Writing About Deaf Characters Tumblr
Horror teaches us that our worst fears are inside ourselves, not outside, but the key to facing those fears is in our imagination as well. Write Hard of Hearing Characters as Normal, Rounded People. If you're writing a deaf or hard of hearing character, you need to run your work past sensitivity readers. Writing about deaf characters tumblr blog. Lipreading and Sign Language. Lastly, if writing is something you are compelled to do, don't ever give up, and don't ever stop writing. When we write about the things that are the closest to our hearts, we surprise ourselves and we always end up going deeper into a subject which only invites our fiction to leap off the page and have a life of its own and gives our work the best chance to enter the hearts of our readers. This has felt like they were trying to push us into the background and it was frustrating.
- Writing about deaf characters tumblr blog
- Writing about deaf characters tumblr site
- Writing about deaf characters tumblr tumblr
Writing About Deaf Characters Tumblr Blog
Perhaps they have recently lost their hearing and are still learning alternative methods of understanding speech. As a deaf person, I always feel it is important that at least one of my main characters is deaf or hard-of-hearing because there are not enough authentically-written deaf characters in any genre of writing, and the world needs more of them written by authors who understand what it is like to actually be deaf or hard-of-hearing. To better illustrate my point, I am a 30-year-old woman, and I have worn hearing aids since I was 26. For someone like me, background noise is partly my worst enemy and partly my best friend. Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Horror: Interview with Kris Ringman. Are there any things that panelists, and other people who are working with deaf and hard of hearing individuals can do to make things more accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing? Lipreading relies on faces being unobscured, and a hard of hearing person will need a clear view of the entire face. Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Horror: Interview with Kris Ringman. It's essential to get more than one sensitivity reader, and you'll want to make sure someone who uses the same tools as your character (e. g., hearing aids) reads your work. For example, if someone is deaf the term refers to the loss of hearing, but for the Deaf community, the term Deaf refers to a culture. This doesn't mean that the book or story necessarily focuses on their deafness, but I think the important thing is to bring it into focus when it can highlight an experience most hearing people don't realize that we have in our daily lives. However, in a silent room, I will begin to suffer tinnitus, which is maddening and impossible to shift once it starts. It is such a healing artistic process, but our world has put so many gatekeepers in place between us and publication that we need to have very thick skin and take every rejection like it is just one more step in our climb to the top of a mountain. Choosing to include characters with disabilities in your speculative fiction is an excellent thing to do, but you'll need to do your research.
Writing About Deaf Characters Tumblr Site
Above all, write your hard of hearing characters as well-developed, rounded characters, the same way as the rest of your cast. One amazing writing retreat called AROHO that I've been to multiple times had instead given me two interpreters that followed me wherever I decided to go for the week. In real life, we don't always do this well, but in fiction, we can transform our characters in ways that we wish we could also transform, and for me this can prompt intense healing and strengthen me emotionally. However, you may want to discuss this with the community in-depth first. Writing about deaf characters tumblr instagram. Try to stay true to the purpose of hearing aids in that they amplify sound and provide the user with more clarity. With the right optical prescription, you get full 20/20 vision again, but hearing aids won't give you perfect hearing.
Writing About Deaf Characters Tumblr Tumblr
"Write what you know" is a thing I've heard a lot, and I honestly feel it is one of the best pieces of advice I've been given. Conversely, were there any particular successes you'd like to share? This feels like the best scenario for deaf or hard-of-hearing attendees because it offers us an equal chance to make spontaneous decisions like everyone else and allows us to always have accessibility at our fingertips, for lunches and social moments as well. Many members of the Deaf community consider deafness and signing cultural differences, and not disabilities. Throughout history, we have been persecuted, mistreated, and even driven out of society. I've loved it when panelists and authors doing a reading have used a huge overhead projector to put the words they are speaking on the wall or a screen behind them. We also spent every Halloween together trick-or-treating and watching as many horror movies as we could. Writing about deaf characters tumblr site. If you're referencing cochlear implants, please be aware that many Deaf people consider these controversial and unwanted. She is the author of two Lambda Literary finalist books: I Stole You: Stories from the Fae (Handtype Press, 2017) and Makara: a novel (Handtype Press, 2012), and the upcoming Sail Skin: poems (Handtype Press, 2022). I don't actually know of any deaf characters in horror except the ones I've written myself, so I would like hearing authors to sit back and allow deaf authors to write more of these characters into existence so I could actually have characters to choose from and be able to answer a question like this. Also, I've often had to pick all of my events for a writing conference ahead of time, so they can get interpreters for only those events, which is never something hearing people have to worry about – they can just be spontaneous – so this was upsetting, too. Hard of hearing people are not always old, and we're not unintelligent.
Have you had any special challenges at events with accessibility? We all have readers out there that need our unique perspective on life to cope somehow, get through another day, and maybe to write something of their own or be inspired to do something they didn't think they could do. Consider having a younger character with hearing loss, whether that's a working-age adult, a child, or even a teenager. This erases the need for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to always have to look back and forth between the interpreter and the panelist/reader, and we can also see visually how they have laid out their words on the page.