Walk It Off - Dealing with Injured Characters

This is Stepdad Dave - after he rolled down a cliff on our first day in St. Thomas and cracked his shoulder blade. For a while there, from the moment I saw him vanish over the edge before I could reach him, and during those long hours in the hospital, I was sure we'd be putting him on a plane home. But he was a serious trooper and kept going. No snorkeling for him, but he got to do a lot of fun things. We ended up renting a glass-bottom boat, so he could see some of the underwater scenery.

The upshot was, we did a lot of adjusting of plans on that vacation, to accommodate his injury. It was at the forefront of our minds at pretty much every moment - what he could and couldn't do, his energy levels, the pain medication, etc.

All of this is by way of saying that, when characters get injured in our books - which, in SFF books, they pretty much inevitably do - then that is a thread that must be carefully tracked. It's far too easy to forget that a person is hurt and needs time to recover. At the same time, long recoveries can bog down a story's pace.

In the second novel I ever wrote - which remains unpublished - my heroine got terribly injured. As it was set in the modern world, there was no magical healing available to get her on her feet. Being a newbie novelist, I tried to stick to reality, which meant my heroine spent pretty much the entire middle third of the book laid up in the hospital.

OMG, Past-Jeffe. No, no, no!

The pacing went totally through the floor. Effectively disabling your primary POV protagonist does exactly the same to the story. I don't recommend it. I could maybe do a better job of it now, as I have better skills and might be able to find ways to up the tension because of her bedridden state. That's what it takes. Either that or skipping time.

If you manage to keep your character out in the action, the injury and recovery time must still be a constant thread. They get tired faster and have to rest. They're in pain. Minor stage directions can go awry.

For example, in THE TALON OF THE HAWK, Ursula gets hurt right at the Act I climax. (I don't think this spoilery, but fair warning!) She gets abroken nose and skull fracture at the back of her head along with a concussion. Being who she is (including a semi-magical nature), she's able to keep going. But in a scene that occurs less than 24-hours later, I had the hero cupping the back of her head during a kiss. My editor (the fantastic Peter Senftleben at Kensington) commented it out, saying "Um, wouldn't that hurt?"

Well, yes. Yes, it would! And this right there, my friends, is why we need editors. In that very scene, I had him being careful of her broken nose, but I somehow - probably in the course of the several days that elapsed while I wrote all the stuff that happens in between those moments - forgot about the skull fracture.

The take-home message for dealing with injured characters, is careful attention during edits. Susan Elizabeth Phillips talks about doing a complete revision pass for each story element and arc. If an injury occurs, I think it's worth doing a complete pass just for that arc. The injury becomes part of the conflict, waxing and waning depending on other events, and should be resolved with similar attention as any other conflict.

Yeah, and don't stick your protagonist in a hospital bed for a third of the book unless you have a *brilliant plan*. Like Rio Youers pulled off in WESTLAKE SOUL - where the single POV protagonist is in a vegetative state. If you want to learn how it can be done, study that book. 

A Dearth of Disabled Protagonists

The only disabled protagonists I can offer for consideration (who hasn't already been mentioned this week) are Helva from Anne McCaffrey's book The Ship Who Sang and Miles Vorkosigan from the series of the same name by Lois McMaster Bujold.

McCaffrey wrote several books in her Ship Who series, all with different protagonists. In these books, science has come up with options for severe physical disability - one of which is becoming the 'brain' of a space ship. From that respect, I don't know if the heroines of these stories qualify as disabled protagonists. It isn't as if their physical limitations are magically removed - but if you've given up a body entirely and had your brain installed as the nerve center of a space ship - what is that exactly?

Miles Vorkosigan (from Amazon): ". . .Washed out of the Barrayaran Military Academy for being overly fragile (he had been biochemically damaged during an assassination attempt while still in his mother's womb), Miles' natural (if unorthodox) leadership qualities quickly led to his off-handedly acquiring a fleet of nineteen ships and three thousand troops, all unswervingly loyal to him. . ." Because of the biochemical attack, Miles' growth was stunted. His bones are brittle and his spine malformed. His disability is not remedied in the course of the stories. In fact, as the conflict and the pressure on him rises, the worse his pain becomes. He's an utterly charismatic character. If fiction characters came to life, he'd be one of the first I'd want to hang with. We'd be up to our necks in trouble within an hour and grinning while we fought our way back out, although there's a good chance I'd die.

This is the long way of admitting that, in my reading, there has been a dearth of protagonists with more than a few surface scars.  Is it my choice of reading material? Romance novels, until the past decade, had an interesting tendency to shy away from 'issues'. "It's an issues book." in your reviews was kind of a sales killer for awhile. Romance got over that in a big way from a psychological standpoint, but not from a physical standpoint. So far. Science fiction, too, tends to deal with physical disability by 'fixing' it with technology. Cyborgs, anyone?

