Write a person first. We're not our disability. And if her story arc revolves around getting sight at all, scrap it. That's super offensive to us and real blind people don't care about what things look like. Other than that, she would need to use something like a cane for mobility or have trained a guide animal. A lot of us percieve things by how big they are compared to us, how they smell, texture, sounds, and in the case of people and animals, their personalities. Read some biographies by blind people like "Touch the Top of the world" by Eric Wienmeyer and "thunderdog" and "First Lady of the Seeing Eye". And take a look at the FAQs from sites like the National Federation of the Blind, The American Council for the Blind, and Guide Dogs for the Blind. Right now, I would suggest not getting too invested in this idea. The things that come first to your mind about blind people are almost certainly very negative, untrue stereotypes and we really don't need any more of that in fiction.

My first thought is that 'blind' doesn't always mean everything is black. Decide what kind of blind you want your protagonist to be. Would she see fuzzy shapes and colours? Perhaps just light and dark? That's going to impact how she functions.

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> what would be her most important means of taking in the world?

It's a common misconception that blind people have better senses. It's only true in that we train our senses to help us. Most people have a primary sense they rely on for a particular task, but humans use every tool at their disposal. For example, when filling my water bottle I use a combination of sound and touch to know when to turn the tap off. Humans don't use their senses in isolation.

Most blind people have their own unconscious tricks they develop to help them perform everyday tasks, but for full efficiency we often undergo orientation and mobility training or something similar. If your protagonist doesn't have someone to train her, there may be some interesting inefficiencies in the way she does things, so factor that in.

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> How far can could she hear or smell things from?

It's hard to get specific here so I'll go with my experience. I have pretty good ears naturally, but because what I hear is so important to me, I can't actively tune out sounds like a lot of people can. In a crowded place I will struggle to hear the person talking next to me, but that isn't because my hearing is poor.

I use my hearing as my primary way of crossing roads. Traffic has certain patterns to it that you can train yourself to recognise. Sound like that is very directional and you can get a pretty good idea of how far away a vehicle is by the frequency of the sound, but that took years of effort to perfect and I still don't always get it right.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, how good your protagonists' senses are depends a lot on how much effort she has put into training them.



>What can cause misunderstandings simply because someone with sight wouldn't think about it at all?

Facial expressions, bumping into people, shaking hands, not recognising someone you should be able to recognise. Most blind people wouldn't look blind if you took away their cane/dog. I sometimes get whispers about how I don't look blind at all. Blindness doesn't have a 'look', so your protagonist might encounter some of the same ignorance that we deal with. If your society is feudal or patriarchal she might encounter a lot of ablest thinking - you can't be doing that, you're blind/a girl/a blind girl!

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>How would she explore a new environment?

Depends a lot on her character. Would she ask for help? How important is it to her that she appears normal? If I'm going to a new venue I usually turn up early and scout the place, touch everything, walk the perimeter so I know where my hazards are. I don't particularly like doing this in front of people.

These days I'm more secure in my disability and will typically just ask someone if they could show me to the bathroom, etc.

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>What should I take into account all the time when writing?

Consistency. She's not just blind when it suits the plot, she is blind all the time in every situation. I would recommend keeping notes on little nuances as you would with any POV character and check each scene against those notes.

A good example of this done poorly is when a protagonist's power is established as x. If they suddenly display x2 powers to defeat the BBEG without having undergone some training or transformation, the victory feels cheap to the audience. But if they are threatened by a situation we know they should be able to overcome and they just flop over like a wet tissue, it feels frustrating.

If you establish that your protagonist can safely cross a busy street 90% of the time, and then have her get run down by a horse when she's being chased, that feels believable. But if she just gets run down out of nowhere because the plot requires it, that's going to feel pretty cheap. I don't think I'm explaining this too well, but I hope you get the gist.

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>And most importantly, what am I completely missing because I lack the perspective of a blind person?

Good question! How doe she know who someone is? Is she good at voice recognition, and if so how long does she need to spend with someone to get their voice down?

How does she choose her clothing if clothing is important? I went through a phase of wearing the same outfit day in and day out when I was 12 because I had been made fun of for my terrible fashion sense.

How will she navigate crowds of people? If she lives in an era where a cane isn't recognised, people wouldn't move out of her way.

Her friends will often forget and might, for example, point and say 'look at that' only to realise a moment later. Seriously, like, my mum still does this after 28 years.

Unless your society is super enlightened, people will look consciously and unconsciously either pity her or even revile her. People these days sometimes try to take advantage of me by, for example, cutting queue in front of me and in a couple rare cases trying to steal things from me. I'm certain that I've been taken advantage of without even realising it.

My boyfriend regularly plays tricks on me or jokes about me and sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's downright depressing and that's someone who loves and respects me.

Bottom line here is that, although her disability doesn't define her as a character, it will define a lot of how she interacts with her world and her people. In my opinion the most important thing to get right about a blind protagonist is to strike a nice balance between superpower blindness (Daredevil) and being a completely helpless damsel (every other media interpretation of blindness). If you can manage that you're doing pretty fucking good.

Good luck!

Check out Steffanie Holmes' Nevermore Mystery series. Fair warning it is a cozy mystery meets reverse harem. The reason I recommend it is the main character is going blind, and the author herself went blind. It's a good series with a great and well developed main character, and no pun intended didn't see it coming when about 2 chapters in we come to realize the main character is going blind.

I'd recommend talking more with other blind writers, and doing some research on how it affects day to day living, etc before writing a protagonist who is blind.

Oh yeah this you need first experience or close. Um I can tell you all I know, but I suggest watching Molly Burke or Tommy Edison on YouTube. I love both of them. I really think you are not ready to write about that specific ability of a human.






Olivia💙

https://www.rnib.org.uk/young-people may be helpful for you. You can also literally type into youtube 'how do blind people X' and you will likely find a video made by someone either blind or visually impaired on how they do stuff. We have some amazing VI youtubers out there who will show you exactly how they do seemingly difficult tasks.

Some are really quite blunt. If you are looking to learn there are not many stupid questions.

As a blind author, I do beta reading and consulting. My new short stories feature blind protagonists. Check the link below.

http://www.blindjournalist.wordpress.com/writings

I think the most important thing to take into account when writing a blind character would be describing things from the point of view of the other four senses. To me, sound and touch are more important than taste and smell, but a magical medieval land might function differently.

I like to explain how I perceive the world through a few analogies. If you've ever read the Blind Men and the Elephant poem by John G Saxe, that's the way I put together new information, by taking the individual elements and putting it together as a whole instead of seeing everything all at once.

As to common prejudices there's one that is unique to the twenty-first century context the "you're so brave" idea that blind people are exceptional for doing what sighted people do on a daily basis, whereas in your medieval world the default thought would probably be that the blind woman would be begging on corners and if I were writing that's where the character's journey would start off and then have her gradually realize her own worth and talents.

Hi! I really am not the one to tell you how I do chores and stuff. I was blind from birth and am very unaware of my routines. But I wanted to say this: you’re really taking on a challenge, and you’re doing that with grace! Your character seems super genuine, and we need more blind characters, that are just blind for the sake of being blind, not for funny plots. We need authors like you!

You should do some research.