Square Pegs, Round Hole: How Do We Get More Neurodiverse Voices On Our Screens?
Words by Lorelei Mathias
In 2022, we saw some excellent British shows representing disability on our screens - CBeebies’ George Webster, BBC3’s Jerk (with its brilliantly meta-James Norton episode), and BBC1’s Ralph and Katie. In 2021, we were treated to Then Barbara Met Alan.
But how many UK shows were about hidden disabilities, or authored by Neurodivergent (ND) screenwriters? Sure, we’ve seen storylines about living with a different brain type - from Sweden’s Young Royals to the UK’s Doctors, whose ADHD characters were well-performed but under-written. How many other ADHD, Autistic or Dyslexic -authored stories have been commissioned since Edinburgh TV Festival 2022? Aside from CBBC’s A Kind of Spark, the UK industry is dragging its heels in hiring ND writers. Even the Festival’s brilliant 2022 “Insert Diversity Here” talk only touched on neurodivergence. The truth is that brilliant stories from trail-blazing minds that see the world in a unique way are not being told. Why?
It’s simple. The way we’re under-represented is exacerbated by the thing that makes us “different”. The industry is not built to welcome ideas from screenwriters who may talk a little too much, or miss social cues, or have four hundred ideas a second. Simply saying “we welcome applications from ND writers” isn’t going to fix the shortfall. The solution is more nuanced. If commissioners genuinely want more ND ideas through the door, they need to overhaul the entire door, and understand what it is about our invisible disabilities that holds us back.
Our brains don’t work the way submissions need them to.
We have brilliant ideas but no inner editor. Distilling our ideas into the neurotypical format (one-pager and beat-sheet) is often much harder. Our thoughts run at lightning speed, in all directions at once. We see the connection between things, as well as the things themselves. Our Pre-Frontal Cortex – in charge of focus, organisation, navigation – is dopamine-deficient and under-developed. So, more of a Pre-Frontal-Vortex.
Think of it as: your brain has no air-traffic-control, so all the thought-aeroplanes keep crashing into one another, or like you’ve programmed the satnav, but it keeps changing its mind, or you’re writing an article and keep jumping metaphors. With no satnav, it’s hard to stay on track and complete tasks... or not run over your word-count in an article or WhatsApp message…
On the plus side, we’re never short of good ideas. But each one comes pregnant with four shiny new ones inside, nesting like matryoshka thought bubbles that burst and disappear at any time if you don’t act on them immediately. I now live in a state of suspended terror of having new ideas and wish to God I had a bouncer telling them “Nope! It’s one in, one out!”
Comedy is the best medication, and the struggle is clinical
Yes. ADHD is all kinds of horrific, but it is also funny AF and it really is clowning on a daily basis… and I’ve found comedy to be the best medication (having tried everything else on the NHS).
Lola is a character I’ve developed to bring to life the horror and hilarity of living with ADHD on screen. A love-able clusterfuck, think Mr Bean, with less dopamine, she’s charmed juries from British Comedy Guide to Funny Women, Comedy Crowd Chorts to the New Voice Awards - where “Life in ADHD” was nominated Best Web Series. She’s garnered hundreds of thousands of views worldwide, and praise from Rory Bremner and The ADHD Foundation.
Like Lola, most meetings I have with producers leave them feeling tsunami’d and offering me that lexical kryptonite: ‘less is more’. Yet, whenever I’ve punched up anyone else’s work, or taken part in writers’ rooms, I’m told I have witty, pitch-perfect dialogue, and great ideas -they just don’t always fit through the round hole of commissioning.
Once you better understand the impairments faced by people with different brain types, and the invisible barriers to entry they cause, you realise the phrase ‘we welcome applications from ND’s’ is a little ironic. Upload forms and word-counts can be burnout-inducing to those with poor executive function, but through being open about our neurodiversities and pooling our strengths and weaknesses, we have the key to increasing ND representation - and more hit shows.
Given the low numbers of ND shows in our schedules, it is time to make some reasonable adjustments to the process. Quotas alone won't help increase representation, though they would be a start - how else can we improve access?
Building a Ramp
The answer starts here at The Edinburgh TV Festival, where last I befriended a Producer and a Story Editor from the Ones-To-Watch scheme. They joined my comedy-drama script “The Break Up Club” and have helped me improve the story structure and treatment. Acting as my “satnav” to keep me on track. Having seen the benefits of having my own creative satnav, I’ve developed that into a scheme to help others: The Square Hole Initiative; at its simplest, a manifesto outlining industry change, and a proposal of straightforward measures to increase ND access:
Creative matchmaking: A channel or studio-run introduction service where writers hot on ideas but struggling with plot join with writers strong-on-structure /weaker at dialogue etc. By pairing people with complementary skill sets, we can make the most of everyone’s talents. I work well with Autistic editors who can find the order in my chaos!
Wood for the Trees Workshops: When I write, my brain explores every eventuality of every branch of storyline; I can't always see the wood for the trees. While attending John Yorke (Into the Woods)’s BBC Academy lecture series, I got the idea for workshops inviting ADHD writers to bring mind maps of ideas to work with script editors and producers to whittle their oeuvres down to a logline and coherent one-pager, before setting off into the woods. Ideally, they’d then be paired with junior script editors to act as satnavs to stop them getting lost on the onward journey.
Flexibility on length and wordcounts: Yes, it’s annoying to open an email or PDF that’s four days long. But with ADHD, cutting and re-writing takes so much longer and can be impossible to do without burnout. Blaise Pascale - an early ADHD influencer - totally nailed it when he said: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”.
See it, be it: Actively hire more neurodivergent commissioners able to “speak our language”, and more neurodivergent executives and showrunners.
Writers’ room placements for ADHD writers: As a fellow ADHD writer Scarlett Kefford put it, “we poor rocket fuel onto other people’s ideas.” Your writers’ room is missing out if it doesn’t have a visiting ADHD voice in it, so set up a programme whereby ADHD-ers are invited to float between writers’ rooms - in between trying to cut down their own pilot scripts!
Help us to help you
In a dream-world, this could become a movement to make all the creative industries more accessible to all neurodivergent brains… with commitment from commissioners, producers, agents, like the brilliant Comedy 5050. We just need sponsors, and admin support. Shows by ND creatives are commercially and critically successful - look at Everything Everywhere All At Once, an homage to ADHD with its non-linear storylines and infinite multiverse. As Steve Jobs put it decades before Apple TV, the square pegs are “the ones who push the human race forward”. They are voices that need to be heard.
About the Author
Lorelei Mathias is a comedy writer, performer, showrunner for MelonComedy.Com, 2 x Nominee for New Voice Awards and winner, Comedy Crowd Chorts Industry Award and Runner-up, Funny Women Awards for her latest short film “Creative Writing 2.1”. Myself and my “satnav”, Gemma Wright (Autistic, Producer, One-To-Watch 2022) would love to hear from you. Get in touch at LoreleiMathias.com. @LoreleiMathias on Twitter; @LoreleiMelonyMathias on IG.