So. Feel a bit silly for asking this, but, meh. I am currently in the process of createing a book in COG, will probably post it in hosted when I am done, cause from what I remember of the COG reqs, you need to have an actuall book out? Anyway. The MC is blind. I am blind myself, but am a little unsure on how to write a blind MC, especially since the majority of the community of this forum, is sighted. Suggestions? Thoughts?
O. When I say, “blind” I mean, totally without sight, since there are lots of gradiants of LV/blind/light perception, ETC. Anyway.
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No need to feel silly for asking, it’s what the community here is for after all. I wouldn’t really know exactly what to suggest but writing from experience can actually make for some powerful writing in itself. Maybe writing a story with a character who suffers from a disability, be that blindness or an inability to walk. Perhaps don’t make that their defining trait. Unless of course the story focuses around that aspect, if I’m making sense? Also I can’t really explain it but the concept of a blind MC is different from a lot of the other stories you find on here. It might make for interesting reading. Adds a different perspective to a character.
There is another Work in Progress, not sure if you’re aware of it already, but the MC is blind in that story also I believe. Might be worth taking a look for some inspiration perhaps? It’s called “Until the colours bleed gray”.
I’ll post a link.
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okay, well I start with saying that I don’t have much experience with blind peoples and community . That said, what you need is a demo that you post on these forums. You will get feedbacks, and you will beta test and stuff like that .
That goes without saying, you will also have to code the game yourself.
As for your question:
1- Like you said, there are different kind of blindness. So you will have to decide if your mc is completely blind, were they born blind? Did they have an accident or illness that made them blind?
2- Once you have decided that, you need to figure out how much the blindness play in your story. Is your story about a character struggle with the blindness, or is it just a side characteristic ?
The difference will direct how much details you need to pay attention to, and how your story unfold.
The fact that you are blind yourself, then you have 1st hand experience about the subject and how it feel. Most authors try to imagine how something could feel, but it really depand on the peoples in general. Not everyone had the same experience, not everyone deal with a similar illness or disability the same way.
3- How to write them? Similar to any others characters, while taking in consideration the limitation upon them.
Exemple: an mc will walk, talk, drink, make hands movements. But a blind one will have to memorise their surroundering to be able to walk without bumping into anything .
I know some rely on dogs companions to move around. Others have a cane.
Losing your sight, mean usually that your others sense are sharper. An mc like that could hear or smell something another NPC who isn’t blind couldn’t . Like a gaz leak? a soft knock on a door?
It’s the details like these that will shape the mc and how they act , interact and react to thing, in comparaisons to the others characters you will create.
4- Once you get an idea about how this mc feel, and a general idea of their roles in the story and the level of how much being blind play in the story. That’s when you start thinking about how to make this mc that everyone outta there can play as, yet be different for each person.
Just because alot of readers around here have sight, it doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of thing. Since there are many stories where we get to play a werewolf (Nobody around here is one), a Pirate (They don’t even exist!) and yet we still can.
That’s where imagination come to play, your writing skill will cement how the game goes, the atmosphere, the dialogues, the world where everything happen .
Your job as a writer, is to write your story and immerse us as much as you can .
Anyway, hope this help you a little. Good luck with your story!
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Hello there! Just got a notif on this and decided to check it out haha!
I’d say I’m extremely far from being an expert on this considering the fact that I am not blind myself and writing is fairly new to me so take what I say with a grain of salt. I don’t want to misguidedly lecture you on something I have less insight on!
Going along with what others have said, I agree that you should first determine the degree to which mc being blind factors into the story. Is it simply that mc is blind and that’s just how it is, or will it be pointed out for plot reasons, etc?
For example, I like to be open that my story can never truly capture the genuine experience a blind person may have, both due to me being sighted and also due to the magical and plot elements that are affected by the mc’s blindness. However, there’s also a more realistic route you could take. Really I suggest thinking about your story, its world, and how it pairs with your mc first. Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about how sighted people will consume this game right off the bat, maybe try writing out some snippets and then gaging how the audience reacts to them first if that’s a concern of yours?
I’m sorry if I couldn’t offer more detailed help! I’d love to hear about your story and wish you the best of luck, because I for one am absolutely pumped that there’s more talk about mcs that are blind and the writing that can come from it!