While the heroine of my third (still in the works) SFR is deaf, I cheat and give her technology so she can compensate a little bit. I also give her an addiction to that compensation, but that's another story. This heroine's deafness does not define her. It's a single, minor aspect that makes her who she is. She starts the story hearing impaired, she finishes the story the same way, and her deafness has no impact on whether the conflict of her story is resolved or not. Why is she deaf, then, you ask? Because when she walked up and informed me I'd be writing her story, she eventually told me so.

Still. This heroine can hide her disability for a long time. You can't look at her and see that she's hearing-impaired. I guess the closest to physical disability I've written so far has been a cyborg hero (yeah, his story is still in progress, too, sorry). His cyborg implants are obvious, but they, too are compensating for lost limbs. He suffers no loss of motor skill or function, so that's hardly physically disabled, is it? Am I afraid to deal with a protagonist in a wheel chair? Or a heroine who came back from a warzone missing a leg? Maybe so. Writing either character sure feels scary to me, which means I'll have to try.

The Disabled Protagonist

by Allison Pang

*waves*

Yes, I'm finally back - but first big shout out and thank you to Jane Kindred for stepping up to the plate the last four weeks to fill my spot!

That being said, it's sort of an ironic first post to come back to - given my history of health issues, I came pretty close to going out on disability myself this summer. (Between the back and the Interstitial Cystitis - yeah, I've got plenty of painful reasons on my side.)

Which brings me to my first point - what exactly makes someone disabled? I actually did some poking around on this because of the above reasons. If you look at the American with Disabilities Act, it says:

The Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA) has a three-part definition of disability. Under ADA, an individual with a disability is a person who: (1) has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; OR (2) has a record of such an impairment; OR (3) is regarded as having such an impairment.

A physical impairment is defined by ADA as "any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or anatomical loss affecting one or more of the following body systems: neurological, musculoskeletal, special sense organs, respiratory (including speech organs), cardiovascular, reproductive, digestive, genitourinary, hemic and lymphatic, skin, and endocrine."

So there's a lot of ground to cover there. Major life activities are going to be things like walking, driving, self-care and that sort of thing - but it's still a pretty wide range that's open to some interpretation.

The thing is, it's easy to see someone in a wheelchair and understand that they may have a disability - but there are plenty of other disabilities that aren't nearly as well understood or as obvious. (But can be just as terrible in their own way - especially because if people don't see what you're suffering from, they often don't believe you are in pain. Even doctors fall into this category - "Oh, just push through the pain and you'll do fine.")

There was some question earlier this week (in Jeffe's post comments) about whether or not Abby from my Brush of Darkness books was considered to be a disabled protagonist. I actually took an informal email poll from some readers to get a feel for what they thought - and all agreed she had a medical condition...but not everyone saw her as disabled.  (Note for those who haven't read the books - Abby was in a car wreck a few years before that left her with a severe brain injury. She's got a bit of a scar and a metal plate in her head, a slightly messed up leg and is prone to seizures.)

Technically, by the ADA standards? Potentially - yes, she's disabled. She can't drive, for example, and her seizures tend to be of the grand mal variety. (To the point of wetting herself, in at least one instance.) But to actually be legally considered for disability there are a number of hoops to jump through - how many seizures she might have in a given timeframe. The medications she was/wasn't on. Doctor input, and so forth. For the story purpose, I didn't feel a need to take it that far - though she does no driving in the second book when she ends up going on a road trip, and she worries about babysitting her nephew, because she's trying to be more responsible about her condition by that point.

In either case, she doesn't allow this condition to stop her from going about her business. (And keep in mind, the first book takes place about a year after the accident. She's figured out what she needs to do to manage the everyday, by that point, though she has a number of emotional scars to sort through.) I've had several people write me over the years asking if I'm epileptic or if I have a family member who is. I'm not and I don't but I did some research and checked things over with a family member who is a doctor, and then used my own experience with chronic illness to flesh things out. (Abby's jadedness toward her condition is probably all me - the amount of doctors and meds I went through for the first several years as I tried to figure out wtf was wrong with me was beyond frustrating. Twenty years later, I'm still dealing with it.)

For myself, having Interstitial Cystitis means there are things I can't eat or drink. It means severe, debilitating pain when I'm having a flare - bladder spasms are awful. It means feeling like I have to pee all the time, even right after I've finished, even if there's nothing left in my bladder -  but I can sit on the toilet for hours at a time and just let it trickle out every few seconds. TMI? Yeah - but just by looking at me, you wouldn't know I suffer from it, right? But it's super shitty, all the same. Is it a disability? For some people, absolutely - as bad as my description may sound, there are people who have IC who are far worse off than I am. I have periods of remission now - but it's one of the reasons I have to be so careful with things like vitamins or other meds. Anything that might cause "increased urination," even if it's in a super low .001%  of patients? Instant guarantee to set me off on a multi-day flare that can keep me from going to work.

