Not long ago, I had a book stall at an event unrelated to autism – a rare occasion for me as an autistic author and speaker. And I think it’s fair to say there are misconceptions among the general public about the value of representation.

Take, for example, the man who approached my stall and asked about the Underdogs series (all links open in new tabs): a four-book neurodivergent dystopia saga, where heroes from a special school become the last hope for the freedom of the British people.

“Ooh, sounds interesting,” he replied. “Is it for charity?”

 

No, sir. No it is not.

 

Over the following weeks, I got more and more irritated by that question. He was a nice enough person, but his question showed how far we still need to progress. Sure, everyone’s heard of autism now, but we’re still seen as inferior. (This being the perfect example: why on Earth would anyone write a novel series with neurodivergent heroes unless there were some kind of philanthropic or charitable aim behind it? After all, we’re not supposed to just be protagonists by right, like neurotypical characters get to be!)

Nowadays, with autism and neurodivergence under the spotlight more than ever before, it’s more important than ever to get autism representation right. But how do we do that? And more importantly, how do we avoid representations that are harmful?

 

A brief history of autism representation

To this day, the most famous fictional representation of autism is Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man (1988) – a movie ironically inspired by the real-life savant Kim Peek, who wasn’t actually autistic.

I’ve talked briefly in the national press about my opinions regarding Rain Man, but the short version is this: I see it as a hugely valuable piece of autism history… with an emphasis on the word “history”.

Did Rain Man do a world of good for autistic people by providing the first baby steps of autism awareness among the public? Yes it did. Should it be recommended to 21st-century audiences as a way of learning about autism? Absolutely not.

 

Of course, there’s been progress in the accuracy of autism representation since then. In the mid-2010s when autism started to become a hot topic in wider society, there was a spate of autistic characters popping up in movies and TV shows – although the development, accuracy and faithfulness of them varied widely. Julia the Sesame Street puppet was widely acclaimed in 2017 for introducing young children to autism with limited speech, while I haven’t heard anyone mention the autistic blue Power Ranger since the movie left cinemas that same year.

And for every show like The Good Doctor which was praised for its autism depiction, there was a movie like Sia’s Music (2021) which was roundly condemned by the autistic community as being inaccurate at best and harmful at worst (although Music still won two Golden Globes despite its insensitive autism representation, because that’s where Hollywood is right now).

 

Moving on from Sheldon Cooper

Now in the 2020s, I think we’re beginning to get it right. The wider population hopefully won’t have to rely on Dr Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory for their unofficial autism education for much longer (a character whom the creators were shrewd enough never to confirm as autistic, thereby avoiding the ethics and responsibility that would come with it). This is thanks largely to the advent of openly autistic authors, along with various non-autistic authors who place personal value on listening to the autistic community.

Elle McNicoll, for example, has received acclaim for her novel A Kind of Spark (2020), recently adapted into a TV series on CBBC – featuring 11-year-old autistic protagonist Addie, who’s trying to establish a memorial for the witch trials in her hometown. (McNicoll herself has written an excellent article about neurodivergent representation here and is an outspoken advocate for meaningful representation in publishing.)

I also personally love the children’s book series The Leap Cycle (2020-2024), by Patience Agbabi. Leaving aside the interesting premise of leaplings (those born on February 29th) being born with the ability to leap through time – and a group of leapling friends travelling across historical eras to solve crimes – it’s also autism representation in a lesser-known form: instead of the protagonist being a white middle-class boy who loves trains but misses social cues, Elle Bíbi-Imbelé Ifíè is a 12-year-old autistic black girl who lives with her Nigerian-born grandmother round the back of a London industrial estate, who loves 1968 Olympic long jumper Bob Beamon and spends the opening chapter recovering from a meltdown.

 

Meanwhile, earlier this year the Underdogs series (2019-2024) saw the publication of its final book. The series was described in the second book’s review in The Guardian as “serving real purpose” – which was quite a compliment, but I’m looking forward to the day when neurodivergent representation (especially of those in special education) becomes so natural to us that Underdogs becomes part of autism history too.

 

But why is autism representation so important?

Well for starters, because everyone else gets to be the heroes, so why shouldn’t we? But it’s even more important than that: if we don’t have sufficient representation, the general public will think we’re not ‘important’ enough for it. (For further illustration, see the story at the start of this article.)

The most predictable point for me to write here is that it’s important for autistic people to see autistic heroes. And yes, this can be lifechanging.

But I also need to point out this:

It’s immensely powerful to have works of fiction that impact the perceptions of people outside of the main characters’ traditional communities. And it’s a type of powerful that we need to normalise.

