Writing an MC who is unable to speak (hearing intact) and attends a high school.* Very broad, yes, but, any writing tips? Want to create a relatable character for everyone, but also want to portray the condition (and anything relating to it) properly and appropriately. *Edit: Brief Character Background: a poorer kid from a broken home. He gets picked on a lot, not just for his condition, but during the story develops at least one good friend who stands up for him.
Why is he mute? Learning disability, neurological trauma, physical issue, psychological issue, etc. Depending on the why, how has it effected his life? Does he know ASL? If not, why not? If not, how does he communicate? If yes, how (who taught him, did he teach himself)? If yes, does he actually know anyone else who knows it? I'd try to think of ways that this would have impacted his life, pay attention to them, and otherwise develop him like any other character.
1. Mouth the words/ use sign language/ writing pad or eraser board 2. Exaggerated body body language/ whistling for certain things. "Yes", "No", or "Hey look at this" / Morse code? Can use the drums for yelling lol (sorry if this offends, but I would totally do this if I couldn't argue) Hmm... last suggestion brings the use of an instrument as a replacement for speech... How expressive and neat would that be? 'Cuse the rambling here 3. Having an actual whistle on self to help keep safe from trouble... or an air horn... 4. Uses a set of pre-recorded words downloaded from a program, think what offices use. Only he has one for class or the daily conversations.
I know the protagonist of A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard is a teenage selective mute, which puts her in a similar sort of situation. Reading that might be helpful. I haven't read it myself, but I've been meaning to. The extract I've seen looks good.
Signs of attraction by Laura Brown is the best book I've read from a HoH or Deaf/deaf perspective. For Deaf people, just as for the mute, most of the problem is communicating with hearing people (not the lack of sound). A deaf person can always read lips or body language, most hearing people are really bad at understanding anything other than their primary spoken language. So since mutism is relatively rare, I would get inspiration from the deaf/Deaf/HoH world. This book describes perfectly the challenges and benefits of using a wide range of communication, including writing (electronic and paper), body language, and different degrees of ASL (and the difference between being deaf and Deaf).
This is what I thought while reading the first sentence. I am guessing there are self esteem issues. Can he make any sounds, or is it complete mute? To show how much he sees himself differenly than his peers, I would try to work on something with him making noises & how much he hates that. As a teen, small things are magnified and focused on as the rason for X happening.
(Revives thread) Noises, he can do, he just can't form language. But if he's irritated, he'll scoff, or gasp or scream if he's scared, etc. (I haven't quite yet figured out why he can't form language >~<; I think it's something mental/genetic on his part) He doesn't like other people very much, which only makes communication harder for him. Something I use for humor early on in the story is a text-to-speech or other kind of software that doesn't work very well, and he only ends up getting angry with it.
