Ok so I have come up with a female lead and a male lead. The female lead is a military defense unit who's lost her memory. (If you know Xenogears/saga she's kinda like Kos Mos, or you can google her) She eventually regains her memory as the story progresses though. Up until that point she has a very limited vocabulary unless her defense protocol takes over for her. At first the only thing she says is 'Nope' or 'Yup'. There's a couple of bits I have planned but I'm not sure how funny they'd be. I imagine it's something that'd be amusing at first but cringeworthy after a while, even if the plot gives an excuse for it.
Work with it. Develop it some more, let it grow until a story starts to suggest itself. Or just keep working out bits for them and eventually you might have enough to suggest a story. Or this might just be an exercise, some character building practice, At any rate, just work with it for a while and see where it leads.
Yeah I'll work with it (it kind of already developed into a vague idea for a story) and see how far I can take it. I do want to avoid it being annoying though. Maybe I'll have it be like a coping mechanism for people she doesn't trust yet. I know that I personally don't speak up much until I get a feel for how much I can joke with someone.
It would be annoying if she stays too dumb for too long. It's fine to have her without memory at first, that allows you to do some near-info-dump stuff if you want (but be careful with it). But she should start to grow and remember or whatever, that's going to be the main line of development. If that doesn't start happening pretty soon then it will definitely be annoying. Well, I'd say it would break the flow of the story. But before her memory starts to come back or she re-learns or whatever is going to happen, the story still needs to be moving. At that point it can be things like her and the reader developing an understanding of her situation, like a child learning about the world before beginning to learn about herself. Just so long as something is advancing.
Yeah, I plan to have her recover more speaking ability as she recovers her memory, more personality too. The first 'dungeon' (it's the kind of story that I'd want to be a game someday) has like three of the terminals she needs to connect to (remember that other topic about fantasy characters reacting to computer servers? same idea) to restore her memory and that's enough to get her speaking more normally. While she still suffers memory loss, she at least remembers her name and ability to speak. I'd say they find all three of them within the first half of the first chapter, so it's not a bit for very long with the exception of new people she doesn't trust. And even then it doesn't take her long to trust someone new, she's just very cautious at first. There's also an 'AI' side of her that speaks up from time to time when she refuses to talk. So it won't be completely two words for very long.
