help!

i'm writing a book that has a mute character who has a blind bro. how would i show communication between the two w/out telepathy? i want to try and show it how Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan communicated, but i don't know how i'd do that without describing it step by step, and i don't even know sign language.

edited 23rd Apr '16 11:12:07 AM by Puddleglum

Do you know how Helen Keler learned to communicate? She was blind and deaf from a young age. Her teacher would have her hold her palm out, and she'd do sign language in Helen's hand. They could work out a system like that, with the mute one signing into the blind one's hand, and the blind one learning how to sign normally.

Oh, you ninja-edited me. Don't try to describe what the signs look like. If you were completely deaf and mute and vocal speech was a novel concept to you, you wouldn't attempt to describe the exact way speakers move their mouths and tongues and vocal cords and whatnot for each sound because to the character vocalizing their dialogue, there's nothing special going on; all they're doing is talking. To your mute character, that's all signing is to them- just their way of talking. You don't need to treat or format signed dialogue differently from spoken dialogue. Just do something like

the first few times the characters are introduced, and use 'signed' as the dialogue tag instead of 'said'. You could also leave out translating what Mute brother is signing if all he's doing is signing "Tell them x" and write something like

Don't overthink how you format something that is, at the end of the day, just another form of conveying speech. There's all kinds of ways you could play with this.

edited 23rd Apr '16 6:07:14 PM by CrystalGlacia

Perhaps telepathy could work, depending how "hard" your story is. A sort of touch language could also work.