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so I too am blind. However, for me personally, I have almost no interest in writing about the experience of blind people, because it is so familiar to me and thus not very interesting. However what I have done is to think about how being blind effects me, and then generalise that into the experience of my characters. For example, its common with blind people, and other minorities too, that people have said some form of, “you’re not like I expected,” or worse, “you’re not like those other blind people.” Which can build in the expectation that there is some amount of “passing” or seeming “normal” that a person can perform to be seen as less of a member of their minority. 1 of my stories was about someone else, a mage in this case, dealing with that same perception. Their arc (spoiler if I ever finish and post it) was about realizing that that entire way of thinking was false and rebeling against that system.
So think about what aspects of being blind lend themselves towards good storytelling, and then weave those into the character’s experience.
Whether you choose to write about blindness directly, as you seem to be considering, or more obliquely, as I tend to prefer, its important to find a balance between expbboring both the drawbacks and benefits of whatever you’re exploring. We’re unused to thinking of blindness as having upsides, but many sighted people cannot move around their house when the lights are off, or there aren’t lights at all. When the power goes out, for instance, a blind person is in some ways more equipped to navigate the environment than their sighted family. Now, arguably that’s not all that interesting, and may even veer into Inspiration porn (the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability.)[ but you can see how this can be expanded.
All or most of the character’s struggles probably shouldn’t center around their blindness. The new daredevil is said to be very good in its blindness representation, though I haven’t actually watched it yet so can’t comment personally. I am a fan of Toph from Last Airbender, though. She isn’t a perfect representation, but she is very good. Robin Hob, also has some surprisingly good blindness representation in her later books, though the blindness also goes along with a good deal of cptsd, which can make it slightly harder for people` to know what aspects of the character’s experience are from the blindness and which because of the ptsd, however I do think its a worthwhile series for this.
If you want to go more specifically into what your goals are for the story, I can try to offer some more advice, but I hope something here has been helpful.
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To add to the advice pile,
I would try to avoid making “MC is blind” the entire plot of the story. It should be a character trait rather than the crux of the story.
Other than the MC being blind, what is the story about?
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From the stories I’ve read with a blind character they capitalized really using other senses or like @E_RedMark said included guide dogs, canes, or other devices. I can’t say I personally know what it’s like to be blind but for me I’ve always connected to the emotional part of a blind MC.
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Did you… maybe switch those around? lol
In all seriousness, I do agree with that point. As a sighted person I would be fascinated to play a game with a blind mc, especially one written by someone who knows what they’re talking about. I like to play games that allow me to experience a different perspective, and I don’t think the fear of what others might think should stop you from writing it.
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I’ve already got an idea on what the story is going to be about, the fact that the MC is blind is more of a secondary feature to the story itself. The only thing I was really struggling with was introducing new characters, without having those characters explain themselves, so I guess I could always have the team that the character will end up working with just have one of them explain the new characters. Something that effect.
Also, MC probably isn’t going to be blind the entire series, though that’s partially due to another character and a in universe system sort of? I’ll have to flush that particular part out, and it won’t come out until at least book 2, I’m gonna make this a series.
If I can figure out how to post stuff on that dashing in sight, and then get a link in the WIP‘s, I’ll probably do that. I’ve almost got 10 chapters so far, so yeah. Thanks for all the positive feedback 
Also, on a more lighthearted note, how do we know that it’s actually pirates that don’t exist, and werewolves do, they simply making a cover story for them as pirates?
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If you’re asking how to put experience into written words, there are two things more that might help: describing the obvious, and writing “plainly.”
The “obvious” would be things that are ordinary to a blind person–whatever those might be.
As for “plain” writing, that just means writing without too much adornment, like metaphors, allusions, overly complicated prose, and so on. Concretely describing things as close to reality as possible will make it easier for readers to understand the unfamiliar, and connect to common experiences.
Details will help flesh things out, too. Mentioning different degrees of blindness would be a good one, since fictional works rarely acknowledges them. Another big thing I’d suggest mentioning (but not necessarily giving the MC) is Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder. A majority of the totally blind have it, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it even talked about in fiction with blind characters, let alone depicted. It’s a major thing to exclude. Even when it’s treated, it’s pretty sucky and exasperating to have–and I’m speaking from experience. (Although I’m sighted, I have it due to another condition of mine. I imagine it’d be more complicated to have it without sight!)
