On Writing and Neurodivergency
MEMBER VOICES
Neuk member Elspeth Wilson interviewed other neurodivergent writers reflecting on how it influences their craft.
When neurodivergent writers are interviewed or spoken about, there’s often an emphasis on their process. How and when do they write, do they have a routine, how does their neurodiversity impact that. And whilst this is all valid, interesting and potentially useful for other writers, there’s a lack of discussion about how neurodiversity impacts writing craft. As neurodivergent authors, we have so much to offer in terms of form and craft as well as representation and process – although perhaps neurodivergent style can be thought of as a kind of representation in and of itself.
“In writing horror, my neurodivergence is a massive gift,” explains Lucy Rose, best-selling author of The Lamb, a folk horror cannibal novel that explores mother-daughter relationships. “My relationship with textures makes me want to crawl out my skin.” As neurodivergent people, we often notice – and are potentially horrified by – small details such as flickering lights, the wrong shape of spoon or a clothing label rubbing against our back. Rose uses these everyday experiences to create a kind of creeping dread; it’s not so much transforming the mundane into the terrifying, but foregrounding the terror that already exists within it.
“The trick to writing good horror is that you don’t show the monster but you let us feel it”, Rose says – a sentiment that will be familiar to many neurodivergent people who are haunted by sensory issues that others may not even notice. And it’s not just horror where noticing small details enriches writing. Tom Newlands points out that “being autistic makes you very interested in the world, and in people, and very driven to learn.” In his literary coming-of-age novel, Only Here, Only Now, Newlands builds a rich sensory world in a coastal town in 90s Fife. “All that information that you take in over the years, paying attention to things, it accrues, and what you end up with is a picture of the world that is more advanced; richer and more multi-faceted – more overwhelming at times, too.”
As Rose notes, “there’s a huge misconception that people who are neurodivergent don’t feel empathy as much.” But for many neurodivergent people this couldn’t be further from the case. “I’m very curious about other people’s feelings,” Rose says. “I’m constantly trying to understand the people around me which is a really taxing pursuit.” And although it might be draining, it can allow a writer to get into the minds and feelings of their characters, including those who have different characteristics to the author.
Whilst this is a necessity for all writers, anyone who has been brought up in a mainstream culture that doesn’t cater to their needs arguably has a headstart on relating to and empathising with a whole range of characters. Because the fictional characters we grew up with were almost never (openly) neurodivergent, we’ve gotten used to both decoding neurotypical characters and empathising with those who are different from ourselves.
That said, neurodivergent characters may not always be legible or likeable to neurotypical audiences and that in itself offers something to a literary landscape where there’s a focus on likeability, particularly for female characters. In my debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, the main character, Ivy, makes dubious decisions driven by her fervent desire to belong when thrust into a glittering yet treacherous world at a prestigious university. For some readers, this might make Ivy unpalatable – and of course it’s every reader’s prerogative to have their own opinion on a book. But I believe my neurodiversity helps me write characters who are nuanced and complex, observant and watchful because I grew up studying and imitating others out of necessity. A character doesn’t have to be relatable or like the reader to be a good character or to offer them something. The ‘outsider’ main character has long been a method of giving a reader a way into a story – and neurodivergent writers are ideally placed to understand and interpret this feeling.
For Natalie Jayne Clark, author of the sapphic crime novel The Malt Whisky Murders, her own way of experiencing and thinking about the world directly influences the voice of her novel, told in first-person by the main character, Eilidh. Like Clark, Eilidh has ADHD, and the author describes it as “natural” for her protagonist to “take us through their thoughts and rationale in a similar way. There might be an image, detail or tangent that doesn’t initially make sense or feels unusual, but then we can see how her (or my) brain has connected the two.” Again, neurodivergent writers are writing against the grain of characters being instantly understandable to readers – and offering creative richness in the process.
Many writers write to make sense of their experiences and this can have an extra dimension for neurodivergent writers who are navigating a world that wasn’t made for them. Marcia Hutchinson, author of The Mercy Step which explores the life of a young girl in 1960s Bradford, describes her writing as autofiction; “I write about my own life, not just because I’ve had a relatively long and eventful life, but because I want to try and understand why I have behaved the way I have in so many circumstances.” This way of excavating one’s own emotions and behaviour will be familiar to many neurodivergent people; it allows Hutchinson to act almost like a detective of herself and transform her own experiences into fiction. She explains that “often with the benefit of hindsight I can see that I took people literally when they were speaking figuratively but I was unable to distinguish between the two.”
Neurodivergent writers also often approach language itself in particular ways. The main character of Newlands’ novel, Cora, is a teenage girl whose voice is immersive and lively throughout the book. “One of the reasons I chose to write in the voice of a teenager was because it would allow me to be playful,” he says. “There was scope for slang, brand names, compound words, weird spellings.” This was partly to entertain the reader “but most importantly keep my brain interested.”
Hutchinson, who has ADHD, also notes that she has to work on exactly what she’s drawn to at the time: “I would be terrified to get a two book deal because the pressure of having to write book two would do me in.” The tendency for many neurodivergent brains to get bored quickly can produce writing that is extraordinarily varied and imaginative at a sentence level as well as in relation to story and character.
Neurodivergent people are increasingly visible – often as political scapegoats – and whilst there’s been greater representation in recent years thanks to fantastic novels such as A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll, our visibility can come at a high price. In the arts world, neurodivergent writers are still often pigeonholed or tokenised. But there’s a burgeoning, hugely varied neurodivergent canon out there which should be taken seriously on its own merits. We may still be the outsiders looking into a neurotypical (literary) world but that allows us to rebel, experiment, play and see things in interesting, insightful ways – even through the barriers that are placed in our way.
Elspeth Wilson is a writer and poet who is interested in exploring the limitations and possibilities of the body through writing, as well as writing about joy and happiness from a marginalised perspective. Her debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, comes out in paperback on February 26, 2026.