I haven't Al, but my cousin was born profoundly deaf. I wrote about her for Odyssey and I discovered the article in its entirety on the alldeaf forum: http://www.alldeaf.com/threads/a-balloon-popped.52023/ Feel free to shoot me a message if you have questions.

 

There are some deaf writers on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Rebecca-Wilova/answers/Deafhood-culture

https://www.quora.com/profile/Don-Grushkin/answers/Deafhood-culture

https://www.quora.com/profile/Michele-Westfall/answers/Deafness-physiological-condition

I don't know if you're familiar with that site, but you can ask your own questions and optionally "ask to answer" a specific person.

 

I have someone very close to me who is deaf. I would say that they change in the following ways:

Must have lip/eye contact to "read" what is being said...
Hearing loss will change what is heard... for instance, lower, bass sounds are easier
Socializing is hard in crowded areas with background noise
Can't keep more than one convo going at times
More intimate socializing
Miscommunication is more frequent unless written
No talking on phone without the translator, all text
Calls made out are done by others
Doesn't mind loud noises, dogs barking, crying children, etc.
Less overwhelmed with external stimuli

There are likely way  more, but that's what I've seen over 15 years

 

If you want to be true to the culture you have to pick the type of sign language your character uses. If they are profoundly deaf (there isn't a high percentage of people that are profoundly deaf.)

Understand how your character was educated and where? This will make a difference in the type of sign language they speak and cultural norms. Do they need to have a deaf interpreter (this is different than a sign language interpreter)? Different relay services and how people both hearing and deaf interact with them.

Is your character living in a town with a large deaf community or an area that is sparsely populated and why? This might have to do with education or family ties.
Is your character pro or again cochlear implants this can be a polarizing issue in the community with many people against.  Was the character born deaf or did an illness or accident cause this if so at what age?


These are just a few issues I thought of off the top of my head.

 

Thanks, guys. Nice article Vijaya.

I don't remember how I came up with the idea to have a deaf character, but I've quickly realized that this can add a lot of depth to the book. The deaf lifestyle/culture will be an interesting topic to research.

 

If you want to research the deaf lifestyle/culture, you might want to watch the series Switched at Birth.

As for novels, the most recent I read featuring a deaf MC was the gay romance St Nachos.

 

If you want to research the deaf lifestyle/culture, you might want to watch the series Switched at Birth.

As for novels, the most recent I read featuring a deaf MC was the gay romance St Nachos.

St. Nachos was great. Texting and smartphones have made conversation with the non-deaf more accessible for the non-hearing.

I had an aunt and uncle who were profoundly deaf after losing their hearing to illness as small children. Depending on the age of your character, she may have been raised in a school for the deaf, so that might affect her relationships with her family and community. Also, adaptations necessary in the home - like smoke detectors, doorbells, etc. that use flashing lights in addition to bells or buzzers - you might find a way to use some of this tech in the story.

 

I have.
Expert lip-reader as she was she solved a mystery by "eavesdropping"

Yes, I plan to use that (reads lips of opposing counsel in court, perhaps).

My current concept for this character: She's a thirty-eight year old twin of the main character. The MC is a lawyer (male). She became totally deaf during infancy, and she and her twin are good communicators--both know ASL and she is a good lip reader.

She's accused of murdering her husband, and her deafness will play a role in why/how he was murdered, or how she reacts to it.

I wonder if it's too obvious/cutesy to have her named Marlee (after Marlee Matlin).

 

I wrote a deaf child character in my first book and I had to the two love interests bond around him - the dad could sign ASL, the female LI could do BSL (different languages with about 30% crossover even though they're both 'sign'). There were some characters who did Pidgen sign (again different!), and some that just allowed lip reading.

I focused mainly on the romance aspect, but a lot of readers enjoyed learning about the fact that every country has their own sign language - even English speaking ones - and about the implant that can allow some people to hear.

It was a good mechanism in the book. I enjoyed researching it and speaking to translators.

I indicated sign speak with italics, rather than speech marks.

TBH, I LOVED writing this the most as it was so different.

 

Probably the most important part will be getting the little details right. Living with a partner with a life-long hearing loss showed me a lot of interesting things.

We take for granted things we can hear: doorbells, fire/smoke alarms, car alarms, alarm clocks....
Other people take for granted we can hear things like honking car horns. Hiking on shared trails became more stressful because mountain bikers assume you can hear them coming up behind you when they call out. (Living in Denver, Colorado means mountain bikers coming downhill behind you is a common occurrence on shared trails.)

She relied on her dogs for cluing her in on some things. They'd react when someone came to the door, for example. Then they'd also react to neighborhood fireworks and she'd have to try to figure out what they were reacting to.

Any case where you wait for your name/number to be called changes a little.

I think when writing any kind of disability/limitations it means a lot to spend extra time on research to get it as right as you can.

