I dont think NTs explain autism symptoms accuratley

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when i watch a video about autism by an NT or psychologist, i feel like its not quite accurate, very close but not quite, say if an NT said "people with autism dont hang out with people because they dont like it", well thats true, but theres more behind it. People like Carly Fleishman and Temple Grandin have been so good at explaining not only how i act, but also how i feel. i find it hard to translate thoughts into words, and sometimes a sentence will come out broken or not worded correctly, so i use Temples lectures to better explain to my dad how my brain works, and ever since then, my dad has been so understanding, more so than when he read a book.

what im saying is, theres a difference between acting like an autistic person (without choice) and thinking and feeling like an autistic person

Precisely why I don't believe neurotypical writers can create truly realistic fictional characters with autism. You can't show readers an autistic character's point of view if you haven't experienced those situations and sensations for yourself.

Then by that token, no author is capable of realistically rendering a character with any mental disorder whatsoever, unless they have experienced the disorder first-hand. I'm not sure that I can go along with that.

It's not that no author can write a character with any mental disorder, since most people eggsperience something on the spectrum of common mental disorders like depression and anxiety and can eggspand on those eggsperiences to write the characters.

However, autism is developmental and affects so many areas of cognition for whole life that it is much harder for non-autistic author to write autistic character well.

I think I can write stories about anxiety, AvPD, depression and autism well because I have those.

If I was to write a story about living with Histrionic PD or schizophrenia I would have to do a lot of research. I'm sure I can get to the crux of the story but it'll be more realistic if I had NPD and schizophrenia.

Can I write a story of what it feels like to be a young Indian brave growing up in today's reservation? Probably. Chances are no one would buy it if I wasn't actually a brave from a reservation.

Last edited by redrobin62 on 16 Dec 2013, 3:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Actually, that would be precisely true. I'm not saying you can't CREATE a character who has a point of view you've never experienced - but I am saying you cannot invest that character with any AUTHENTICITY, because your BRAIN does not see the world through the same kind of lens that a real person with that disorder would. You can write a character with a neurological disorder from the outside - you can describe how they appear to other characters - but you cannot describe what they are experiencing and do it accurately if you have no clue what that point of view feels like or how it looks from the inside.

I am not a child, but I can write child characters, because I have been a child.

OTOH, I can create a character who is a dog, but I can't ever claim it will accurately reflect what a real dog thinks or feels, because I have no idea - I've never been a dog (at least that I can recall). All I could give the reader is a fantasy of what a dog's life is like, if a dog thought like I do.