5 Step Guide on Writing a Character with X Disorder or X Disease
Rebloggable per request.
I’ve been thinking about this and came to the conclusion of like… fuck it, it’s time to write a 5 Step Guide on Writing a Character with X Disorder or X disease.
Step one. Create a character. Don’t look for a certain disorder then write the character. Have your character written first, and by that I mean everything that doesn’t have to do with the disorder/disease. Of course this or that disease will have an effect on your character’s personality but your character’s disease isn’t their personality. Don’t use a certain disorder just to add it to your character because you think it’s cool, people in real life have it, it’s a real issue. Respect it.
Step two. Research like a motherfucker.
Step three. Be creative. Ask yourself how you’d be if you had it, know that you have a better image of what it is, causes, symptons, diagnosis and treatment.
Step four. Don’t focus entirely on the disease, or the disorder, or the disability. Then it stops being about the character and starts being about what it shouldn’t be.
Step five. Yay you’ve done your research and have a character and this character happens to have this disease but they have a personality.
Step six (actually an extra from step two): find people with the disease (another good idea is to search for experiences from people with it) or that have knowledge in it and ask because it’s okay not to know and even better when you’re willing to learn.
Now go and write awesome characters.
-Alex
This Is a Towel: Mental Disorders
anthony-fucking-stark asked: Hello, I’ve been following this blog for months and it has helped me very much. But now I have a question: do you have anything on how to write/roleplay a crazy -or insane- character?
You are gonna be so proud of me. I found you some awesome links!
WriteWorld is inexplicably deficient on articles by our admins on mental disorders (a term which, for the purposes of this article, will encompass personality disorders and all other serious mental illnesses), but I do have a few general words of advice for you regarding writing characters with disorders of this kind:
- Mental disorders are not for funsies. They don’t make your character cooler. There are actual people out in the world right now that live with the mental disorder you’re using to give your character some extra pizzazz, so try to bear that in mind as you write.
- Pick a mental disorder and write to it. That is seriously all there is to it. Just do that to the best of your ability with as much respect to your character and the disorder as possible and you will have achieved something that pretty much every writer screws up. Once you’ve chosen a mental disorder…
- Research the specifics of the disorder you have in mind. So many writers mix and match their favorite symptoms from different mental disorders to create a disorder that suits them, and that’s okay, it’s just not true to life. It also makes things more difficult for you, because getting your way all the time isn’t particularly good for a writer. We need our ego tamped down every so often, and we need our research to help us create conflict. If we bend the rules to allow for every little thing we want to magically come true, there is zero believability and zero credibility. Do research. Set boundaries. Give some credit to reality for being plenty messed up on its own without any help from you (dragons and nanobots are, of course, excluded from this criticism).
Don’t worry, I’m going to give you some resources for researching mental disorders. - With all of that said, there is more to a character than their mental disorder. I am begging you to please give every other aspect of your character as much weight as the mental disorder he or she has. The mental disorder may take over your character’s life, but notice that they have a life to take over. A life that (maybe) existed before their mental disorder as well as during and after.
- And one more thing: The mental disorder your character has does not equal the plot of the story. There is more to the story than the mental disorder just as there is more to the character than the mental disorder. Plan and write accordingly.
Also, mental disorders are not convenient plot fluff. Mental disorders do not come and go as you see fit. If a character has PTSD, they have it every minute of every day and even if it’s a sliding scale of intensity for them, they still have the disorder. This is what I meant when I talked about rules. A good rule to have is that if your character has a mental disorder, then they have it 24/7, not just when you think it would spice up the scene (not that you would do that) (but you might) (so don’t).
I really strongly recommend that your check out our tips on writing depression and amnesia (below) as well, since much of the advice we give in those articles carries over into every other type of mental condition.
- Brief Advice on How to Write Depression: Imagination and Research
- Remember, Remember: The Basics of Writing Amnesia
- Writing PTSD (and other mental disorders) Accurately
On to the links I found you!
From fuckyeah-char-dev:
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Avoidant Personality Disorder
- Depressive Personality Disorder
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder
- Paranoid Personality Disorder
- Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Psychopathy
- Sadistic Personality Disorder
- Schizoid Personality Disorder
- Schizophrenia
- Schizotypal Personality Disorder
- Self-Defeating Personality Disorder
- Their “Character Development” Tag
Other Tumblrs/Tumblr Articles:
- Writer’s Tip # 5 - Avoid glorifying characters with serious mental illness/personality disorders and express these with negative behaviors.
- FuckYeahCharacterDevelopment’s Discussion of Suicide and Depression
- The Tumblr Mental Health Directory
- Mental Illness Directory
- Leviathan-RPC: How to write - mental disorder series, part one : Sociopaths
- Military & PTSD Resources
Outside of Tumblr:
- WebMD’s Mental Health Subsite
- Symptoms and Treatments of Mental Disorders
- Wikipedia’s list of mental disorders
- Medlineplus: Mental Disorders
- NAMI: About Mental Illness
Videos:
- Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness — from the inside
- Ruby Wax: What’s so funny about mental illness?
- HealthGuru.com’s YouTube Channel
And I just want to say that nothing is more useful than actually talking to someone who has the disorder you’d like to write about.
Thank you very much for your question, and I hope this helps!
