Being a Better Writer: Characters with Weaknesses

Welcome back! And welcome newcomers! I've been getting a lot of hits from Reddit's r/writing, so those of you that are new, welcome to Unusual Things!

Now, first things first. Counting today, we are only four days from the release of Colony! I'm keeping track of the numbers, and it has already seen more preorders than Unusual Events. Plus they keep rolling in! Still, that leaves four days for that record to have a nice, high bar by the time of release, so if you haven't pre-ordered your copy of Colony yet, now's the time! Hit the link and go! Or if you've already ordered it but know someone else who will enjoy it, fire them the link! Or share it on Facebook or your social media site of choice! The more eyes get a look, the better!

Right, enough plugging. It's time to talk about writing!

So this week we have a request topic from a reader, but it's one of the ones that is far more into the nuts and bolts end of things. More specifically, it's right into the nitty-gritty of characters, which is something I can really dig into (and deliver on, if my reviews are any indication).

Anyway, this reader wanted to know how to go about writing characters with weaknesses. Specifically, they were curious about how they could go about writing a character with physical disabilities, such as one that was wheelchair bound or missing a limb.

This is an excellent question, because similar to writing about gender, there's definitely a right way to go about it ... and a wrong way.

But I'm not going to launch right into it. We're going to do a bit of a lead-in first. And to do that, I want to talk a little bit about a subject that I've covered before: overpowered and underpowered characters.

You can read the rest of this post at Unusual Things