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I’m writing a story right now where one of the main characters is an autistic child. I have been doing a lot of reading to try to understand just what that would mean to this young man in the situation I’m injecting him into. I got the idea for this a few years ago when I saw the movie Temple Grandin — about a woman with the same name — starring Claire Danes.
The boy is stuck with his mother in the middle of semi-apocalyptic maelstrom so severe as to make them struggle to survive. I call it “semi-apocalyptic” for a reason. You’ll have to read the story to find out what that reason might be.
I wonder if anyone else who might come across this post has done something similar — building a character trait (sometimes called a “flaw”) into a source of drama and character interest?