 

My own efforts with this have come in the form of Alfie Smith the Speedcuber (2023) – a children’s book about an 11-year-old autistic boy who rediscovers his confidence through speedsolving Rubik’s cubes.

It was published as part of a run of neurodivergent books by HarperCollins’ Big Cat imprint for schools, and it was done excellently. As an autistic author I was listened to by the production team, they sought external feedback from autistic sensitivity readers, and they specifically hired an autistic illustrator too (his name’s Tim Stringer – look him up, he’s great).

 

There are few bigger honours for a children’s author than to have kids dressing as your character for World Book Day. But also, crucially, the collage above is comprised of autistic and non-autistic children.

 

In my opinion, this is what we should be aiming for. Autistic characters who inspire autistic readers, and are celebrated by non-autistic readers. Who send the message to autistic readers that autistic people can be heroes and role models, and send the message to non-autistic readers that autistic heroes deserve to be commonplace.

 

How to get autism representation right in fiction

Well, I have six opinions.

 

1. If you’re not autistic, listen to autistic people.

Some may disagree, but I really do believe that non-autistic people have a role to play here. I’d go as far as to say that reserving autistic characters solely for autistic authors is a flawed idea – because:

• It naturally reduces the number of autistic characters;
• It underestimates the impact that a genuine autism ally can have;
• It positions autistic people as automatic experts on everybody else’s autism, which simply isn’t true.

I mean, non-autistic poet/author Patience Agbabi (who, to be fair, has autistic family members) wrote a beautiful autistic-led book series and The Leap Cycle is getting the praise it deserves. Meanwhile, autistic musician Sia directed Music and the rest of our community had to spend months doing damage control.

But the non-autistic people who get it right are those ones who listen – and also have a deeply-rooted personal enthusiasm for doing right by the autistic community. What I found delightful about the journey of Alfie Smith the Speedcuber was that two autistic creatives worked on the content, but the publication process was run by largely neurotypical allies who were as keen on meaningful and positive autism representation in children’s fiction as I was. (Well, almost. Autism advocacy is my career.)

 

2. If you are autistic, listen to other autistic people.

As an autism advocate, I’m quite conscious that I only see autism from my own perspective, so it’s my responsibility to listen to other autistic voices. If I don’t, then all the speeches and training I deliver would just be me talking about myself.

It’s similar in fiction. Ewan West, the main character of the Underdogs series, is a 16-year-old autistic lad with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). I don’t have PDA personally, although I have a longstanding history of building great relationships with PDA teenagers, whether through my mentoring work, my life as a teacher, through people I know socially or even some of my godchildren. And as you can imagine, I did a lot of listening before representing PDA in fiction – as I did with dyslexia (when writing Raj) and ADHD (when writing Charlie).

This goes for all groups you don’t have personal experience of, by the way, not just neurodivergence. I was very apprehensive about writing the character of Kate Arrowsmith– a 16-year-old autistic girl with enormous anxiety – because despite my own history of anxiety, I’ve never experienced it as a teenage girl. But her character is by far the most popular of all the Underdogs, which indicates that I got the listening part right.

 

3. Give them a healthy character arc.

In this century, a story that ends with a wheelchair user being cured by a magic fairy and becoming non-disabled isn’t quite as in vogue as it might have been a hundred years ago. And it’s certainly no longer acceptable for a story with an autistic character to end with them being ‘cured’ of autism and living happily ever after as someone they were never supposed to be.

I won’t spoil the ending of the Underdogs series, but I promise the autistic characters don’t finish their arcs becoming closer to neurotypical. They simply take steps towards being their best autistic selves. (Oh, and Kate does not overcome her debilitating anxiety by the end of the war. That’s not how wars work. Instead, she becomes an authentically anxious badass.)

 

It’s important to be careful about character arcs because of the neuronormative expectations that are already in place. When I wrote Alfie Smith the Speedcuber, I was advised by the production team to spend less time in the final chapter pointing out his differences to wider society and more time on his similarities, as a way of showing how much more accepted he’s become. I wholly objected to this (and the team immediately listened and agreed), because I refused to send the message that acceptance looks like assimilation. So I made it very clear at the end that Alfie is still noticeably different to most people around him, and that this is not a bad thing.

 

4. Don’t just make them a walking diagnosis.

Anyone can Google autism, make a bullet-point list and check them off as the story goes along. But if your character is a bunch of autism traits who only selectively behaves like a real character, you’re not getting it right. (This might look like a character comprised entirely of stereotypes – or at the other extreme, an ‘autistic’ protagonist who behaves and socialises exactly like a neurotypical person, but once in a while the author mentions they’re not making eye contact.)

