autism, Girls, and Keeping It All Inside, useful in understanding more about internal and external presentations of autism. I’ve also learned a lot from people around me – for a little taster of that you can watch my wife’s TED talk about her experience of being autistic.