Aspie authors writing social interaction

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I have written some science fiction stories before, ranging from short stories to attempts at a novel. Once, I left a couple of my stories on a table in my dorm commons room to see if anyone would say something to me about them. No one did respond, so I can either believe no one read them or believe that they were terrible and those who may have read them didn't want to tell me that. Though school, work, and even my hours spent daily on WP have deterred me from starting any new writings of purely self-interest (except for one, a fictional treatise on the history of an mid-Atlantic island nation), I have considered that in the future, after I finish my computer science Bachelor's degree, I might write science fiction as a career. I would want to "test the waters" before jumping into science fiction writing, of course. One of my concerns about going into writing as a career, that is, with the intent to make money off of stories that are popular, is the fact that in most cases individuals with Asperger's Syndrome have difficulty in social interaction and, although it is by no means a requirement of social interaction that there be social interaction between or among any of the human characters, in much of the popular fiction today by such authors as John Gresham, David Brown, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, especially, and etc., it does play a very important role.

A question I have for you all is do you think that someone with Asperger's Syndrome can become a successful author even with his difficulties in social interaction, which may be reflected in his writing, especially in the dialogue?

Another question: Does anyone know of any successful writers who have or have been suspected to have Asperger's Syndrome?

EDIT: clarity

Last edited by hyperbolic on 13 Nov 2006, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You pose an interesting question. I have just completed a correspondence course in writing, and have received high praise from my instructor. But I am always afraid that my characters aren't well rounded enough, or may come across like robots. Since I have never been published, this is something I intend to find out, when I am ready to submit the novel I am working on. My instructor has seen the first three chapters, and her only corrections were for grammer, usage, etc.

Jane Austen
Emily Dickinson
George Bernard Shaw
Henry Thoreau
Mark Twain
Isaac Asimov
Garrison Keillor

Wanna form a writing group?

That would be cool!

I know I'll be in that list when my story comes out!

Funnily enough, the conversations are one of my favourite parts of writing, and the descriptions are my personal demon. Maybe someday we'll be able to credit each other's writing!

I'm not sure of the procedure to form a writing group - how about we just continue this thread? Maybe we could get a sticky for it so others can join.

Anybody got something they wrote to start us off?

Maybe a visual writing prompt?
http://first50.wordpress.com/files/2006 ... ers_sm.jpg

Or a verbal writing prompt?
"Who told you that you couldn't, and you wanted to prove them wrong?"

Ideas, anybody?

Wow, are you sure about Garrison Keillor, Twain, and Thoreau? These three writers are my heros. I've been complimented by Professors and Professionals in regards to my writing. Are you sure of these folks were Aspies? Fascinating!

My longest lasting and most powerful obsession is writing. I write quite a bit to release steam and clear my mind. I'm quite impressed with most of my work. I work on novel steady until finish it. I have one thriller set 20 years in the future where evalangical Christians become just as fanatic as Extremist Muslims and I'm working on a novel where the male side of humanity is destroyed by genetic warfare (sci-fi of course) though both are mere transcripts (buggy as ****) I love them and one day I will finish correcting and try to get them published.

In otherwords: Aspies write just as well or better then NT's.

Or worse. You should have seen my writing skills when I was six! Spelling, grammar and typos everywhere!

Aspies having trouble writing about social interaction?

About every short story I try to write is about social interaction in the high school setting. Often times, my characters observe and observe but end up as confused as they started.

Dialogue, though, I will admit, is one of my weak points. I've always had trouble getting my characters to have the rhythmic patterns of the English spoken in most high schools. All my characters speak in a formal, stiff English.

I like the idea of a writing group - count me in as well. Maybe it'll be the spark that gets me to finish something for a change. I have four unfinished short stories from the past three months. All good premises that I just abandoned.

I'll do what I can to help. My big skill in writing is imagery but I like writing tension into the plot and having unexpected endings.

Thanks for your replies. And keep replying! It's encouraging to know that there are other aspiring Aspie writers out there.

I can think about some of the names as they relate to Asperger's, and some I am undecided on, while others I can see as Aspies. I've listened to Garrison Keillor's Prarie Home Companion before. He seems to have the crowd so under his control that I'm not sure whether he is an Aspie or not. (His voice and writing style have literally been described as hypnotic.) Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was certainly a free thinker and eccentric for his time. I've read parts of the guilded age. Everything he writes has this kind of strange humor too, which gives his works their distinctiveness, and I believe it does resemble in some very small way, at the very least, some of the jokes around WP. (Call me insane but I feel that WP has a parti.cular sense of humor.) The name Mark Twain, of course, is a clever wordplay. Isaac Asimov writes in a very detailed way and his dialog can be at times rather prosy (although the ideas behind them are very strong and that is what gives his stories his weight, the ideas, more so than the characters); however, I have read that Asimov had a great sense of timing and could give a speech within an alotted amount of time until exactly at the end of the alotted time, without ever looking at a watch. On the other hand, Asimov had poor manual dexterity. Emily Dickinson was a bit off the wall and isolated herself a lot--a role model, I don't know, a genius, certainly, but was she Aspie? I don't know enough to tell. BTW, where did you get this list?

It's great that someone has thought about starting an Aspie writing group. Though school, work, and my hours daily spent on WP will deter me from writing much for the time being, maybe I can participate with you guys on some basic level. Maybe I'll submit some things I've already written. Once they are cleaned up a bit, that is.

I got the list from a site whose url I didn't keep - found it through Google. Determining AS is a judgment call - I guess there's no terrific authority.

I can never decide what to write about, especially fiction.

Dialogue comes easy to me, I write that first. But I can't move a character across the street, or across the room.

How do you decide what to write about?

I think the way many of us learn to socialise through logical determination could lead to a beautiful writing style.

You know, I always thought I'd have a lot of trouble with that too, but when I started writing stories again this past year it was a lot easier than I thought. I guess I've had a lot of time and opportunities to absorb people's speech patterns and style of speaking, and I have a sister who is always up on the latest slang, which I'm terrible at. Sometimes I kind of "listen" to the characters' voices in my head, if that makes any sense, to see what a natural speech pattern for them would be like. I've read that it is a good idea to flesh out the characters on paper or in your head before even writing the story-know their interests, personality, family, quirks, etc. I think that can help with dialogue as the better you know your character, the better you can imagine the kinds of things they might say. The thing I really have trouble with though, is imagining how a character would react to something or what his or her motives are. I have always had a great deal of difficulty predicting how people will react to things, and why they do the things they do.

I used to have a lot of trouble thinking of things to write about too, but awhile ago I read some advice by one of my favourite authors to think about a time that we felt the most afraid, or embarassed, or happy, and start changing things around, and seeing where that goes, and that helped a lot. Sometimes I also get ideas from things other people have told me, as long as I know what they're talking about and can imagine myself in their shoes. I've also developed a strong sense of direction in regards to the theme of my stories-I like to write about human frailty and what it means to be human and the dangers associated with defining humanity by strength and capacity for accomplishment, people who are overlooked or don't fit in, that sort of thing. I don't know how useful any of this is though-I've just started writing stories again in the last year after a long break from it, and as far as I know my stories could be horrible and I could be a complete failure at it I'm not a very good judge of my own stuff.

I plan on becoming a film director/writer, and I am practicing now by RPing with other people on AIM (If ya wanna rp, check my signature. ^_^). I find that in this one RP that I've been doing lately with this one person, I've been focusing on character interaction and development more than I ever had before. So I believe I have broken the barrier of not knowing how people act, and I think I can continue on to my desired career! ^_^ (Even though in this RP, I've slipped an Aspie in. XD But I almost always do anyway.)