Different anon here! I have a character who's blindness is incident related, but it's been several years since then and the story isn't heavily focused on his trauma (or at least that specific trauma, as he has others that aren't related to blindness)
This was before I knew injury-based blindness was a harmful/potentially harmful trope though, so now I'm worried that I'll have to rewrite his backstory entirely to avoid writing about experiences I don't have, or pushing any harmful tropes that are already pushed far too much.
What do you think? Could I still use that as part of his story without focusing too much on that specific traumatic event, or do you think it's better for me to discard it entirely?
The Accident Narrative/Going Blind Through Trauma trope and How to Make It Better - (I’m just calling it that because I don’t know if this thing has a name)
My problem with this trope - and the problem many people have with it- is very specific. I’ll try to break it down for you so it is easier to understand. My problem is basically with the execution.
Characters go blind unrealistically often from traumatic accidents in media. Mainly because it creates a lot of drama, which is fair, if cheap. It is also a good story starter if the story will be about them being all sad that they’re blind. These stories usually focus heavily on the blind part rather than the trauma part, and they paint blindness as the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Including death. Sometimes the character grows out of this feeling and sometimes they don’t.
The way you portray this is what changes the narrative.
I like that your story takes place several years after the incident although how well it is done will depend on the portrayal of the resulting blindness. Blindness can be tough, but avoiding considering the incident a tragedy that ended his vision could help. Not having too much of a woe-is-me attitude toward it will also help. Starting the story years after the incident creates beneficial distance.
With this in mind, the story won’t be - about - him going blind and then adapting and possibly being sad, possibly not sad about it. That would be a type of story that is probably best left to blind people who lost their vision later in life. Your story avoids this issue by starting the story well after the incident occurred. When you said you didn’t want to write about something you hadn’t experienced, to tell a story that wasn’t yours to tell, this is what you want to avoid. If you aren’t writing about going blind/being blind, you’re good, at least for this question.
So, you have avoided writing about the experience of going blind (and having that be the focus of your story) and starting the story at another time so your character can have some distance from his trauma. Your story will not be showing your character tragically losing his sight and learning to adapt. -dramatic sniffle-
The other part of this ask that really works for me is the part about focusing on different traumas. It sounds like the character is going to have more to them, and the idea of the Blindness Trauma being not as significant as other more recent traumas sounds good and true to life. It also takes the focus away from any implications of blindness as particularly tragic and all-encompassing. Your character will expirience different things just as anyone else would. Focusing more heavily on other things in his life is a good idea. That, coupled with the distance from the initial traumatic incident makes it okay with me.
Here are a few other options for you or other readers who are writing incident-related blindness:
1. Have them focus on the traumatic incident itself rather than the resulting blindness.
Yes, going blind can change your life. It can be scary and someone may need to grieve their vision loss as they would any other major change. However, this doesn’t have to be the dramatic take-up-an-entire story thing either.
If you decided to write flashbacks, you can show the character mostly dealing with trauma, with blindness as a reminder of it. This puts the focus on the traumatic incident itself healing from trauma rather than trying to heal from blindness. When sighted people write about this, it comes out as awkward, not relatable, and impossible to separate voice-type things - like worrying about never being able to marry - from the authors own opinion or worries about blindness.
Focusing on the trauma of say, extreme injury can help with that. It is important to make a distinction for the reader, who usually goes in not knowing much about blindness and conceptualizing it as one of the worst things that could happen to them. Make it as clear as you can that the character is upset due to trauma rather than being devastated their life is over because they are blind.
2. Have the trauma happen off-screen / have them not remember it much due to young age
It sounds like this is also what you’re going to do. You could mention the traumatic incident briefly, without too many dramatic details. A few descriptive sentences should be enough. You could write it for reference and only take a few samples from it you liked. This keeps the focus away from drama for drama’s sake. It also disrupts the usual narrative, putting you farther away from the Accident Narrative or trope. You could simply have had the character be too young to remember much detail.
3. Add more blind characters
This one is good for any story. You should always trace your logic for topics like the one you presented or consider how to do things better, but one easy way to avoid readers thinking all blind people are like your character (which they might), you can add another blind character or more who were born blind or went blind at a very young age. Who don’t struggle with being blind generally. This exposes your readers to more ideas of blind people.
When your story is standing on the line between nuanced character and meeting a stereotype, you should absolutely have at least one other if not a few blind characters. In fact, I would be surprised if a story like this didn’t have other blind characters and, if I were reading this story randomly, I might even feel less forgiving or open to what was different about the Accident Narrative this time.
Thank you for asking this question. It is kind of challenging to answer and I had to rewrite this a few times. Basically, you want to do what you can to disrupt the usual portrayals of blindness because there are actually so few and most are made by people who aren’t blind or even disabled. You cannot make this trope or stereotype go away, but you can try to shake it up. Because this can be done differently, to avoid writing about adapting the tragic blindness, I am ok with this type of story.
I don’t know if this one is harmful exactly, but it is frustrating to see and can certainly lead to some harmful ideas, such as blindness only being tragic even when someone was born blind. I have a review coming up for a book called Blind that might be helpful, as well as a post called Tropes I’m Tired Of that I hope will help. Your ask definitely helped me consider more ways this trope could be made more bearable and concentrate on what exactly I dislike about it.
All that said, this is not a post encouraging people to use this narrative in all their projects. Only if you feel like it is necessary and fits the character. I would like for this trope to be less common than being born blind or going blind in a way that isn’t so dramatic and, possibly, abrupt. When most characters go blind through traumatic accidents it contributes to people’s idea that blindness is not only traumatic for anyone at any age, but also cannot be anything but a tragedy.
I really hope this helps. Of course, I would really encourage a few different sensitivity readers with this story. Just to get different perspectives. There is another blind person who also offers sensitivity reading at @sensitivityreaders and it might help to get them or someone else, in addition to me. Because I would love to read this sometime.
