[renamed]

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

 

[Jan Piers]

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.

 

[TromboneAl]

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.

 

[jkwak]

Can you give me her contact information?

Emailed you!

 

[Gone 9/21/18]

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.

 

[renamed]

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

 

[TromboneAl]

Memoirs are priceless!!

Which do you recommend?

 

[renamed]

I really liked Finding Zoe by Brandi Rarus
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Zoe-Womans-Identity-Adoption-ebook/dp/B00MMP6ME4

 

[TromboneAl]

Again, for others in the same boat, someone from alldeaf.com PMed me and suggested Reddit.com/r/deaf would be a better place to seek advice. The people there seem more helpful and supportive, based on their responses to others who have asked for help in writing a deaf character.

https://www.reddit.com/r/deaf/search?q=character&restrict_sr=1

 

[SVD]

I had seven deaf girls get rescued in my third zombie novel. One of them turned, and the deafness carried over when she became a zombie.

To make things easy, I usually had someone else interpret the signing.

 

[Nicholas Andrews]

No, but I have a few POV chapters in my next book with a blind character, and I'm dreading it. I write in third person limited, so I can't paint a visual picture since the character won't be able to see anything. Obviously she has other senses, but describing what a character sees is probably 75 percent of my prose.

 

[AJW]

My son attends a primary school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing here in Europe. Most of his fellow students wear hearing aids or have cochlear implants. Lip reading is no longer being taught, it is a dying art in our part of the world. Most of my son's schoolmates can hear only wearing their equipment. Since most of them got their CI as infants, their speech is good. But despite that, theirs is still a world onto itself.
When I first stepped into this environment I felt like a complete outsider, and still do many times. The school is bilingual - instruction takes place in both spoken words and sign language. Many of the deaf teachers go without CI and rely completely on sign language (lip reading fell out of fashion about two decades ago), which makes it very difficult for non-signers to engage in conversations with them.
Some of the students' parents are deaf too, and what I've found is that many of them do come across as pretty defensive, at least initially - like the folks on the forum for the Deaf that was mentioned here. I don't blame them. What I see 'growing up' alongside my son and his school friends is that the deaf have to put up with lots of insensitivities (to put it mildly). It starts when they are kids - lots of teasing and bullying from kids in their neighborhoods who make fun of the gestures the deaf kids rely on for communications. And then there are the legions of hearing folks who think that deaf people must be retarded as well, or simply require hard shouts to follow conversations. I cannot speak of serious discrimination, but there is a great amount of micro-aggressions that deaf folks have to swallow day in and day out.

Anyway, not much advice from me in the above. Just sharing my experience. I will say, that you learn a whole lot about any other culture by simply stepping up to people and make friends with them. If I were you, I'd get off my chair, and start visiting clubs for the deaf, coffee bars for the deaf etc. Do more than paper research. Really get out there. Immerse yourself into their physical world. This may take time, most likely longer than you're used to when building new relationships, but you will learn much more from actual face-to-face contact than any book or online stuff.

Good luck

 

[Jan Piers]

I know what you mean about the bullying. In his first year of middle school (junior high) my son intervened when classmates were bullying a deaf kid in school. The two of them were ostracised from the rest of the class. My son defended the other boy because the fight was unfair, three against one. Both boys were big for their ages and could take on a gaggle of kids easily so they were left alone. They became fast friends, even phoning each other from time to time and speaking through a middle-aged woman about thirteen year old boy stuff. We were in contact with him and his family for several years. Eventually the boys drifted apart, the friend moved on to the School for the Deaf and my son to an arts high school. If I caught a bus and the boy boarded it, even years later, he would come and sit with me. I know their friendship enriched both of them and they discovered good qualities about themselves that shaped them into better adults.

 

[TromboneAl]

I've been learning a lot. I don't think I've ever seen someone signing here in our rural area (far northern California). I'm going to learn enough words in ASL or at least finger spelling ("I'm a writer who will have a deaf character ... may I ask you a few questions ...") that I can introduce myself if I find somebody, but my experience at AllDeaf (plus my introvert nature) makes me hesitant.

 

[Dwindle Gee]

All my characters are deaf, every single one. They don't listen to a word I say. 

 

[TromboneAl]

Nice, thanks, Al.

I've learned that some deaf people are annoyed when they think a hearing person is learning ASL "just for fun."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdT5hVheZv0&t=260s

 

[TromboneAl]

This documentary is amazing, and starting at this point, gives insight into deaf culture:

https://youtu.be/hdIoSNwNfVs?t=42m19s

Here's a brief trailer for the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXNrqKPsac0

 

[TromboneAl]

And here's the child in the video after she grew up (without an implant until she was older):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXNrqKPsac0

 

[AJW]

Interesting documentary! Familiarizing oneself with the medical and social implications of CI's looks like a good introduction to the world of the deaf and learn how this world relates to the realms of the hearing and the hard of hearing. To some people within deaf culture, the barriers between the three groups (the worlds of the deaf, the hearing, and the hard of hearing) are insurmountable.

The controversy around CI's in America that is the subject of this documentary also exists here in Europe. There are cases of deaf parents who prefer their child growing up without a CI, just like they have done themselves. Such parents, those who object to their deaf child getting CI's, worry that their child will become alienated from them once he or she is absorbed into the dominant cultures of the hearing and the hard of hearing.

This documentary could facilitate a writer by offering a line and hook to go exploring deaf communities. One could, for example, set about writing a feature article about CI's for one's own town paper or magazine, then reach out to deaf centers in the neighborhood in request for interviews (specifically referring to this documentary - using the film as a crutch for a 'follow up-article', so to speak), utitlize the process of article writing to get a feel of the waters, and employ the new contacts as means to build a network and friendships that will, down the road, offer deeper insights that may help with the writing of a longer piece, such as a novel.... Just an idea 

 

[azebra]

I’ve just done a sign language course. I’d recommend doing one if you are writing a deaf character. You’ll get a huge crop of ideas. I learned far more than I expected about communication and observation.