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Blind Character Advice



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Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:01 am
Lefty says...



Hey, guys! I'm currently going back and revising a story I finished and I need some advice/resources.

So, in my story I have a sixteen-year-old character who goes blind after being able to see for her entire life up until this point. The tricky thing is, the story is written 1st-person duel-narritve, partially from her perspective, partially from the perspective of a friend who is helping her. I have little knowledge or real-life experience when it comes to blindness or being around someone who is blind and I feel I could write those parts better if I was better versed in the subject or knew how other writers have done it.

I think what would be most helpful to me would be recommendations of other fictional books involving blind characters, but any tips, videos or advice in general would be extremely helpful.

She goes blind due to being hit with magic and it only makes her blind for about a month, so obviously this is a very different situation than if someone were to go blind in real life, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it was helpful.

Thank you so much for any advice you may have!

-Lefty
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Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:40 am
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FeatherPen says...



Hello Lefty,
I’m not well versed in the subject but one thing did occur to me while reading your post. That is, does she know how long she will be blind for? (it may change her attitude)And if I was to lose my sight I would probably feel quite frightened too. I can’t recall any books with a blind protagonist of the top of my head although I know I have read one or two. Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick has a protagonist who becomes deaf and may help you in terms of how the character deals with it.
I have not read it but Blind by Rachel DeWoskin is a YA novel about a girl who loses her sight. Good luck with your research and story it sounds very promising.

@queenofscience maybe could you help?
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Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:52 am
Lefty says...



@FerranWright

Hey, to answer your question... No, she doesn't know how long she will be blind for. She assumes she will be blind for the rest of her life until she gets her vision back.

Thank you so much for the suggestions! I will definitely check them out!
Hear me out, there's so much more to life than what you're feeling now. Someday you'll look back on all these days, and all this pain is gonna be invisible. - Hunter Hayes
  





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Wed Jan 13, 2016 10:39 pm
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queenofscience says...



I can help with this. I have a visual impairment. I've been around many blind people. What would you like to know?
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Wed Jan 13, 2016 11:39 pm
Lefty says...



Hi there, @queenofscience! I posted the chapters where my character is blind a while back and got some reviews on them. Apparently I had an issue with "telling" instead of "showing", which I think was because she can't see. And I'm not sure that I captured her reaction to being blind as well as I could have. Also, I'm not sure I wrote how she would handle things differently in life or how things would change for her as well as I could have.

I guess because I have little knowledge in the subject all the way around, I thought any other books with blind characters would be helpful to see how that author did it, or just any advice or tips on the subject that would help me to understand it better and make it more realistic.

I'm not sure if that helps at all since I still didn't really mention any specific questions, but I guess I'm not sure of what specific questions to ask... which is why I was mostly looking for book suggestions or just advice in general.
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Sun Jan 17, 2016 6:46 pm
EternalRain says...



I love writing in the perspective of blind characters! I believe it adds such a challenge to writing and it helps practice the other senses. That being said, it is incredibly hard.

If you want a fictional book in first person narrative, "Girl, Stolen" might interest you! It's about a blind girl who gets kidnapped on accident.

Now, as far as writing goes -- you have to be the character. Explore the other senses in deep depth -- hearing, scent, touch. When someone is born blind or becomes blind, their other body parts become stronger and more adaptable, so they may be better at hearing than other people (just like if someone loses both arms, they can use their feet for more things than a regular person can).

I hope this helps! I'm no expert, but I have written in a blind person's perspective before and although difficult it is extremely interesting! :) Don't forget to do basic research about it, too (like service dogs, white canes, etc).

Unfortunately, none of my works that I have written with blind characters are posted, but I may post it eventually (my NaNo novel was about two girls, and it alternated between them -- one was blind).
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Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:02 am
Lightsong says...



