why can't this guy talk?

With one story I'm planning, I decided to use a fairly unconventional way of dealing with Poor Communication Kills - making the protagonist mute. However, I'm at a loss for what kind of mutism to give him.

Background: He's a bright, promising student at the local mage's school, who has recently (say a few months back) lost the ability to communicate. His great-grandfather was instrumental in defeating a trio of evil shapeshifting mages, and he's going to end up realizing they've got another such mage preying on their town now and no one knows about it.

So, here are my two options for making him mute:

a) Broca's aphasia - one day, he had a terrible headache. He tried to work past it and go through his day as usual, but on the way to one of his classes, he suddenly collapsed. He woke up at the healer's department of the university, unable to speak or write (but he can read & understand fine), and with the healer saying he had a brain bleed.

b) a magical curse - for some reason, someone decided to curse him to be unable to communicate. The effects are pretty much the same as Broca's aphasia. I haven't been able to think of a good story for why someone cursed him and how come no one can fix it, though.

So, two questions:

Which option should I go with?

If I chose option b), what would be a good story behind how he got the curse?

The problem with making someone mute by Broca's aphasia is that, depending on the severity, it doesn't really make one completely mute, and it would make him able to understand most every-day sentences but when it comes to more complex concepts his understanding would break down. People with Broca's aphasia typically are able to communicate somewhat if the person they're communicating to is willing to listen. How I've heard it explained is that it's like the aphasic has a "bag of words" to work from — while the formal aspects of language like grammar are gone, they still have the lexicon. Think speaking with lots of nouns and little else. He'd probably understand things like "the dog chased the cat" because there's a cat and a dog and chasing going on, so the assumption would be that the dog was chasing the cat, and that's what he'd understand. However, something like "the dog was chased by the cat" wouldn't process as it was meant to. He'd still probably get that the dog was chasing the cat, because there's still a dog and a cat and chasing going on, and the finer details of the sentence is lost. And blah blah blah.

Also, I have a hard time believing that that would be his only problem if he had brain damage If he had a stroke or something, there would be other issues.

For what you're going for, a curse might work. Or trauma, if you want to go that route. Or, if you want to do it the old fashioned way, you could always just cut out his tongue.

edited 27th Apr '11 4:55:11 PM by OhSoIntoCats

Now, if you take the curse route, maybe somebody had a strong personal vendetta against him, and developed their own mute spell that could circumvent most curse removal strategies, hence why your character's stuck with it. Exactly how the spell works is up to you.

"Also, I have a hard time believing that that would be his only problem if he had brain damage If he had a stroke or something, there would be other issues."

No, I was planning on giving him a limp and having him switch from right-handed to left-handed if I went the brain damage route. And he'd have to relearn walking and a bunch of other skills.

Having him sort of able to communicate but not well might work better than him being completely mute, actually. Because at certain plot points it would work better if he managed to say something.

How about this idea? He actually had a completely mundane brain bleed, but everyone assumes it was a curse, put on him by someone jealous of him being the top student in magic class. The reader is left expecting that sooner or later I'll reveal what caused his injury, but I never actually do. (And I'll do the research to make sure he's got believable problems.)

if you're going for the magical curse route, how about a curse that causes his voice to etch away at his sanity, causing him to clam up out of fear?

I like your last idea very much, actually. It'll be a nice subversion of the audience's expectations, seeing the story is set in a fantasy setting.

A subtle hint or two that the curse doesn't necessarily exist would be nice, though.

On the same lines as ^ that, it might also be good to have a few other events that get attributed as magic but aren't. Small mundane happenstance things, or accidents, that just sort of happen normally, but have everyone in your story going "Well, it must have been a really bad hex. Are you sure you didn't cross anyone recently?" "Well, no, I don't think s- wait a minute, I had an argument with Bob yesterday. It must have been him! How could he do this to me?!?"

edited 6th May '11 9:01:28 AM by Dec