We need more disability representation in fiction—disability representation that doesn’t use stereotypes, harmful messages, and untrue assumptions.
Diversity is very important! When people read stories with characters like them, it can make them feel seen, included, human. But bad representation can bring more harm to the disability communities. If you’re here, I’m assuming you’re striving toward great disability representation in your story. Let’s write better stories together!
There are quite a few harmful disability tropes out there, and this article doesn’t cover all of them, but knowing these nine and the ideas they spring from will make your writing just that much stronger.
1. The Curing Narrative:
What it is: A character is cured of their disability at the end of the story. This is likely something they or the characters around them have been working toward as part of the plot.
Why it’s harmful: It portrays disability as a flaw or other bad thing to be overcome. It also says that with enough perseverance, people can “overcome” their disabilities. This can make real people believe that those with disabilities should just “try harder” or that they’re lazy. This trope also takes away disability representation from your story, because your readers with disabilities won’t be able to identify with them, as most real people will have their disabilities for the rest of their lives. Additionally, most real people with disabilities don’t actually want to be cured.
What to do instead: Don’t cure your characters’ disabilities. If you want a change to represent their healing, choose something else, like their magic returning or their home being repaired.
2. Single Episode Disability:
What it is: A character acquires a disability at the beginning of an episode, and then gets cured of it at the end after learning a moral lesson.
Why it’s harmful: On top of the negative effects of the previous trope, this one suggests that disabilities are a form of “righteous punishment” or something that can “teach someone a lesson.” Like the other tropes, it can cause people to treat real people with disabilities poorly, not giving them the accommodations they need because they seemingly don’t deserve it.
What to do instead: If a character does acquire a disability during your story, don’t cure it, especially after a moral lesson. If you still want a “righteous punishment” aspect to the story, choose something that’s not a disability that they can regain at the end, like losing a job or relationship.
3. The Character Hates Themself due to Their Disability:
What it is: What the trope name states. A character feels like they can’t be happy due to the challenges their disability creates. That disability is portrayed as keeping them from doing what they want in life, which can sometimes drive the character to suicide.
Why it’s harmful: This trope paints having a disability as something awful, and that people with disabilities can’t live full, happy lives. While it’s true that people with disabilities often have more challenges, they can still enjoy their time on earth and live fulfilling lives. Diversity should be celebrated, not portrayed as depressing, and this trope does not create positive feelings about differences in ability for real people. It may even make it harder for those who gain a disability during life to adjust to it, as this trope makes it seem like their lives are over.
What to do instead: Many people with disabilities actually embrace it as a part of them. If your character needs to hate themself, make them hate themself for a reason other than their disability.
4. The Disabled Person as Incapable of Participating Fully in Community Life:
What it is: What the title states, that people with disabilities can’t participate in all areas of life, such as work, school, families, and other relationships.
Why it’s harmful: While it’s true that people with disabilities often have heightened difficulties in many of these areas—largely due to, not their disability, but their treatment by others—many can still function in these spaces, just with more understanding and accommodations. This trope paints a depressing picture of life with disabilities, which just isn’t the truth, and again makes real people think having a disability is awful.
What to do instead: Don’t portray a character’s disability as something that keeps them from happiness. When you write frustrations in major areas of their life, focus on their treatment by others such as peers and authority figures, but show hope, that they can still be happy and fulfilled. Perhaps they just need to find the right friend group or become self-employed.
5. Bitter Crip:
What it is: This trope takes the above trope even further. The character with the disability is so bitter and overcome by their “suffering” from their disability that they become a villain.
Why it’s harmful: Again, in actuality, people with disabilities can still live happy lives. Telling people with disabilities their condition is so awful they could become villains does not boost their spirits, nor does it help others not think of disability as a negative thing. Plus, linking people with disabilities, an already vulnerable group, with crime can create more mistreatment and violence against innocents.
