Dos And Don’ts of Writing About Mental Illness

Hello everyone! I’ve been pretty quiet on here lately, but I want to get back into posting some more “how to” writing content. I love writing things like this, so today we’re going to dive into a not-at-all-controversial topic: how to handle the topic of mental illness in your writing. It is imperative that mental illness, and those who live with mental illness, are treated with respect, dignity and honesty, so I’ve compiled a few handy Do’s and Don’ts for approaching the topic of mental illness and writing characters with mental illness.

Before we start, I want to make a quick note on language. As I speak about further down in this article, the language we use is important and we should always do our best to respect that. However, people have different preferences about the language used to describe them. In this article, I have mainly used “person first” language (this is because I’m a uni student, and this is what we’re asked to do, and also it bulks out essays wonderfully), e.g. using person/people/characters with mental illness. Occasionally, I have also used the term mentally ill, but since this is not preferred language for many people, I have kept this to a minimum.

With all that out of the way, let’s have a look at mental illness in our writing!

Do…Treat Your Characters Like People

Before we go too deeply into the dos and don’ts of writing characters with mental illnesses, I want to remind you that, at their heart, characters with mental illnesses are characters first and foremost. Just as people with mental illnesses are people first and foremost.

Remember to give your characters with mental illness the same respect and depth you give your non-mentally ill characters. Take the time to flesh them out beyond their condition. Consider their hobbies, their loves, their dislikes, and their dreams. Treat them as you would any other character. When authors take the time to consider their mentally ill characters as actual characters and develop them the same way they develop their other characters, it’s very difficult to go wrong.

Know The Novel: Within The Changeling and the Wolf

Welcome to the next instalment of the Know the Novel linkup! Unfortunately I was a bit behind on schedule this month, so I missed the actual link up, but if you want to check out everyone else who did participate, you can find it on Christine Smith’s blog ! All right, let’s get into it!

1. How’s the writing going overall?

It’s very slow work, it honestly feels like slogging through a tar pit like some poor baby mammoth some days. But yeah, I’m making progress, slow progress is still progress. It’s also a very thorough rewrite, trying to smooth out a lot massive potholes and bumps in the road, which is a lot of work, so of course it’s going to be slow and hard.

2. What’s been the most fun aspect about writing this novel so far?

Definitely hanging out with my characters again, and being able to develop my world more. Everything about this story is so fun, it’s kind of like wish fulfilment for everything I want in a Celtic fantasy book. I love all of it and just being able to immerse myself in this world of Gaelic, werewolves, fae, cults, and my sweet neurodivergent boys.

Know The Novel: The Changeling and the Wolf

Can you believe that next month is NaNoWriMo? I’ve been doing Inktober all month so I’m not sure my brain is quite ready to kick into gear and think about a completely different challenge just yet.

But, nevertheless, I’m here to introduce (or…uh reintroduce ) my NaNoWriMo novel for 2022. I’m going to be participating in the Know The Novel linkup, which is now five years old. Absolutely wild, I remember doing it for the very first time, so that makes me feel very old now. Anyway, let’s move on!

Introducing…

If you’re a dedicated reader of my blog, you may recognise this novel as my project from NaNoWriMo 2020, known then as “The Darkest Night”. Because yes, for the first time I am actually working on an established novel rather than a brand new first draft!

However, I’ve obviously developed this draft quite a lot since I pantsed it back in 2020, with absolutely no outline or anything. So I’m taking a second crack at this story to work on it some more and hopefully get a complete second draft (that has a more coherent plot line, fingers crossed).

Anyway, if you want to check out my original Know The Novel post for The Darkest Night you can find that here, and if you want to check out Christine Smith, who created this link up, you can do it here.

Let’s get into it!

What first sparked the idea for this novel?

The first inkling (pun intended) of this story came from listening to a YouTuber (I can’t remember who it was, so sorry about that) talk about and read excerpts from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings sequel, which he called “The New Shadow”. Unfortunately, Tolkien found the story bitter and depressing (fair enough) and abandoned it 13 pages in.

The story revolves around the land of Gondor, over a 100 years after the downfall of Sauron. Aragorn is dead, and his son now rules. But men have forgotten the true evil of the time when the Lord of the Rings ruled and have grown complacent, which disturbs the main character, Borlas.

Essentially, Borlas and a much younger man, Saelon, get into an argument about the true nature of evil, and Saelon mentions that a cult dedicated to the worship of orcs (and I suppose Sauron or Morgoth by extension) is now rising. Borlas immediately concludes that Saelon is part of this cult, which offends Saelon. Saelon invites Borlas to come to a clandestine meeting that night. Borlas is one of the very last people left who can remember life before the Great Peace, as it’s known, and he believes he would be able to recognise the scent of evil, so he agrees to come.

When he arrives at his home after his argument with Saelon, Borlas steps into his house and is immediately greeted by a “dead silence”, and he smells the old Evil “and recognised it for what it was”.

And there it ends.

Obviously that was not good enough for me, so I decided to finish it.

The Stars Fill Infinity Character Playlists (but it’s just classic rock songs)

I finished my first semester of university, and also my Certificate IV in Auslan, which means that, for the first time all year, I actually have some spare time! I’m hoping this will mean a few blog posts for all you lovely people, before I go back to uni in July! I’ve got some great plans coming up, including the first instalment in my Disability in Fiction critique posts and also the ever faithful mid year freakout book tag, but today I wanted to ease back in with something a little bit quirky and fun.

I grew up listening to classic 80s and 90s rock and not much else. My mum loved the Christian rock bands, like Petra and Whiteheart, and rock operas like The War of the Worlds and Jesus Christ Superstar. My dad liked more mainstream rock, Bryan Adams, Midnight Oil and Bon Jovi.

Anyway, all this to say that recently I’ve been enjoying listening to all those 80s and 90s classics. And as I’ve been listening to them, I’ve been comparing them to some of my characters. So today, I’m here to present you with character playlists for my SFI characters but it’s all 80s and 90s music (and not all rock, contrary to the title).

(A few years ago I did a normal character playlist, which you can check out herehttps://anordinarypen.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/character-playlists/)

Let’s get into it!