If you’re an aspiring author, you’ll understand that writing diverse characters can enhance your story, making it richer, believable and more interesting. Of course, characters with disabilities are one potential inclusion to make your story more relatable or engaging to readers.
But if you’re not careful, you can easily slip into stereotypes or write something that feels fake — or worse, offensive. Though with the right mindset and a few practical tips, you can write characters with disabilities in a way that’s both respectful and believable.
Avoid Using Disability For Plot Convenience
Before figuring out how to write a character with a disability, it’s important to decide if your story should include disabilities at all. If you’re using disabilities solely to highlight a character’s highly unfortunate circumstances, you’re more than likely to undermine your readers’ ability to empathise with that character instead of achieving your intended effect.
Plenty of fictional stories have main characters who are either initially disabled, have parents that are disabled in some way, or both. Those same stories often don’t evoke any real sympathy for the character, not only because the trope is overused, but also because inclusion of disability isn’t portrayed in any meaningful way beyond a convenient plot point to portray tragedy.
If you do decide to include disability in your story, ensure it has contextual significance, not simply because it’s convenient.
Research & Understand The Disability You Portray
While this may seem beyond obvious, it’s worth noting that if you intend to write about a disability you don’t have yourself, you’ll need to learn about it first. This doesn’t just involve reading medical facts about a disability. No amount of medical-based websites can effectively inform you about how people with a specific disability feel about it, cope with it, or plan their lives around it.
So read and watch the personal accounts of PWDs, such as via blogs or online videos. Or better yet, interview such individuals directly if it’s within your means. There’s no better source of information for the disability you want to write about than from the people who have lived with it.
Even if you’re writing about a fictional disability with no real world counterpart, it’s still worth researching how disabilities in general are treated, managed, or perceived in certain eras and cultures. This can provide a valuable frame of reference to craft characters with disabilities that not only make sense within the confines of your story, but also make readers feel like they’re reading about real people.
Focus On Their Lives, Not Their Disability
By extension, this also means having to avoid defining characters based on stereotypes. It’s very common for authors to employ the “tragic hero” trope, and use disability to define that character’s entire life and corresponding circumstances.
While it is important, even encouraged, to showcase the unique challenges a character faces as a direct consequence of their disability, keep in mind that such characters aren’t solely vessels to showcase that disability. Give them full, complex lives — whether it’s messy relationships, personality flaws or traits that aren’t tied to their disability, and ambitions that may or may not be realised.
Use ‘Person-First’ Or ‘Identity-First’ Language Smartly
Modern sensibilities dictate that using ‘person-first’ language is the correct form of address when indicating someone with a disability. For example, a ‘person with autism’ is considered more polite than calling someone an ‘autistic person’, since you’re recognising the individual before the disability.
That said, not everyone appreciates that perspective. Some individuals with disabilities, and even entire communities, prefer ‘identity-first’ language. Others don’t mind either way. Your best bet is to simply research what your target audience prefers overall, but even then you will likely discover a general consensus that can’t please everyone.
It’s also worth noting that you might not consistently stick to either ‘person-first’ or ‘Identity-first’ language throughout your story, and that’s perfectly fine. You could, for example, mostly use ‘person-first’ language when you’re narrating the story, but switch to ‘identity-first’ language when a specific character has dialogue.
Regardless, so long as you’re specific language deliberately, with clear and thoughtful intent, you’d be far less likely to write about a disability in a way that would offend or cause harm.
References
Daan Katz (2023) How to fail at writing disabled characters [Accessed 13 April 2025] Available at: https://daankatz.com/how-to-fail-at-writing-disabled-characters/
Jill Williamson (2020) Writing About Characters with Disabilities by R.J. Anderson [Accessed 13 April 2025] Available at: https://goteenwriters.com/2020/07/17/writing-about-characters-with-disabilities-by-r-j-anderson/
James Irwin (2025) 6 Tips on Writing Disabled Characters [Accessed 13 April 2025] Available at: https://janefriedman.com/6-tips-on-writing-disabled-characters/
Sarah Awa (2023) How (and Why) to Write Disabled Characters Well [Accessed 13 April 2025] Available at: https://medium.com/@sarahawa/how-and-why-to-write-disabled-characters-well-e626238e4987