Like others have said, it's important to focus on other senses like smell, hear, touch, and so on. Since the character is blind, her chapters would be largely filled with descriptions gathered from using those senses. Which means, you have to get out of your comfort zone since usually we are more focus on visual descriptions. Read more on different kind of smell, different kind of sound, and those senses must be sharper than people who could see because the character rely on them so much, so tell us what she could do with them other than basic things. Can she distinguished people's footsteps? Recognized the emotion of a speaker from his or her voice? Things like this could help develop her character and show us who she is.

So that's that. Sorry, can't help you more, but good luck! :)
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Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:46 pm
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Rosendorn says...



I'm going to ask something else: how blind is she?

"Blind" covers a fair chunk of visual impairments. You can be anything from barely legally blind (meaning you do have a certain amount of vision, it's just extremely blurry— this can be corrected with glasses in certain cases), to no peripheral vision (which can be everything from "only straight ahead" to "through straws"), to only really seeing bright colours/light, to completely 100% no vision.

The type of damage received is also something you have to consider for what visual impairments your character has. There's also how quickly it happened and whether it impacted both sides equally. (A punch to the face can cause more damage to one side than the other, for example)

So until you specify a few things, it's really hard to give accurate advice. "Going blind" is actually a very broad topic.
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Mon Jan 18, 2016 6:07 pm
Lefty says...



@Rosendorn

She's hit by a magical spell that was intended to kill her, but she was far enough away from it that it wasn't as strong, so it made her go blind instead. Complete black, no light vision, as if she were to be wearing a blindfold because basically, the magic went into her eyes and clouded her vision like paint on glasses.

As for how fast it happened... Since it was an accident, pretty fast. She was hit by the magic and got knocked out by it, then she was blind when she woke up.

After about a month, she falls down a well-shaft and the jolt of hitting the ground shifts the magic and she can see again, but she has no way of knowing that will happen when she goes blind. She thinks she will be blind forever.

---

I didn't mention how she went blind before since it's obviously a very fiction situation, thus has never actually happened to anyone before. And because it was magic instead of an actual injury, it's possible the aftereffects (the way she's blind, heightened senses, etc) could differ slightly from the norm.

I'm aware that there are different levels and variations of blindness, but generally when I hear that someone is "blind" v.s. "legally blind" or "partially blind", I think of them having zero vision, but that's just me. Fully blind unless otherwise stated. So, that's what I posted as.

Thanks,
-Lefty
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Wed Jan 20, 2016 2:53 am
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birk says...



focus on other senses like smell, hear, touch, and so on. Since the character is blind, her chapters would be largely filled with descriptions gathered from using those senses.


^^

Essentially, if you are to write this, I'd primarily focus on trying to bring this to life within your character. And sure, find a book on this if you'd want to see how exactly someone else did this.

I'd add though, since she only is in this condition for about a month, she wouldn't have too much time to get used to it, yeah? I think they'd enchance somewhat rapidly, but I think she'd still be pretty limited within that first month. So I'd probably try to keep that in mind.

Unless you're DareDevil. (Though, I forget, but I think he spent a lot of time getting used to being blind)
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Wed Jan 20, 2016 4:09 pm
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Rosendorn says...



On top of the adjustment for physical senses Birk mentioned, the emotional part of sudden vision loss shouldn't be overlooked, because you're dealing with:

- The trauma of "somebody tried to kill me!"

- You have to figure out how much she relied on her sight and how much she's going to grieve over losing it (handle. with. care. This feeling does exist in the recently disabled population so it should be included, but it is much more layered and nuanced than non-stop "my life is over this is the worst thing ever!" like a lot of cultural narratives say disabilities are).

I say you need to figure this out because some people are naturally more reliant on other senses even if they have 20/20 vision (Somebody who's almost completely vision reliant will adapt poorer than somebody who already relies on sound and touch, for example). Depending on her environment and job/hobbies, she'll have different senses enhanced already. Hunters and those who spend a lot of time in the woods often have to rely on their ears more than their eyes just because a threat or a potential meal can come from any direction, and could be camouflaged.

- Adjusting for any adaptations, such as being lead, canes, any available animals— these adaptations have to be learned and are not easy to master. Even being lead is an art in and of itself, as easy as it sounds.

