Is A.S.D. a major handicap to creating characters in fiction

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As with any fiction, the more you have experienced in life, the more you can write about. This includes reading a lot of fiction. You get ideas here and there, and then start assembling them.
Remember some very successful fiction has some rather cardboard characters, I remember this being said of "Jurassic Park". It was the central idea, not the characters that sold the book. On the other hand we read about Sherlock Holmes stories because we're fascinated by his character.
Don't be afraid that AS will hold you back, write your heart out and do your best ! !

I don't find it difficult at all. In fact in some way I think my AS has GIVEN me the ability to write so creatively. I am a very visual person, and I allow my characters to come into my mind. They "introduce" themselves to me, and I'm almost like an observer, watching what my characters do.

I quite agree. I recently started writing a story and BAM! I had a central character appear and now I realize I can build a series of stories around this person ! !!

I just ran across Kurt Vonnegut's '8 rules for writing', which might be a help. I can't cite the source (might get banned..., but I'm sure it's copied from somewhere else....

Not at all an issue for me. Besides which, being an outcast is almost a prerequisite for being an observational writer.

Don't know if any research has been done. Have played at writing a scifi/fantasy story on and off for a good while. Several friends really have enjoyed following its development.
Have thoughts but will have to put them together and come back. Not sure how much my Aspeberger's was in effect 20 years ago when I started messing about with the thing.

 
Have nothing to back it up with right now but part of me wants to say that it is not necessarily so.

 
Understanding that it is hard to do, do try to write out notes and things about your characters that give an idea about who they are - and if it is not totally satisfying keep the satisfying parts and count it a step toward success as you build the character in stages.
Maybe if you can't pin a single name on a quality of a character write ot a little "sketch" scene showing how that character acts in that situation. Then later it might be possible to go back and say, okay since he or she acted that way they likely might have been feeling this.
Or' sometimes the story doesn't need how a character felt in that scene, but just what they did. And maybe this character needs to be 'fleshed out' more or maybe less depending on their role in your story, so not all of them ned the same investment of yourself in their creation.

Found 'em!...

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Not sure that any of these apply to "Slaughterhouse Five" ....
Perhaps he just joking ?????

     Hallo - although I started this discussion, I have been away from the forum for a little while; but thanks to all those who made comments on this issue.
     At one time I wanted to reply to many comments in detail, but was inhibited by the thought that I might be thought to be flooding the topic too much. But I still have one main thought on the subject, and will talk about that now.
     Although I have tried to write fiction in the past, I do find creating good characters one of the most difficult parts, and I do think my probable Asperger's syndrome is a direct cause of this, that it is a real handicap. That's why I started this topic, to see if others agreed - and they don't seem to, by and large.
     Rather oddly, there were occasions when incidental characters came out more vividly than the central character from whose viewpoint I was writing the story, although these incidental characters were maybe not portrayed in any depth, but just given a few distinctive mannerisms or a memorable appearance or a certain quirk of personality which made them somewhat appealing and easy to remember. I can't necessarily do this just by choosing to, and such instances would seem to be the result of the lucky chance of happening to choose the right mannerisms for the character.
     But when it comes to more important characters explored in some depth, I have tended to find that they often seemed to be largely a disguised version of myself - that all my main characters were in a sense almost the same character - myself. It seemed that, in any depth, I just couldn't get into the headspace of anyone markedly different from myself.
     This seems definitely to be a handicap: it is surely a limitation if, as a writer, you can create only characters who are a variant of yourself, and might make your writing rather monotonous overall. On the other hand, if I were to take up fiction writing again (which I haven't done for some years now), I wonder if it would be better to just accept the fact that I can't create diverse characters convincingly, and instead of trying uselessly and unconvincingly to do so, maybe it would be better to just quite overtly create similar characters, and concentrate on doing it as well as I can.
     Any thoughts on this?
     Thanks.

Regards, Michael.

Maybe you should write about a society of clones.
Everybody will be the same... basically.

Also, writing about a society could be a solution. Try to use your creativity for not having to use depth characters. Go around your problem for creating something no one ever seen.

I love writing fiction and fanfiction, but I agree that it can be difficult to write original characters. When I do, they usually share many of my AS traits.

I've started doing some playwriting recently, and one thing I've heard from multiple sources is that I have a very good ear for dialogue. I'd think it only stands to reason, since as an AS adult who's fairly well integrated, attention to how people talk to each other is something I've had to pay attention to and learn along the way.

It takes a little more effort to really flesh out the characters, but that's, I think, something that should be getting effort just as a mark of good writing.

I never really considered this, but I believe it might be true. I've come up with two story ideas, and both characters are very much the introspective, quiet types. I think my cast of characters, in whatever I write, would be quite a strange one. Think of David Lynch films.

I've been wondering the same thing as the OP for a while. Writing fiction was one of the first creative things I tried. I wrote a lot as a teenager, but I could see back then already that my work was flat and my characters non-existent. I wrote for "texture", where I would create moods with situations and description of objects, but when it came to people, my work was flat. I stopped writing out of frustration with this. Fifteen years later I started again just for fun, and noticed I was able to better explain and build characters, but they somehow always related to experiences that were my own, or belonging to people I knew. I still prefer to write about mood/setting. I'm not sure if it's common amongst writers to rely so heavily on personal experiences - I still assume writers are supposed to have more imagination.

I had a friend ask me why I was so good at writing interpersonal interactions when I was so crappy at understanding it in real life. Um, because writing is slower?
I start with a personality profile. Usually something simpler than Meyers-Briggs. I do that so I will know ahead of time how such a person would react to stimuli.
The last book I just finished was very hard for me, and I still need to go through and make sure all the reactions fit the personality of the main character. It was a challenge to me because the character is based on a son of a friend of mine's. He is totally irrational and self-serving and trying to dump his family and have the freedom of an adult when he has none of the skills of an adult. He's a teenage male, and absolutely nothing like me!! ! I kept wanting to change the character's behaviour because nobody should act like that. I would need to remind myself, How would -------- act in this situation? And how would he justify it to himself. After all, he would not see himself as I see him.