Interesting writing exercise

[davidgillon]

My technothriller WIP has been pretty much stalled ever since Russia invaded Ukraine because the plot is heavily drone dependent and I needed a better feel of where drone and counter-drone technology was going as a result, to make sure the narrative doesn't turn suddenly obsolete. It occurred to me the other day that I pretty much have that, so I've been noodling at it again for the last few days.

One change I was considering making whenever I returned to it was to shift a major secondary character who's Deaf from getting by on her own with lipreading and a cochlear implant to using a sign language interpreter -- which probably already made professional sense as she's a DA and needs to be certain she isn't missing anything when she's in court. So I sat down to do that on Friday, and it actually went a lot faster than I anticipated, while still being a fairly big edit job. It's an interesting exercise because it makes you think much more about where everyone is standing during a conversation, especially when you throw in that she's also lip-reading where she can. And it also changes more intimate scenes (she's the protagonist's wife) as having a conversation while spooned up against each other isn't really practical if you need to see hands and lips. On top of which doing it in the dark is just out. Equally you can't just send her off to show someone around the family home, if she can't actually hold a conversation with them, so viewpoint character/protagonist suddenly became an important part of that little excursion.

By coincidence I came across the trailer for Marvel's upcoming Echo this weekend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUKnherhuw , in which the only person to speak is Wilson Fisk/Kingpin/a very bulked up Vincent d'Onofrio as Maya Lopez/Echo/Alaqua Cox is Deaf and uses ASL and is too busy kicking ass in the trailer (never mind she's also an amputee) to stop and sign. But there's an interesting piece here and here where director Sydney Freeland talks about changing the way they might otherwise have framed shots to accommodate the fact they're being signed.

 

Comments

[madgastronomer]

I have been told in the past (too far back to remember) that for the Deaf, it is a thing to communicate brief messages while spooning by tracing the letters on one another's skin. So not whole conversations, but "I <3 you" and like that.

[davidgillon]

Interesting point, I really will need to get a sensitivity read on the Deaf side of things if this goes anywhere - the mobility side of things for the protagonist I can handle myself, but not the Deaf side for her wife.

[yhlee]

Huh!

Neither Joe nor I is Deaf, but he knows the "I love you" sign (I taught it to him) and we regularly, um, press it to each other hand to skin even when we can't see each other's hands. (I also know the ASL finger alphabet but have only attempted its use a couple times, and I really suspect it was a case of "noooo stop your cheremes are awful and your accent sux, just let me lip read" only the Deaf librarian was too nice to actually come out and say it quite in those terms. The other time was during the flood when I was briefly getting some information across to a Deaf woman in the shelter.)

[davidgillon]

It's a good point, almost a 'life found a way' one ;) I might take another look at the more intimate scenes.

The overall setup for the WIP, especially as the Deaf character is not the viewpoint character, means I'm mostly dealing with scenes where there's either an interpreter present, or it's the married couple together. The one major exception is going to be the (not yet written and almost certainly off-screen) run in-to the final confrontation, and there's a minor one with a toddler-nephew I need to go take a look at.