How much detail for a supporting character's disease?

I think it would help to make the character more real if some things are gone into a bit. Not a lot of medical details, but "so-and-so would never be able to do something because..." sort of (short) explanations. Offhand remarks, little complaints about how other people don't understand because they don't experience the difficulties.

I'd just mention it when it comes up. If the character can't go rock-climbing with the protagonist, say why. If the character has specially-fitted controls on his/her vehicle, describe them briefly.

Have you looked at any of the MS and other mobility-impairment communities on LiveJournal and elsewhere? GimpGirl, for instance, or MS_Support might give you a bunch of folks' perspectives.

jannawrites said:

IceCreamExpress - I've visited many online resources but I also have personally-accrued knowledge, since my dad has MS.

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I figured somehow that you had a close friend or family member who was experiencing this--sorry to hear that, and I think it's great that you're depicting it in your fiction.

I do think that, in general, the online communities are good sources for a lot of different first-person perspectives on everyday life with a particular condition.

I'd say—until it becomes important to the plot—go into it just enough so that the reader has some idea of what it is, and entails.

Also, some of the little details your characters can mention that can both reveal character and depict the disease at the same time are great. For example, if the character had had the potential to become a great athlete prior to the disease's discovery, someone could mention that, for both character development and more detail on what the disease entails.

And remember that sometimes certain symptoms or details of the disease need foreshadowing to work if they're important to the plot in certain ways. Have you seen the movie Signs? At the end, an alien tries to poison Mel Gibson's son with some kind of poisonous gas, but the boy is safe because he was having an asthma attack, and as a result his lungs were closed and no poison got in. Of course, the boy having asthma is clearly portrayed and made important to the plot long before this ever occurs. Imagine how silly and deus ex machina that ending would have seemed had director waited until after all of this to tell the audience the boy had asthma. Of course, the symptoms of asthma are fairly common knowledge, so no more was really needed, but with something fewer people know about, any plot twists that depend on a symptom of a disease or something like that should be foreshadowed so no one feels cheated by an otherwise sound plot.