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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2020 - 05 - 09 - ID#ggsvpb
5
I'm looking at writing a story in which the main character is blind (self.Blind)
submitted by Stradinius
As the title says, the character herself is going to be blind, but I never want to actually STATE such in the story. I want to go through the story focusing on all the other senses, and never mentioning anything that the character sees. Having said that, I obviously have no experience in the field of not being able to see.


I mean, my vision isn't the best, sure. I can still see with glasses, though. So I wanted to ask people who ARE blind pertinent questions that would come up throughout my writings. Things like
"What's the first thing you notice upon entering a room?"
"What's the first thing you notice when meeting a new person?"
"Are there any specific things that consistently jump out at you? Certain sounds or smells?"


That just begins to scratch the surface, obviously. I want to write this well, and have it be as logical and true as possible, while still making for a good read. I understand VERY little of the lives of truly visually impaired individuals, and would like to learn more about the topic before I even begin pre-planning the story.


I hope I'm not being rude in any way asking any of this.
joininfluck 3 points 3y ago
There are so many other posts on this subreddit about this exact topic and I think it'd be a good idea to have a look for those. All of those posts will say this, and so I must make sure you know:
That character is first and foremost a person, and them being blind is a physical trait of their character. Do not base the entire story and their interaction around their blindness, as it's incredibly insensitive and to be honest quite boring.
Stradinius [OP] 2 points 3y ago
Of course, that's exactly what I'd like to avoid. Even with her being the main character, I never want to state that they're blind or even necessarily give any intentional indication of such. The goal is more along the lines of 'if someone pays attention, they'll realize that a character's APPEARANCE is never mentioned. Only the sound of their voice and similar.'


I'll take a look around.
FoxtheDon 1 points 3y ago
where can I find this story?
Stradinius [OP] 1 points 3y ago
The story hasn't even begun to be properly planned at this time, but the goal is a published novel. If not, it'll be posted online somewhere. I'll keep you updated if that time comes.
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
What genre will this be? I have some ideas, but I could give some more useful information if I knew some more details about the story.
Stradinius [OP] 2 points 3y ago
Right now, I'm thinking of a fantasy narrative. it may evolve as I continue to write, but that's the idea I'm going for.
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
So the biggest problem I see is that you can't just not describe things visually and expect your character to otherwise act like a sighted person.

Let's imagine that your character enters a mansion. You would normally be able to write something like, "John walked into a large high-ceilinged foyer illuminated by a skylight with a large spiral marble staircase in the center of the room. He looked around admiringly at the enormous beautiful watercolors that adorned the walls." How would you describe this and evoke the same sense of grandeur? How would he be able to know what was so special about this room unless someone told him? Someone could tell him about it before he entered the mansion, but it would be strange for someone to tell him in such detail about every part of the mansion and every other place he visits in the story. If I walked into such a space, I would be able to tell what was on the floor (which I can tell from my cane tip, something that you wouldn't be able to use because it would would reveal immediately that your character is blind) and I would be able to tell that the ceiling was high from echoes. Most blind people don't use echolocation, which could be used to identify a staircase, but again, doing this would reveal immediately that your character is blind.


Now let's imagine that your character wadts to explore this mansion. Many blind people need to walk around spaces a few times to learn our way around them. Getting disoriented isn't something that sighted people do so often. If you made your character unusually good at navigation, you would potentially be aligning with the blind-people-are-superheroes trope that is quite common in literature.

Finally, fantasy is often characterised by fighting. How do you plan for your character to participate in a duel or battle and win?

I think you've set yourself quite a hard challenge that you'll need to give a lot of thought to. This isn't meant to discourage you, and I'm happy to provide further advice.
Stradinius [OP] 2 points 3y ago
I think you may be confusing fantasy and adventure there. I find that fantasy can be so much more than fighting, whether referring to fighting against people or monsters. I want to focus primarily on the concepts of magic, flora, and fauna representative of a fantasy world.


In this case, the concept will be more centralized in terms of location. Limited to a single town, or so my thought process stands now. Very rarely will the character be in a location that she's unfamiliar with, but the situations that unfold within such location is what changes.


I have a couple ideas of how to go about this, but the one I'm most focused on is the concept of having her be an apothecary. It allows me to write her with a role that could potentially be filled without having sight, instead relying on her senses of touch, taste, and smell. If I introduce magic into the mix, I can even cover extra-sensory bits through the use of said magic, but it would be mostly minor things. Haven't ironed out those details yet either.


I can see the superhero thing becoming an issue, true. While Daredevil is a personal favorite of mine, it's not exactly my goal in this instance. It'll take a lot of careful planning to avoid that.


I'm not set in a lot of these details, and my lack of information is what's preventing me from putting things together in a way that feels right. I definitely agree that it's going to be quite the challenge.
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
That sounds good.


I don't read/watch much fantasy, but I was thinking of series like Game of Thrones and The Last Kingdom that I thought had a lot of fighting. I think that it could also be hard if there were strange creatures, but it doesn't seem like your book will have that.
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