Do Not Go Blindly Stereotyping in Your Works

How to not let your readers down and how to leave a positive impact on them

When you are working on a book related to atypical people, one of the huge results you should be aiming for is whether your interpretations of the specific generality will somewhat correspond with the preferences of the people who pertain to that generality. The renowned psychologist and a Senior Scholar at Princeton University, Daniel Kahneman starts his acclaimed book Thinking, Fast and Slow by saying, and I quote, “Every author, I suppose, has in mind a setting in which readers of his or her work could benefit from having read it.”

Even though authors constantly broaden their perspectives about specific societal groups and people with mental disorders or neurodivergence, they can get carried away by the prevalent influence of stereotypes. Stereotypes can often hinder an author’s ability to assess and develop different perspectives about certain groups. They can restrain a character’s development, confining their psychology, as the psychology of a person constantly changes due to environmental factors.

Fiction is a reflection of reality experimented with a few additional stimuli or alterations. But you have to put together all the puzzle pieces in a precise manner as to deeming the experiment viable. No one is 100 per cent an introvert, nor is anyone 100 per cent an extravert.

A villain can’t be a narrow definition of evil, unless the villain is a machine with a fixed set of algorithms. But that doesn’t mean they could be persuaded or even be distracted from doing something unpleasant just by saying a few words or just patronising them. They could have had already thought through everything, well almost everything. Not everyone with bipolar disorder experiences paranoia or delusions.

There is no actual difference between a male’s point of view and a female’s point of view, except there will be changes as a result of how they are treated and how they live their life, on the basis of their sex.

A person with mental disorder(s) or neurodivergence may turn to reading books which explores the extraverted and introverted mind and life of another person with the similar mental disorder(s) or neurodivergence. That person might get influenced by how the character lives their life and try to relate to them intentionally or unintentionally. People might read books as an alternative for meditation or as an act of helping themselves.

So we need to put much of our work on researching how someone of a certain group behaves, thinks, without confining how someone of a certain generality would behave or think into a single criterion. A character need not be likeable as long as they are relevant and riveting like every real person’s life is.

So, if you don’t know what your character, who is variant from you, could do next or how they could behave in certain situations, you need to schedule a meeting with someone who does know, especially someone who can relate to them, or is divergent in the same way your character is, unlike you.

Talk to them, try to understand them in a deeper level, explore their interests and hobbies. Even go on a stroll with them, do different sorts of activities, mostly what they like to do.

Observe them whilst doing all these activities to get a perspective on what they could do in certain situations, how they could behave, and even how they might think. But it is also important to be like a friend to them, to not treat them as they are test subjects, to enjoy your time with them, to discern how it would be to hang out with your character.

Maybe even read a specific book exploring their life and essays on them to comprehend how they express their emotions and how it might be like to be a person belonging to that specific category. Understand that these are all just to get a perspective on the people of a certain category, not to knock together a character out of them directly. The ending depends on what you want your readers to take away from your work, and it can vary.

Orienting one’s sexuality does not have to change the person; but if the person does change midst their sexuality orientation process, that is only because that person chooses to or wants to. An addict does not have absolute control over whether they stay abstinent or give in to the addiction, but they do have the choice. Furthermore, in this new world, we do not have to conform to the norms that certain people expect us to conform to. The world is already diversifying its culture and its perspective, now your fictional world only needs to, but not necessarily, follow it.

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