 

A tip for anyone else in this situation: Stay away from the forums at AllDeaf.com! I started a thread there in which I said I was a writer and asked about problems in marriages between deaf and hearing individuals. I received extremely negative responses and was told I was an a______.

Someone PMed me to say that they get those questions a lot and don't like it that authors tend to get the details of deaf culture wrong. Also, that the posters there are pretty harsh. Still didn't explain the response I got. It was pretty surreal, actually.

 

This is an idea and might not be possible for you, but if you can audit a deaf culture class in a college that would be very helpful. This would put you in contact with working interpreters as well that can fill in where the class leaves off. 

 

I'm so sorry Al. If all we ever wrote were things we knew we'd be so limited. Keep at it.

This is precisely the reason I did not join a burn forum or a forum for parents of special needs kids when I needed very specific information. Online interactions can so often go wrong. I much prefer listening to people in person. And books. Always the books!

 

I have a character in In Search of Jessica and she's the main suspect in serial killings.

She's not deaf, but was traumatized after the murder of her dad and and after being hospitalized in a mental institute for 15 years and then released, she has never spoken since her dad's death.


I guess it's a similar situation with a deaf person, in that she communicates using hand signals, typing on a computer, or writing. Usually deaf people will have difficulty with speech. The good thing is that you have to get right into.their heads for it to work. I guess the big difference with being deaf is that apart from lip reading you wouldn't have a clue what was going on around you in your peripheral with people or sounds that weren't directly communicating with you by whatever method. One thing my character would have in common with yours is if there was nothing to hand to communicate, or with people who couldn't sign,  and the emotion and frustration it would cause.

I didn't use italics for her mind replying to question she didn't want communicated, but used. - No way -  to indicate a thought as too much in the way of italics would put people off.

Got to say it was a challenge and pushed me out of my boundry to get it right, but readers seem to like it the way I've crafted the story.

 

I've done it. I researched the heck out of it. People are so very sensitive to appropriation right now. I'm also not surprised by that reaction you got in the forum. I think people are sick and tired of being misrepresented, mocked, used, etc., so they're on the defensive. Anyone even with good intentions is to be called out. They don't realize we're on *their* side, hoping to get the details right. Count me as another person who's both sympathetic and frustrated.

Anyway, I read a lot of memoirs and how-to books about raising deaf children (and Deaf children, as there is a difference). I also took an online course called Writing the Other, which specifically addresses appropriation and how to get it wrong and right. I watched a ton on Youtube. I learned some ASL.

This site was very helpful: http://www.lifeprint.com/index.htm

Be cautious of movies and shows that feature deaf people. It's often not accurate. I also learned that there's a lot of fictional emphasis on lip reading when in reality it is very, very difficult and people are rarely good at it.

So far I haven't gotten any hate mail about my deaf character but I keep my fingers crossed. Current WIP features a Native American woman. I just can't stick to write what I know, and one of these days someone's going to yell at me...

 

Thanks for the tips.

I ordered the first season of this series, starring Marlee Matlin (deaf actress known for Children of a Lesser God).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp_MQWHMo9s

>apart from lip reading you wouldn't have a clue what was going on around you
I'm going to use that to up the stakes--if the deaf character gets sent to prison, she'll be cut off from her deaf community.

I indicated sign speak with italics, rather than speech marks.

That's interesting. I was thinking of not writing it any differently from normal dialogue, because there will be a lot of italics. What did you do, Kay?

 

That's interesting. I was thinking of not writing it any differently from normal dialogue, because there will be a lot of italics. What did you do, Kay?

I'm not Kay, but what about using "signed" as your dialogue tag versus "said"?

"I was at the store," she signed. "That's why I didn't see what happened."

I'd make it clear at the start that her "speaking" is actually her "signing," throw in the "signed" dialogue tag from time to time as a reminder, and otherwise trust my reader's intelligence.

When I see italics, I think they are setting off the character's internal thoughts. For your deaf character, signing is their way of speaking so italics doesn't feel right to me; using quotation marks seems more natural.

 

My series has a deaf protagonist, and I would echo what everyone else here has said in terms of immersing yourself in research: memoirs, nonfiction, etc. One book I found really helpful was Train Go Sorry, by Leah Hager Cohen.

The other thing I did was hire a Deaf sensitivity editor to give it a pass and help make sure I was getting my character's experience true-to-life. She was invaluable - I'd highly recommend hiring someone like that.

That's interesting. I was thinking of not writing it any differently from normal dialogue, because there will be a lot of italics. What did you do, Kay?

On the subject of dialogue, I had originally put the sign language in italics, but my editor recommended that I use normal dialogue tags and "signed" versus "said" (like thegreenheron suggested). Her reason was that italicizing sign language emphasized its "otherness," rather than treating it like you would any other language.