- Adjusting to needing new adaptations (the reason I say "new" is everyone uses adaptations; disabled people just use different ones), primarily in whether or not there'll be any "I need these adaptations to survive I never did before" and associated feelings, which can span from "I don't know how I feel" to "I'm upset I need to learn this when I never needed to before."

Somebody who loses their vision suddenly will go through an emotional roller coaster, because both a label for a preexisting condition and suddenly deteriorating abilities end up as things you ned to adapt to. As I said, loss of ability or a label that tells you "these problems you had as a kid aren't ever going to get better" is something you need* to adapt to.

*For some people these labels, especially the latter, are actually a relief because it tells them what's going on and gives them tools to adapt; as a result the "need" isn't 100% correct but I do think in this situation "need" fits. I'm just putting that note in for general reference in case you decide to write more disabled characters.

Also, I'm questioning how the spell works, that a jolt can change it? If it's a killing spell, then the possibility exists that simply jolting a person hit with it can undo the death.
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Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:10 pm
Lefty says...



Thanks for the tips, @Rosendorn!

The spell works like a wave, where when the wave starts its very strong, but by the time it reaches the beach, it peters out and is much weaker. The sorcerer (his name is Kinch) is in a forest clearing having a meeting with other sorcerers. Lydia followed one of the sorcerers there and is watching from afar. Kinch uses the spell on some of the sorcerers in the clearing, killing them and Lydia was caught in the tale end of the magic, which had weakened by the time it got to her.

So, because the magic was stronger on the people it killed, they can't be woken up as that is what the spell was intended to do. The magic would have made all of the sorcerers go blind too, but as a side affect since they wouldn't still be alive. Because Lydia got caught in it but wasn't hit with a high enough dose to kill her, she still became blind, but in a way that could be reversed.
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Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:58 pm
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Rosendorn says...



That magic explanation still doesn't make sense.

If the spell was designed to kill people, the natural weakening would be that it kills less, but still kills. So if it hit her in the hand, it would kill her hand. This, hitting her eyes, would kill her eyes— and returning them would involve necromancy.

Here's a piece of advice I got years ago that I hated at the time, fought with my reviewer for an hour on, and proceeded to realize was the best piece of advice ever:

Hitting reset on a character's ability is cheap.

It's your first instinct because the thought your character is negatively impacted in any way hurts. You don't want to see your characters suffer. You don't want to have to learn how to write a brand new state of physical being, one you don't experience.

But if you want a good story, you have to.

Good stories follow through on the trouble they get their characters into. They don't tell us "everything will be alright because it went back to normal"— they tell us "everything will be alright because the characters learned to live with hurt". You end up with more conflict but also more opportunities because you have committed to the trouble you've caused.

Using coincidence to get your characters into trouble is one thing. That's fun. Using coincidence to get your characters out of trouble is cheating.
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Wed Jan 20, 2016 8:36 pm
Stori says...



An interesting topic, and I have a small part to contribute.

There's a trilogy by Andrew Clements, starting with Things Not Seen and ending with Things That Are. In the first, the protagonist is invisible; the third is narrated by his girlfriend, who's blind. Maybe you should check it out.
  





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Sun Jan 31, 2016 5:57 am
Tecumseh says...



You should watch Tommy Edison, since he has a YouTube Tube channel that various perks, nuances, drawbacks, etc. of being blind. He also has a fantastic sense of humor and is very enjoyable to watch!

Hitting reset on a character's ability can be a cop out, but it also can be interesting, like the All For Nothing trope (The results of a complex story/plot are all undone in one fell swoop) or, more specific to this, the Throwing Off Disability trope (A character who has been disabled for an extended period, often physically or visually, suddenly regains the use of their disabled organ).

It is fine to use when sufficient character development occurs as a direct result of having had that disability, and that character development which would not have otherwise been possible helps the character fulfill the needs of the plot.

Really, the spell could just wear off. If it's meant to kill, and hasn't been survived before, then she's the first one to find out what the side effects are, exactly.
  








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