How do I write a social survival guide for asperger people?
I decided to write a survival guide called "The neurotypical tyranny", for people with Asperger's syndrome.
I want to write this book to help people like me.
These are the following questions that I want to ask:
- How do I research neurotypical society?
- How do I research the biggest strengths and weaknesses of neurotypicals and Aspergers and explain them with neutrality?
- How do I pinpoint the biggest dangers that Asperger people face in this hostile society?
I want to write two different versions of this work: one for adults, and the other for children. What kind of style should I use for each version?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/31014. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
As to how you should research neurotypical society, I think you first need to define "neurotypical" for readers. I have been criticized myself for using this word without giving a full context.
The way it's typically used implies that there is a standard range of most brain chemicals and behaviors. I suggest you start by interviewing psychiatric doctors or nurses, or therapists or anyone else who works professionally with people on the spectrum, to find out what those levels are.
And, though this is unsolicited, I would remove "The" from the title. "Neurotypical Tyranny" is a bit stronger, and I might even add a subtitle. "Neurotypical Tyranny: A Survival Guide for Aspergers" or something.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32889. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads
Obviously, if the title is "The Neurotypical Tyranny", you are not starting out "neutral". :-)
I wouldn't try. My grandson is autistic, and (contrary to most fiction) no superpowers in the mental department have yet shown themselves. He is generally happy and playing, but he is a teen entering puberty and his play and speech are not even as advanced as that of three year olds in our extended family.
Write from your experience, from the POV of a person with Asperger's.
Your question is too broad with too many questions, but I will give you a direction in which to travel, in the interest of help.
Science begins with an inventory. Darwin's Theory of Evolution would not exist, if he had not first traveled to catalogue animals and their forms. His ideas sprang from comparisons between the animals, their likenesses and differences.
The same could be said for botany; the same for anatomy, the same for astronomy, geology, physics: All begin with a catalogue describing instances of some thing, be it stars or plants or rocks or even emotions.
Begin your research by building yourself such an inventory of your own experiences with Asperger's. Then sort those, categorize them, detail the pluses and minuses of them. The negative experiences, the positive ones, the defeats and triumphs.
The 'strengths' of the neurotypical is only relative: It is what they do with ease or instinct that the non-typical must struggle to achieve, or simply cannot achieve at all.
Science begins with an inventory, or a few of them: Actual experiences, emotions, types of breakdowns, and so on. When you apply your intellect to such an inventory, patterns will emerge. Look for them. Prioritize them. Organize them.
Doing that work can indeed be helpful to others like yourself, and teach them to better navigate the world.
Speaking as a professor, isn't that what we do in classes all the time? We have organized the topic of some subject to make it easier for people to understand and grasp, avoiding the most common pitfalls of misconceptions by explaining things more clearly, and thus we create scientists. Because others before us did all the grunt work of building an inventory and organizing it, so the student (meaning your readers) need not repeat that, they can just see what was observed and how it was, in the end, interpreted in a useful way, avoiding the errors and wrong turns that actually did occur along the way.
That is the service you can provide, and in truth a person with the condition is ideal if they can think and write about it with firsthand knowledge.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads