I need an autistic writer's opinion...

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I'm trying to write a story about an older brother taking care of his autistic little sister after their mother died. It has a lot of negative things because her brother knows nothing about her condition and how to care for her. He is often mean to her and triggering her meltdowns and outbursts because of his lack of knowledge but in the end he understands it and such...

The thing is, every time I try to write it, she seems to act more like this big brat who hasn't learned a thing about how to act. I don't want her to come off as being that. I want her to come off as showing autistic traits such as her lack of social interaction, being afraid of her brother's wife, her routine and hate for change... those kind of things. But I just can't seem to portray that and in the end... she ends up being this really bratty sixteen year old who cries over everything for not getting her way.

Like for example, Kumiko (the girl) doesn't know how to make her bed and asks her brother to help her make it but he says no to her in a mean way, calling her a brat and all that. So she starts crying and calls him mean saying how he isn't the brother she looked up to and all that... then throws a pillow at him.

All I can think of when i picture her is being this eight year old in a sixteen year old girl's body who carries around a teddy bear and dresses like a little girl and such.

What I'm asking is... can someone inspire some ideas for me so that maybe I can make this story come off as being so bratty and such? D: I really need some help here. I'm having the hardest time...

You can try having Little Sister come to her brother's aid when an accident happens, or you can have her fix something for Big Brother when he really needs it. Autism isn't all bad as the media and Autism Speaks makes it out to be. We have talents and can contribute like everybody else.

These 4 movies all feature an NT male who has to take care of autistic brother:
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
The Black Balloon
The Wizard
Rain Man

Maybe you can get some idea from there.

Update. I read the story. So far, so good. I'm curious to see where you're headed with it.

It is kind of hard for me to do, because I hardly ever write fiction. Maybe you can talk about the blast of sound when her big brother yells at her or how what she feels when he snickers at her. What about her routine? What about her looking forward to her favorite show that he has never missed, and finds that every time it is on, brother is watching some kind of sports or something like that. Or how about that she is not allowed to do some of her favorite tasks? It seems that since you are autistic, you may be better to describe her viewpoint on things first.

Okay, read your draft. I write songs and I'm a self-diagnosed Aspie, so I'm not really well acquainted with autistics... but I also tend to go overboard critiquing creative projects like this, so... use or ignore as you choose, it's your book. But these are some observations after reading the first chapter...

Before addressing the little sister: Having a hard time with the idea that "she didn't have that (autism) eleven years ago," although he might be surprised at how much further behind she's fallen... yeah, even later in this chapter, you talk about how she had always been "weird" and how a movie always used to calm her down and how she liked her macaroni and cheese "just so."

There are some pretty obvious attempts in this first chapter to "explain to the reader what autism is" sort of like some of the science-detective shows on TV nowadays have the cops talking to each other about how some DNA thing works or something. Maybe slow this down so that the story only tells these things as fast as the brother learns them. In particular, it seems like the wife knows a lot about autism already, maybe this needs to be more of a learning experience for her, too.

As far as the brother goes... why did he leave eleven years ago and why has he been entirely out of touch with the family? Did he leave _because_ of the little sister? I might find this story more believable if he [i]knows[/i] about her condition and is just freaked out knowing that now he's going to have to take care of her... maybe there needs to be a chapter before this one to establish HIM better as a character. The way this is written, by the third paragraph of the first chapter, you've thrown us into the depths of the story - maybe a little too quickly? And then your title - "My Little Sister Has Autism" - we know what the story is before we even open the book. What if you just called it "My Little Sister" ?

Maybe instead of the wife being the expert on autism, make it so that she knows nothing about it and, despite being out of the picture for 11 years, he now has to explain to HER (the wife) what it is... or reverse the story so that Kumiko is the wife's little sister and the guy IS totally in the dark about this. And he feels caught between his responsibility to his sister and his responsibility to his wife.

Okay, so, as far as the sister coming across as "bratty," I think if you just stop making the brother refer to her as bratty, we're not going to have that impression. Yes, she yells when she arrives at the new house, but I think that anyone who's seen Rain Man will feel like, all in all, she's adapting to the new situation rather well.

Although some of that may even be because as I read that first chapter, it does feel like she's an eight year old, and I'm picturing her that way... you may need to do a bit more to establish her as a 16-year-old in this first chapter and then have the meltdowns start in the next chapter. She's got a 16-year old body and maybe you need to have the brother (and sister-in-law) be aware of that at the funeral, on the drive home, that first night. Some autistic girls tend to overdo the "sexy" thinking it will help them make friends.

I assume you've planned out where the story is going - she does a bunch of autistic things, has meltdowns and all that, and in each chapter he learns something new (something that you also want your readers to learn about autism). So you want your NT readers to start out identifying with the brother so that, as he learns these things, the reader learns them as well. Again, to do that, you need to start out portraying him in a way that makes the reader like him, feel like, "yeah, that's me." As it's written now, he comes across from the first time we meet his as somebody who does NOT want to take this responsibility, who cannot handle this situation, who for some reason left the family and has been out of touch for eleven years. Give us reasons to understand why he is this way. He starts out as a good person, but then he's thrown into this situation he can't handle, but the reader has accepted him as the good guy, and now they're cheering for him to learn how to cope.

I dunno, hope some of that is helpful; if not, feel free to ignore...