 

As a reader, I'm always skeptical of the "superhuman lip-reading power" like this. I can see how lip-reading someone who's directly talking to you could help you understand them if you're wholly or partially deaf. But "eavesdropping" on someone else's conversation would, it seems to me, require a whole lot of assumptions. There are too many sounds that are formed by the same lip/mouth movements, and a lot of people who don't move their mouths all that much when they speak. I would probably stop reading any book that hinged on expert, exactly correct lip reading as a plot device.

Not speaking from personal experience but from a girlfriend I lived with for four years who had been 95% deaf for 30+ years. She was good at lip reading. Even with high-end hearing aids she still relied in part on lip reading for conversation. She described using lip reading for about 50% of what people said. That being said:

She got used to guessing words in context, because she'd still have words in almost every sentence she couldn't understand. So she'd make her best guess from sentence context. Conversations could be exhausting for her brain as a result.

She hated long mustaches with a passion because they could so easily be in the way. Working in a microbiology lab with everyone masked up was hard for her.
Russians and some other ethnic groups speak much more at the back of the throat, and are *much* harder to lip read.

Lip reading as a supplement to help with communication I would buy. Consistently accurate? Not so much.

 

Thanks for the tips.

I ordered the first season of this series, starring Marlee Matlin (deaf actress known for Children of a Lesser God).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp_MQWHMo9s

>apart from lip reading you wouldn't have a clue what was going on around you
I'm going to use that to up the stakes--if the deaf character gets sent to prison, she'll be cut off from her deaf community.

That's interesting. I was thinking of not writing it any differently from normal dialogue, because there will be a lot of italics. What did you do, Kay?

Italics. My editor agreed. I think it's important to distinguish between spoken dialogue and signed/lip-read dialogue because it's a different thing and comes across differently in real life. It would be confusing to see it all marked the same. I also had italicized dialogue when my hearing character and my deaf character were passing a phone back and forth to talk to each other (deaf character had her phone smashed by a bad guy so they couldn't text normally) in a text editor app. Later they were using a text to speech app. I used italics for all of that. It didn't end up seeming like too much.

One thing I should mention is in the Writing the Other class I took they insisted all ASL be in normal quotation marks. Some people see it as ableism to not treat it as normal speech. I think this is the same thing as how some people consider it racist to italicize foreign words in books. My books have some Irish in them and I use italics for all the Irish. I think it's confusing to the reader not to, but that's me. I'm sure I'll get hate mail over both italicized Irish and ASL someday but so far, so good.

Something else I learned is that ASL has its own grammar structure like any language, so it isn't word for word translations into English. I struggled with this at first, because if my deaf character signs to my hearing character, You're a spoiled, entitled jerk, it might literally be something more like, Spoiled and entitled you or something else (I'm just making this up here, I don't know how it would be signed in ASL). So I asked a pro, and he said ASL represented in italicized English dialogue is a translation itself and there's no need to worry that it isn't word for word. I'm not sure if this matters to you but I thought I'd pass it along so you don't have an OH NO WAIT THIS ISN'T GONNA WORK moment like I did during revisions. LOL

 

I have a deaf friend who has moved away and we communicate through email. While her spelling is impeccable, her sentence structure is bizarre. LMK if you want examples and I can email them to you. I have kept all her correspondence just in case some day I have a deaf character so that I can use them as a template. As we've aged, my twin sister has gone deaf. She learnt to lip read as her hearing failed and would watch her boss in meetings through glass and find out exactly what the heck was going on long before the word was put out to the staff. As written above, there can be a lot of fun with this.

 

The other thing I did was hire a Deaf sensitivity editor to give it a pass and help make sure I was getting my character's experience true-to-life. She was invaluable - I'd highly recommend hiring someone like that.

Can you give me her contact information?

Yes, I will used "signed" instead of "said," and have other reminders that signing is going on, as Lorri demonstrated.

Difference in grammar, interesting. Yeah, I think I won't open that can of worms.

I'm into language (I guess we all are), so this stuff is doubly interesting.

Which of your books has a deaf character, Kay?

I noticed that Shawl and Ward have written a book called Writing the Other. I will check that out.

 

Can you give me her contact information?

Emailed you!

 

As someone with age-related moderate hearing loss, I found out, like most people with hearing loss, I rely far more on seeing people's lips as they speak than I realized. Even now with hearing aids, whether someone is facing me or not makes a big difference. Think store cashiers who are facing their register as they ask this and that.

My romance Without Words has a mute heroine. She's not deaf, and the research for a realistic cause for that is another story. Anyway, what I did was in the beginning when the only way she could communicate with the hero was by writing, I italicized what she wrote. When he began to learn to sign, I used "signed" in place of "said" and no italics. I haven't had any negative reviews or feedback except about the way she is sometimes treated. A lot of sensitive, modern people don't know history well enough to understand the level of prejudice not that long ago.

 

Which of your books has a deaf character, Kay?

[Comment removed because the new TOS of this site is ridiculous.]

I noticed that Shawl and Ward have written a book called Writing the Other. I will check that out.

Yes, that's the one. The website is http://writingtheother.com