Finally, from a gameplay perspective: a blind MC would certainly be different, as @Autumn19 said. I’d be very interested to play a game that can offer an alternative experience.
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The only problems I’m really anticipating with this, would just be describing new characters, if you have no one around to helpfully describe them to you. I could probably circumvent that, and I have some stuff in the works to do that, but. I’ll write some more stuff, once I figure out how to post a demo, I’ll do that and then probably use the Feedback to edit and upgrade and stuff.
Just last week I was thinking that I’d like to read a book with a blind protagonist, so I’d definitely be interested to see how this turns out. As for describing new characters, maybe describe their tone of voice or how deep they sound? Or how they pause between words, that sort of thing. Descriptions that you don’t need to see in order to recognise. Maybe they are very gruff, or speak in a sing-song like manner. Those are just my thoughts, maybe they aren’t any good. Unless that isn’t what you meant with your question.
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If you’re going to write an mc with the same blindness as you do, aren’t you the best person to do it? Blindness written by sighted writers often misrepresent. Because this is a cyoa, I want to read from a perspective from an actual blind person. The small things a sighted person would not easily realise such as how certain texts are difficult to read in text to speech programs. How you don’t know what profile pictures people use. Etc.
I’d suggest writing from your own perspective. The narration should be how you experience the world.
Btw, someone suggested Until The Colours Bleed Grey but keep in mind there’s some sort of unrevealed plot twist that lets mc know what it’s like to see colours as if they’d seen it before.
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what I have kind of sort of done, partly by accident partly on purpose, is kind of done a bit of a hybrid, where as the MC you’re totally blind, and you experience the world through that, but since I have a bunch of cut scenes to other characters, you kind of sort of get descriptions? I don’t know it was a bit accidental.
I’m just running through the stuff I have now, will probably write another chapter or two, just to get to a point, and then post it? I also actually have to figure out how to post it, and then get a link to that in the forums. If anybody would be able to assist me with doing that that would be appreciated.
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I’m looking forward to seeing your WIP!
I have no clear idea how to assist since I’m not sure what you know or how the site looks like from a non-visual perspective. I’m sure you read through this: Make your own games COG
But the simpler way is to upload scene files to dashingdon (Link to dashingdon).
You register, and then “Create Game”, and “upload assets”. What you should be uploading is only the text files in your scene folder. That is, startup.txt, choicescript_stats.txt, and other chapter files you might have. Afterwards, you can post the link to this forum to share your WIP.
Yes this!!! I’ll be the first one to say that mc being blind in my story is not so much meant to be an accurate depiction of living life blind and more connecting to themes that have yet to be revealed, so yeah mc being like “ohoho yes I know what purple is” is definitely not a good jump in a more realistic story. I feel like kind of a doop for not realizing to mention it in my first comment haha!
I also agree that you’re going to be the best person for reference on describing characters from mc’s perspective. If I’m reading this correctly (I hope so, but alas sleepiness is taking a toll on my comprehension skills) then I think that a few small breaks where perspective changes to another character is a great idea for what you want to accomplish! It both offers a chance to describe characters if you so choose to do so and also provides a chance to add more depth to the character the perspective is coming from.
I’ll wait until your story is ready to be put out on here, but there can also be chances to add more characterization/descriptions depending on the genre/overall story setup. For example, say the story involves agents or something along those lines, mc can find files on characters that give information that mc wouldn’t have known otherwise and so on. But that’s just one specific instance, really like I said before context in the story will really help with this!
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That was me, I was aware that the main character wouldn’t remain blind, and there are some others factors at work in the story. But it was the only story I’ve ever seen on this platform to approach the subject in any context. So I thought it might be somewhat helpful to an extent.
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Thanks for the link to the Dashing Dawn sight. Not quite sure the process to link a link in this forum to my game, but I have a bit to work that out.
Also, thanks for the suggestions. I am, going to have it sort of like that. I was writeing a book for a while, another one, and in that book there was an agency, though it has several branches, only 1 corolateing to SN, soopernaturals. So, will use that orgonization. Aah, the grate enemy! Sleepyness! It gets us all, in the end.
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Galaxy- brain thinking. Can’t wait to play your game 
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