(But you take the IC and add  the back pain  and...yeah. Up until my fusion a few weeks ago, it's been nothing but constant, mind-numbing pain that never stopped, even as hopped up on narcotics as I was this year. And the Fibromyalgia diagnosis. It's all hand-in-hand and it never ends. It fluctuates and I've learned to appreciate the good days, but it will never truly go away and it will never be cured. I've just got my fingers crossed that this latest surgery will put me back into something resembling "normal.")

Because I was dealing with a lot of this when I wrote Brush of Darkness, I wanted to give Abby a condition that couldn't be brushed away with magic. I debated giving her my own condition, but frankly I was and am tired of dealing with it. I didn't want to write about it, so I went with something else.

Now, she does get healed of various injuries throughout the series, but her seizures don't go away. Her leg isn't fixed with a wave of a wand. Much like real life, miracle cures are hard to come by, and treating a condition is NOT the same as curing it. You learn to deal with it, or you don't, but each person's level of pain and capability is going to be different.

I should also point out that Talivar, Abby's live-in elf bodyguard, could potentially also be considered disabled, as he's missing an eye and has a severely crippled leg. He's not technically a protagonist, but he's still a major character in the second and third books.

So I've been wracking my brain for popular media where there are disabled protagonists - but there's definitely a dearth of them, particularly when it comes to women. In fact, the only three I came up with off the top of my head would be Children of a Lesser God, Soul Surfer and The Miracle Worker...and two of those are based on actual people, so I'm not sure they count from a fiction perspective. (Seems to happen a lot in Hollywood - e.g. The Elephant Man, or Mask, or Radio, or My Left Foot. It's like they think audiences can't buy that a disabled person can be a protagonist unless it's a "true story.")

If you look at comics, there's Barbara Gordon, of course. As Batgirl, she was shot in the spine by the Joker and ended up in a wheelchair - and eventually became Oracle. That's actually a pretty amazing thing, if you think about it - a female, disabled superhero? In particular, superhero comics aren't exactly known for being overly progressive. (Yes, I'm aware it was ret-conned with the New 52. But still. Her disability isn't offset by a special power, a la Dr. X or Daredevil, so I find it really refreshing.)

Other disabled protagonists might include the movie/book Silver Bullet/Cycle of the Werewolf (Stephen King) - where the main character is a paraplegic boy in a wheelchair trying to survive/defeat the werewolf attacking his town. Or, if you're stretching it - Jake Sully in Avatar - though that does have the "magic" cure/happy ending where he becomes able-bodied, so not sure about that one. How about Erik from Phantom of the Opera? (He's a villain in the original story, but he's definitely become more of a sympathetic character over the years.)

From a children's perspective, I'll throw out Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. It doesn't bear much resemblance to the books, but Hiccup does lose part of his leg at the end of the first movie and is seen with a prosthetic. (Much like his dragon, Toothless.)  Also, Quest for Camelot - where one of the main characters, Garrett, is blind. Or Toph, from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sure, she's an Earthbender, but she's also blind - if she's not touching the ground with bare feet? Nada. (She's not technically a protagonist either, but I'd argue she's a fairly important main character.)

Actually - with kids in mind - I want to bring attention to Eggplant Productions which currently has a call for submissions for fairy tales featuring characters who are PoC,/disabled/ LGBT - so check it out if that's something you'd like to contribute to.

Anyway, I'm rambling now - if you're interested in seeing more about how disabilities and their tropes have been used in media over the years, check out TV Tropes here - there's a lot of good (and bad) examples.

I'd Give My Left Arm ... Unless I'm The Protagonist

Evil Dead: Ash with the Chainsaw "Prosthetic"

Why aren't there more protagonists with disabilities out there?

Seriously. 

In the genres I read and write, we-the-authors gleefully scar the fuck out of our protagonists' bodies -- knives, bullets, acid, wild animals, magic -- but we don't tend to let them actually lose a limb...and have it stay gone. I'm as guilty as the next author of doing it.  Blindness? There's a spell to cure that. Deaf? They'll be fine once the ringing stops. Mauling? It's just a flesh wound. IED? Everyone else except the protagonist is dead or mangled. Hell, in half the books, the protagonist's recovery time from a horrific conflict is on par with a nap.

Of course, we do thrive within the mountains of emotional scars. There's enough of mental crumbling underpinning our novels to build a nation of psych wards.  Internal conflict is ever so much easier to write when there's a diagnosis to be twisted.

