Dyslexic writing 2:

As a dyslexic, you have an advantage as a writer. Yes, that’s right an advantage. OK, the letters might move around and spelling may be some arcane art that you have a vague grasp of and can never really hope to master, but you also have a visual ability which lets you construct mental images in far greater depth.

Dyslexic minds work differently. We have an ability to detach from reality and envisage scenarios which can be turned around and explored from different viewpoints. This gives dyslexic writers a creative advantage when setting the scene for their stories.

Whenever you read a story, you need that visceral feeling of what the world is like, how it smells, what it feels like. You need to experience fear, love, hate, excitement and anguish in the world to really experience it. But those things don’t come through in the description, no matter how detailed those descriptions might be. The feeling of actually walking in an author’s world comes through the protagonist; the character who lets you vicariously experience the world.

The characters an author creates are the vehicle through which the audience experiences the world. He or she is your eyes, your pain sensor, your emotional conduit. A strong protagonist is essential to any story.

That’s why I decided to write without one.

After deciding on a setting, I set about writing as detailed a description as I could without a protagonist. There was no one to explore the scenario, it was just an impersonal description of the scene.

I began writing about the setting on a visual level. I described only what my mind’s eye could see. Building up a three-dimensional view of the scene but only from a visual point of view. Once this was exhausted, I moved on to imagine smells and sounds. But still only in a detached way: there was an aroma of flowers, or a fetid reek of rotting meat but never the effect that these may have had.

I managed to write quite detailed descriptions like this, up to a certain point. Then I hit a wall. Whether I was writing about a fantasy setting in a forest or an abandoned city environment, after a few hundred words it became impossible without a character there to interpret what was being seen or experienced.

As I continued writing the description became increasingly dry. You can say that the light is dim, but how dim? The concept is relative. How much light is there? Enough to read by? Little enough that things that go bump in the night might be coming out to play? Dim light means nothing until a character can’t see in front of him or experiences panic in the fading light of evening.

It was while forcing this characterless description, that a protagonist started forming in my mind. The person I needed to explore this setting was coming unbidden to fill the void and explore the world. Inadvertently taking shape in my mind; I found him waiting in the wings ready to transform my two-dimensional description into reality.

Rather than an invented character, he (or she) was needed to convey the depth of my world. The character who found the temperature of the room stifling, who could smell the cut grass on the hot summer air as he lay on the hot clammy bed was taking shape. By trying to consciously avoid him and write only about his surrounding, I had created him and discovered a lot about him.

Being dyslexic makes me think more as a writer.