DECIDE 'HOW'

DECIDE 'HOW'

Decide how they went bind. Was it a disease or an accident? If it was a disease, you need to determine what it was. The disease you choose will affect your character's vision in a specific way.

Macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa will create two very different changes to vision. Get very specific with research.

If it was an accident, you need to get very specific about the details of that accident and research whether what you're suggesting is actually possible.

A head trauma might create a tear in the retina which would certainly affect vision, but retina tears are actually fixable through surgery in most cases (not all, but most).

A chemical burn would damage the layers of the eye enough to cause blindness, but you need to be specific on what chemical it was, way type of burn it might cause, and how badly it would affect the skin surrounding the eyes.

Going the trauma/accident route is very easy to mess up and prone to being melodramatic. Choose well!

WHAT THEY SEE

Using what you've researched, decide exactly what your character sees.

Be very specific. Keep in mind that 90% of blind people at least have some remaining vision, even if it's very little.

It might be shadow and light perception, so they see more outside in the sun than they do at night. They can still be light sensitive if they have light perception.

They might see shadows moving in front of a light source, but see almost nothing at night. They may only see the light source (like lamp or headlights) and see darkness everywhere else.

Your character might have color vision still, or some vision acuity that allows them to distinguish some shapes from others but still prevents from seeing details.

Your character might have terrible depth perception, and this makes stairs and curbs impossible to perceive and they might knock something over because they perceived it as being farther away than it was, or feel frustrated when they reach for something they though was a few feet in front of them and is actually closer to ten feet away.

See the World From Their POV

Put yourself in every scene or location your character will be in and determine what they can see in the moment. Even if you are narrating from a different character's perspective, you need to know.

Using this, you need to know what your character knows, especially if your blind character is important to the plot. They can't see the small print on that sign, the dried bit of blood on someone's shoes, a shadow sinking into an alley, or even if that blurry blob twenty feet away is a trashcan or a person.

Make It Resonable

If your character is meant to be uncovering these clues, you need to find a reasonable way for them to figure it out.

Is there a sighted companion who points visual clues out to the blind partner? Do they have magnifiers to read small print?

Are they good at sneaking around and overhearing people from a distance? Are they just great and knowing when someone's lying by the tone of their voice?

Are they working with a team?

They don't necessarily have to have "superpowers" to figure things out!

The Narrative Voice

1st Person

This allows readers to inhabit the character and see what they see, or don't see.

You have to work in terms of what your character can/cannot perceive, which can make description hard and can easily slip up and forget that your character can't see that street sign.

3rd Person

Your readers will probably forget how blind your character is if they read pages and pages with great visual description and then be surprised when your character verbally remarks that they didn't see X and Y.

You still have to work with what they can realistically see and it's much easier to forget in 3rd person

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