-C
Got more links or resources for mental illness? Submit a link to us here!
- A person who suffers from a mental illness: I really hate experiencing these symptoms and all I want is for them to go away and for someone to understand me.
- society: Nope. You're just an attention whore, why don't you get over yourself. You have no reason to feel that way, stop being so weak. Grow some balls. It's pretty much your fault that you're that way.
-A
The song playing at the end of the episode ‘Out of the Frying Pan Into the Inferno‘ is ‘ARIA WITH 30 VARIATIONS’.
I think Aria has multiple personality disorder/Dissociative identity disorder
Byron mentioned mental illness ran in the family a while ago; his brother suffered from a mental disorder/schizophrenia??] < Why would that be mentioned unless it was significant.
Maybe Aria is in fact Alison sometimes, and she doesn’t even realise and so during the time she is ‘A’, she sends texts from her phone without knowing {That would make sense as to why Spencer received a text from ‘Aria’ and not a blocked ID in the most recent episode, regarding her “break up” with Ezra}
We’ve seen Aria looking comfortable in the red coat before to play the role of ’Vivienne’.
Once again, Aria isn’t hurt by A. She’s never been directly in ‘As’ warpath.
“You know why I picked you, right?” - ‘Ali’ to Aria
Spencer had taken pills when she saw ‘Ali’
Hanna was in hospital when she saw ‘Ali’
Emily was poisoned by car fumes when she saw ‘Ali’
Aria was drugged by Meredith when she saw ‘Ali’
“Hey Big A!” - Mona to Aria
Aria keeps convincing the liars to not tell the police
Aria has a resemblance to Vivian Darkbloom.. she also seemed taken back and shocked when recognised as ‘Vivian’ by ‘Duncan’
Aria said herself [out of context] A is for Aria. “I’m A”
Aria was all too insistant in wanting to talk to Duncan to find out what he knew about Vivian. Why did she want to be alone? To be there to stop him if he knew too much?
Aria was the black swan they were waiting for at the ball? http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z207/sarahxxlou/419575_317165135011630_167995389928606_939972_1808365436_n.jpg
A didn’t start terrorizing the girls until Aria got back from Iceland
Aria showed her darker side whilst being confronted by Ella about Ezra. She turned on her family in an instant; what is Aria capable of? Even she said ‘.. you have to lie to your friends..’
Aria sent Ezra a text once from an unknown number and the phone screen was clearly displayed in a shot. We saw Aria write the message and once it was sent to Ezra’s phone it said ‘contact: unknown number/blocked ID’ WHY?
Aria cancelled on her plans with Ezra to stay with Holden because it was her plan all long. She sent her dad the note from ‘A’ and left it on the car and planned to not be caught with Ezra in the first place.
Aria has a key to Ezra’s apartment and so access to his typrewriter. Many of the notes have been if not texted, written using a typewriter. Typrewriters aren’t exactly common.
Aria said all too quickly that she knew a shortcut to the viewpoint where Mona and spencer were.
Aria smashes the mirror in one of the most recent episodes, you can see several fragments of her reflection in the shards. This could be a hint to her ‘split personalities.
‘A TEAM’ alison toby ezra aria mona
Marlene tweeted that “#BigA” was a hint in finding out who A is. ‘Big A’ is a what Mona has called Aria in the past.
“Miss Aria, You’re A Killer, Not Ezra’s Wife.” “MAYA kNEW”
In the episode with the dolls, Aria’s doll is the only one wearing a black hoodie, which we have never seen Aria wear.
“You’re little, but you’re so big.” - Spencer to Aria
It’s been mentioned before that Ali had been spying on A - Could these be the photos Jason had of Aria that he said Ali had taken whilst she was sleeping?..
Ali’s look says it all-
Cast back to the PILOT episode. Emily asks Aria why she no longer had the pink in her hair. Aria replies, “Your parents want you to be yourself when you don’t know who you are.” Multiple Personalities.
Remember that time that Aria nodded to someone off camera, very slightly, and then the girls received a text from ‘A’? Well THIS was the shot right before..
{NOT MY PHOTOS] “You’d be surprised what people are capable of” - Aria
Shackles?
^ Because she does it all the time.
Feel free to add to this post (: There’s so much more evidence for Aria being A or being involved somehow..
Side note: What does every one think about the idea of ‘two A teams’, and they’re playing against each other/sometimes with. This would explain the ‘it’s a boy’ basket outside Ezra’s apartment? The other A sent it perhaps to warn off Aria and her team? Just a very vague idea, but let me know your thoughts.
Episode: ‘dead to me’ - Aria doesn’t seem at all shocked that Ali isn’t dead in Emily’s flashback/memory; instead she asks, “Ali, digging up her own grave?” ..
Dead to me: Aria in Ezra’s apartment and the close up shot of the typewriter? …
First ever text - ”I’m back bitches -A” Aria arrived back to Rosewood.
A couple of promos edited by myself - ARIA IS A
http://wallflowersandwonderlands.tumblr.com/post/42458689547/new-pretty-little-liars-promo-aria-is-a [NEW PROMO, UPLOADED TONIGHT!]
http://wallflowersandwonderlands.tumblr.com/post/18852319112/a-is-revealed [TEN MONTHS OLD]
