: Re: How to avoid basing an autistic character too much upon myself? One of the characters in my current piece is autistic. I'm on the spectrum myself, so I have some idea of what this is like,

@Phylliss352

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Speaking as a writer who's on the spectrum too, I can understand your concern. One of my recent WIPs had a supporting character who is obviously intended to be on the spectrum, although the story never says where, and she's been diagnosed for a while now and for her it's become quite mild, to the point her worries about it are disproportionate. That's partly because she's not the main focus of the story, and partly because she's 10 and I don't remember my social mistakes back then well enough to inject many of them into the story. I could have researched some that are true to someone else's experiences, but that would have been problematic for the same reason neither of us wants a character to mirror ourselves as authors too much.

You know, because we read a rule saying not to. No, I'm kidding; is because the character needs to be someone new, created for the needs of the story you're telling. That's not to say your locksmith mustn't be like you, but here are some tips:

Read about other autistic people. I don't mean whole books; just a few articles will do. You could discover ways the condition may affect them that are unlike you. For example, this discussion of how autists feel misconstrued mentions that they're less liable to use or even understand sarcasm than is widely believed. Now, obviously a generalisation that goes entirely the other way would contradict your own snarkiness, so I'm not saying anything someone else has written gets you more accurately than you do yourself. But the aim of this is to think about what you really want her to be like.
Read how autists have described their own experiences, especially the sensory aspects, and especially women. You owe it to yourself to read several paragraphs by Temple Grandin.
Read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. No diagnosis is stated, but the protagonist seems to be on the spectrum. Why?

You should get ideas for building a character as a hodge-podge that way. Ultimately, that's where all characters come from.

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