Tanya McGee Wheatley 💜☘️Why is it that authors who portray visually impaired people in their books always portray them as having had surgery or some miracle to give them sight as the way to go? Why not have a totally or partially blind person be the genius detective or whatever? Why must that person have once been blind but can now see? #Blind #BlindFrustration #PetPeeve
Alex Hall@blindquilter I've thought about this before. My guess is because a book written from the perspective of a blind character would necessarily be devoid of visuals. The vast majority of readers are sighted. Sighted people need visuals. No matter how something feels, sounds, or tastes, the sighted reader would feel a lack of detail and reference points. I'm sure a compelling story could be written this way, but I doubt most authors could manage it. Just my guess.
@alexhall Possibly but if it is written in the third-person perspective, all the visual details should be there. If written in first-person, that might be different. 🤷♀️
@blindquilter True, third person omniscient would work. What I read tends to be first person or third person limited.
Mike McCaffrey@alexhall @blindquilter I would absolutely love a Sherlock/Watson style story where the super smart detective is blind and relies on his sidekick to vividly describe the scene so he can figure out what happened. It could even be written entirely in dialog without any third person narration needed to set the scene for the reader.
@mikemccaffrey @alexhall That would be interesting but I’d like to see something more modern with the blind sleuth using technology to ‘see’ the scene. 😀
@blindquilter @alexhall Nothing saying that Watson is a human!
If you do want an AI sidekick detective story, I recommend Anabel Scheme by Robin Sloan, which was way ahead of its time.
