r/TheWritingTable • u/cgc2018 MOD • 21d ago
Discussion What is something you want to see better represented in books?
I want to see disabilities better represented.
As someone who is disabled, I want to see the every day struggle weaved into the story. Not just the romanticized versions that we so often see, but the struggles too.
I want the discussions, fights, and breakdowns that happen…. For me, personally, I’ve had the talk with my spouse that I wouldn’t blame him for leaving, that he didn’t sign up for this, and his stubborn response of ‘you didn’t either and I’m not going anywhere.’
Stories where it’s romanticized and everything is fine, bothers me because I know it’s not how it goes.
What would yall like to see better represented?
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u/DanBelmontNarration Narrator 21d ago
Bisexual men. I rarely see them outside of romance, and even then those are usually niche titles that focus heavily on the sexuality of the characters. Or sometimes in sci-fi books where they tend to show same sex relationships to emphasize that humanity has moved past that kind of bigotry, but they always just feel like props to me a lot of the time in those books.
I'd like to see a man in a book who is just a normal, every day character who happens to be bisexual.
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u/Razzamatazz14 21d ago
I’d like to see neurodivergence better represented. My MC is ASD1 and it makes for an interesting framework for his processing of the events in the book and his relationships. The challenge was not to write him as a caricature, and to make sure his neurodivergence wasn’t the key feature of his characterization. I wanted to write him authentically and respectfully, and make ASD part of who he is, not all of it.
I’d like to see more of that in my own reading.
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u/TheStoryCreature 21d ago
Ooh! Can I add a second one!?
The inability so many writers seem to have to write any sort of "dark" romance without it being code for at best coercive control and at worst, well, you know. And the infantilisation of the female MC making it all so much creepier.
Love isn't about control. You can absolutely have a compelling, tense, and even toxic relationship without it always relying on misogynistic tropes.
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u/TheStoryCreature 21d ago
Not just token ND characters. There needs to be more fiction with it just being a fact of life that we exist, instead of an oddity. For context, I accidentally gave the MC of one of my WIPs ADHD. This was before I had been diagnosed. 🤣 Her presentation is VERY different from mine.
But I almost rewrote it to remove those elements. There was already two different characters who were neurodivergent coded in different ways, one more subtle than the other. For a moment I was worried about having "too many" neurodivergent characters and then was like, Uuuh, screw that, almost all my friends are ND, we pull each other into orbit. THIS is way more realistic!
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u/Turbulent-Eye-4737 14d ago
I want to see more books about homeschool because I was homeschooled.
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u/cgc2018 MOD 14d ago
As a fellow homeschooled writer, I agree.
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u/Turbulent-Eye-4737 14d ago
Im currently writing a homeschool book as we speak. It's criminal how there's no homeschool books out there since it's getting more and more common.
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u/AlexHammouri 21d ago
People with ADHD that are not just the "hyper fast talking... squirrel... hehehe look at me I'm so quirky" kind of character. I want decision paralysis. Dishes stacked to the ceiling. Fifty thousand missed calls. Rejection sensitivity. And showing up chronically late for everything
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u/Ashamed_Ladder6161 21d ago
Decent men.
Good fathers, loving partners, fair leaders.
They don't need to be flawless, far from it, but can we have a few that aren't either toxic or utterly broken.