What to do instead: If your villain has a disability, give them a different motivation for their villainy. Don’t use their disability to reinforce negative traits, either, like making having less than ten fingers suggest inherent “corruption” simply because they look different. Additionally, be sure to give a good character or two in your story a disability as well, so you make sure to avoid disability accidentally suggesting evil from the only character with a disability in your story being evil.
6. Supercrip:
What it is: A character “rises above” and “overcomes” their disability—they’re able to do everything their disability once made challenging or impossible.
Why it’s harmful: This trope is not only unrealistic, but like some previous tropes, also sets toxic expectations for people with disabilities.
What to do instead: Don’t have characters “overcome” their disability. If you want to tell a story of someone rising past their circumstances, pick something else like poverty or a life of crime.
7. Disability Superpower:
What it is: A character has a superpower that “cancels out” their disability, as if they were given that power specifically because they have it. Common examples include: (1) A blind character having enhanced senses to a supernatural degree, negating their blindness. (2) A blind character being able to still “see”—see the future. (3) A wheelchair user having super intelligence, so they can help with a mission that way instead of through combat.
Why it’s harmful: This trope says that in order for heroes with disabilities, or people with disabilities in general, to be cool, they can’t face challenges from their disability. It also, like other tropes, kills potential representation because readers with disabilities can’t see themselves in a character who doesn’t live with their challenges. Mostly, however, this trope paints an unrealistic, idealized picture of having a disability where characters don’t actually have a disability.
What to do instead: If you have characters with both disabilities and superpowers, make sure their superpowers don’t negate their disabilities. In other words, make sure they still deal with challenges due to their disability, despite their superpower. But still portray them as cool!
8. Inspiration Porn
What it is: In an inspiration porn story, people with disabilities are used to make the audience feel either pity for the person’s condition, or good about themselves because they’re reacting positively to the story. Examples: (1) A family feels bad for a neighbor with a disability who lives in poverty and decides to help shape up his life. (2) A person with a disability, after a lot of work, does something able-bodied people can do.
In both of those examples, people with disabilities are used to “inspire” people without disabilities. In the first example, readers are supposed to be “inspired” to do good for the poor helpless people with disabilities, or at least feel good about themselves for feeling good about the story, and in the second, readers are supposed to feel “inspired” that if someone can do those things while having a disability, readers can do what they put their minds to as well.
Why it’s harmful: This trope focuses on how “good” the able-bodied person is for showing human decency to people with disabilities, and paints people with disabilities as objects of inspiration instead of people.
What to do instead: If you ccould replace the person with a disability in your story with a dog with no consequences, then that story is inspiration porn.
Don’t sensationalize a privileged, able-bodied character doing nice things for minorities or the otherwise disadvantaged. Perhaps have your character instead help a group they are a part of themself. But don’t sensationalize it—your character is helping people, not using them to boost their clout. Also, in general, give the people your character helps desires, strengths, and agency.
Additionally, don’t use a character with a disability to “inspire” the reader. If you want to write an inspiring story, focus on your character overcoming their flaws or traumas, not a disability.
9. Curio
What it is: People with disabilities are included within a scene to help set a tone or feeling, such as deprivation or mystery.
Why it’s harmful: This trope “others,” or inhumanizes, people with disabilities. They are used only as set pieces to create bad or intriguing feelings in the readers. It makes people with disabilities seem like curiosities, or “curios,” to gawk at.
What to do instead: Don’t use disabilities to set a scene. Use pieces of the environment like the flora or the quality of the buildings, or things like the moods of the characters.
Avoiding these tropes, and many others not on this list, boils down to a few simple things:
Let your characters with disabilities lead fulfilling lives.
Let them experience the challenges of their disabilities.
Treat them as people.
Don’t inhumanize them.
In other words, treat your characters with disabilities the same as you would treat your other characters.
It’s as simple as that.
Thank you for reading! If you’re writing a character with a disability, I offer sensitivity reading services for general disability, autism, anxiety, OCD, and other conditions. Click here to learn more!
Happy writing!
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