Beyond labels
Authors don’t always have to make difference explicit.
As a reader who saw very little representation of neurodiversity in books when I was growing up, being able to read novels with neurodivergent protagonists such as A Kind of Spark, Only Here, Only Now and The Kiss Quotient as an adult has been an incredibly joyous and affirming experience. I have also really enjoyed books where I’ve related to a certain character’s traits, even if the writer doesn’t confirm whether they intended them to be neurodivergent or not.
When I started writing fiction, I gravitated towards writing neurodiverse characters because this is what I know, but I realised I needed to make a decision whether to label my characters or not. Things like an on-page diagnosis, a mention in the copy or a flagging in the metadata became decisions I had to think about. And as a writer, I am interested in exploring all kinds of representation, including writing against the assumption that all characters are neurotypical (or conforming to other societal defaults) unless labelled otherwise.
In my forthcoming debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, I wrote my main character as autistic without really thinking about it. It is a way of being that I’m familiar with and, as the book is written in a first-person narrative, it felt natural that my protagonist, Ivy, would inhabit the world with a neurodivergent mind, too. Of course, every neurodivergent person is different but there are aspects to her character that may be recognisable to many – she has a special interest in photography and film, she often remembers minor details of acquaintances’ lives and then has to pretend she doesn’t and she finds loud noises overwhelming.
Because neurodiversity isn’t a central theme in the novel, Ivy’s neurodiversity is never explicitly labelled or discussed. I’m not even sure Ivy herself is aware of it, beyond her fervent desire to belong at her new university and her recognition that she has to mask some aspects of herself to do so. Of course, her mind and way of inhabiting the world influence how she acts throughout, especially as the book is a coming-of-age novel exploring how enticing (and dangerous) the feeling that you finally belong can be. But I don’t feel that my protagonist should be assumed to be neurotypical unless stated otherwise – that just reinforces the idea that neurodiversity is somehow "other". The same can be said for other aspects of identity, too – as a queer writer, I resent the assumption that characters are cis or heterosexual unless we’re told they’re not.
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In my Substack, Neurodivergent Notes on Writing, I have spoken to lots of other neurodivergent authors about their approach – many have taken the same approach, where their character might be neurodivergent but they don’t explicitly say so. Sometimes this might be because they’re writing a fantasy world where concepts and terminology are different, other times it might be because the character themselves isn’t aware they’re neurodivergent or simply because the author wrote them as such but doesn’t feel the need for an explicit label.
I believe this incidental representation is important and sits alongside books that have more explicit representation and foreground neurodiversity as a theme. Some readers will (hopefully) still see themselves in books like mine and others won’t – or might find it hard to – relate to Ivy. And that’s fine – my novel still offers a neurodivergent perspective and brings it to a wider audience. Neurodiversity being present but not crucial to stories only adds to the growing wealth of neurodivergent narratives out there. It also reinforces the fact that neurodivergent writers (and those of other marginalised identities) can write about whatever they want. Their work doesn’t have to centre neurodiversity, necessarily.
I don’t feel that my protagonist should be assumed to be neurotypical unless stated otherwise
Obviously, I’m not arguing against characters being labelled as neurodivergent; it’s something I do in my second novel, which I’m working on at the moment, and I’m proud to write neurodivergent characters and delighted to read them as a reader. I just don’t think there should be an assumption that neurotypical characters are the default unless we’re told otherwise, nor should there be an expectation that writers always have to say so explicitly.
There’s lots of different ways to bring neurodiversity into characterisation and plot, such as through exploration of sensory experiences, masking, special interests, hyper-fixations and (unfortunately) discrimination. Because being neurodivergent isn’t out of the ordinary for me, it took some reader feedback to recognise my protagonist’s neurodiversity at all. When I did, I didn’t feel drawn to labelling her – in fact, it felt like I was writing against the assumption that characters are neurotypical by default. There’s space for the reader to interpret Ivy in different ways and I don’t think you need to know she’s autistic to understand her. After all, autistic people are just people too – and I hope that if people don’t like Ivy or find her difficult it’s for other reasons (like the things she gets up to as part of her all-girls’ secret society).
I hope that we are moving towards a literary landscape where there’s less assumption of certain "norms" in a character, whether that’s to do with neurotype, sexuality, ethnicity or other factors. There’s room for different approaches in representing a whole range of characters, including those that are implicit. And there’s no one way of representing characters – there’s space for different approaches. After all, reading is a chance to travel to different time periods, mindsets and perspectives – it shouldn’t be so hard to imagine that many characters differ from societally prescribed norms, even if we’re not told otherwise.