Your autistic character needs to be a well-rounded individual, with their own life experiences, perspectives, opinions and motivations. After all – people love characters, not checklists.

See also – the wording on the author’s note at the beginning of Underdogs book one:

 

Honestly though, there’s another reason I included this note. Because I was afraid of the inevitable criticism the series would face for note representing everyone. Which brings me to my next point…

 

5. Remember you’ll never please everybody.

During the 2017 explosion of autism representation, I can’t remember a single character who got past the autism community unscathed. Dr Shaun Murphy (The Good Doctor) was criticised by those who claimed “that’s not what autism looks like”. Sam from Atypical (2017-2021) was criticised by those who claimed “that’s not what autism looks like”. Even Julia the Sesame Street puppet was criticised by those who claimed “that’s not what autism looks like”!

Autism looks like a wide range of things, of course. And whereas it’s important to represent as much of the autistic population as possible, we need to make peace with the fact that we won’t do it in a single character.

Leaving aside what autism looks like, this point goes for people outside of the neurodivergence world. You won’t please all of the general public either. I certainly didn’t please this guy.

 

Honestly though… I read this with a warm smile, because it finally made me feel like a ‘proper’ author. After all, if you’ve never received a one-star review, you probably haven’t reached a wide enough audience.

So seriously, please don’t write an autistic character dearly hoping that everyone on Earth will love it. They won’t. So just write a character who you will love.

 

6. Don’t forget those with complex needs!

Think of all the really memorable autistic characters you know from fiction.

• How many of them were non-speaking?
• How many had learning disabilities?
• How many had debilitating anxiety?
• How many were very young, or very old?

Probably not enough, right?

 

I can think of a few – not least four-year-old Pete from YA novelist Michael Grant’s Gone series (2008-2019) who rarely speaks and is also pivotal to the series, Joe from the BBC’s TV show The A Word (2016-2020) who has his own set of strengths and challenges, each of which are explored faithfully, and Kwesi from The Leap Cycle who communicates by signing – and everyone around him having learned his language in order to include him.

But there needs to be more, in my opinion. Not just more, but more who aren’t tragedy cases. Because autistic people with complex disabilities deserve dignity and representation too.

 

In conclusion, I’d like to propose a test…

Some of you may have heard of the Bechdel-Wallace Test, which is used to determine the quality of women’s representation in fiction (devised by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, inspired by her friend Liz Wallace).

 

For those who haven’t heard of it, a movie passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test if:

1. At least two women are featured;
2. These women talk to each other;
3. They discuss a topic other than a man.

It’s interesting to measure movies against this test. The Lord of the Rings trilogy spends eleven hours failing it, while Bechdel’s original cartoon points out that Alien passes. (For the record, Underdogs passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test by chapter 2.)

 

I’m not aware of any equivalent test to measure the quality of a story’s autism representation, so I’d like to propose the Bonnello Test.

 

A book, movie or TV show passes the Bonnello Test if:

1. It features a named neurodivergent character;
2. This character has a personality beyond their diagnostic criteria;
3. They have a character arc that does not involve them becoming more neurotypical.

 

Bonus points if the story doesn’t start with everyone feeling sad about the poor neurodivergent character (because the more tragic you make an autistic person look, the more inspirational they become, right?) Because as well-written as Atypical was, that’s why I couldn’t get past the first episode.

 

–

So that’s it from me with regards to representation, although I do have an article with more general advice for aspiring autistic authors – here it is for those who find it useful. And for those interested in my books, here’s a link to more information about those too.

And as always, I’d like to thank my Patreon supporters for enabling me to perform my autism advocacy for a living (and its large Facebook community), providing me with a stable income in exchange for various perks and rewards.

Finally, I also do frequent speaking engagements for audiences of all types from corporate to charitable, as well as school staff training and even author visits!

 

Take care, thanks for reading and I hope you’ve found this article an interesting read.

Chris Bonnello / Captain Quirk

-
Chris Bonnello is a national and international autism speaker, available to lead talks and training sessions from the perspective of an autistic former teacher. For further information please click here (opens in new window).

Chris Bonnello on LinkedIn  
Autistic Not Weird on Facebook  
Autistic Not Weird on YouTube  
Autistic Not Weird on Instagram  

Copyright © Chris Bonnello 2015-2024  

Are you tired of characters with special needs being tokenised and based on stereotypes, or being the victims rather than the heroes? This novel series may interest you!

Underdogs, a near-future dystopia series where the heroes are teenagers with special needs, is a character-driven war story which pitches twelve people against an army of millions, balancing intense action with a deeply developed neurodiverse cast.

Book one can be found here:

Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon AU
Audible (audiobook version)
Review page on Goodreads