The last book I read -- erm, got into the first 50 pages before I stopped reading -- with a disabled protagonist was JR Ward's Lover Enshrined starring amputee Phury. The reason I stopped reading had nothing to do with the romantic hero missing a leg. The storyline just didn't do it for me. Yes, yes, I do know about poor Thomas Covenant, the leper.  The pity is that he's the go-to answer for "show me an unfixably flawed hero."

Now, physically disabled villains?  Literature is full of them. For a while there, it seemed missing a piece of their body was the go-to identifier for villains. We could start with Captain Hook, Captain Ahab, and Long John Silver to reference the classics then advance to today with GRRM's Lothar Frey, Lord Cett in Sanderson's Mistborn, or Professor Moody from Harry Potter.

It's not wholly uncommon for side-kicks or secondary characters to get the physical short-stick too. How about Dr. Xavier? The deaf doctor in Brockman's Into the Fire?  For every genius black hat confined to a wheelchair there's a sage mentor with the cautionary missing body part.

Why, as authors, do we shy away from writing a permanently physically imperfect protagonist? Does it tie back to the "Write What You Know" advice? Do we unconsciously perceive it as too much of a distraction to the plot? Too hard to write? Too easy to offend?

Truly, I don't know the answer. 

I do know it's not an issue of marketability. For gods' sakes, we've made demons beddable and psychopaths saints. Surely a prosthetic limb wouldn't be a deterrent to a reader.

I haven't written a physically disabled protagonist because when characters take shape in my imagination that sort of defining characteristic doesn't even cross my mind.  I haven't taken the time to consider it. Shame on me? Probably. This week's blog post certainly has me thinking more and more about it.

Tell me, dear readers, is there a disability with which you'd like to see a protagonist grapple? Would his/her learning to live with the difference be an acceptable subplot or a distracting one? If you have advice for an author penning a protagonist with physical challenges, what would it be?

Discovering the Power of the Disabled Protagonist

Isabel was in this spot before the sun sank low enough to hit her. Excellent strategy.

This week's topic in Ye Olde Bordello is The Physically Disabled Protagonist. At first I thought KAK, our calendar whiz kid, had double-booked topics. Then I realized that it was just me. I wrote "Discovering the Power of the Disabled Protagonist" back in August on the Here Be Magic group blog. So, I'm totally taking the bye and reproducing it here.

Hope you all don't mind!

On the advice of fellow Whore James Moore, I read Westlake Soul by Rio Youers. It was a bit of a departure for me in my recent reading, because it's by a male author about a male protagonist. I don't think I was deliberately reading female authors and female POV, but I'd definitely gotten into a nearly exclusive pattern. The other interesting thing about this book is the protagonist is completely disabled. He was paralyzed in a surfing accident and is unable to move or communicate - except through the power of his mind.

I enjoyed the book and its fascinating premise. It also dovetailed with conversations I'd been having online, most notably with my friend, Sassy Outwater. For those who don't know Sassy, she's blind and has a guide dog companion named Kodak. You might have seen them at the RT Convention in spring of 2013, for example.

Sassy is on a quest for recommendations particularly of disabled heroines in romance novels. She's planning to do a full rant and review, so if you have suggestions, she's looking for any and all. Her site is being developed here. I'll be interested to see what kind of list she gets. After all, the romance tropes usually call for the feisty, nubile and always perfectly lovely heroine. That's been changing up in recent years, which is all to the good in my mind.

Speculative fiction, it seems, better lends itself to the disabled protagonist or otherwise "handicapped" hero. I'm using that word in the traditional sense - that some sort of weight is added to make the hero's journey that much more difficult. One famous example is Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, who suffers from - of all the horrible diseases - leprosy. Superhero stories are notable for the crippling burdens - usually emotional - that the hero carries. Think Batman with his haunted, traumatic past.

However, because I read primarily female-driven stories, it seems I rarely encounter the truly disabled heroine. Even if she's emotionally troubled, she's still physically attractive. And her psychic scars don't get in the way of relationships, like Batman's do - or they are temporary obstacles that increase sexual tension, but are easily overcome in the end.

I'm looking at my spec fic bookshelf, racking my brain for exceptions - much as I've been looking at my romance shelves (and yes, the twain do meet and mix it up) for ideas for Sassy's project. It could be my filter bias for the Happily Ever After, but I'm not coming up with much.

So, I'm throwing this out to you all. Examples of heroines in speculative fiction (I'm deliberately using that umbrella term to cover all genres of paranormal, urban fantasy, science fiction, fantasy, sword & sorcery, etc.) that are "handicapped" in some way.

Bonus points for disfiguring disabilities.