ao3commentoftheday:

little-crazy-misha-minion:

feverything:

little-crazy-misha-minion:

weekendwritingmarathon:

shiphitsthefan:

genderfluidlancey:

A fantastic example of ASL in fic is Moth and Flame by @wittyy-name !! Here’s their guide for their ASL dialog here.

Important Key: This fic contains a fair amount of sign language
<“With quotation marks indicates they are speaking as they sign.”>
< Without quotation marks indicates they are just signing. >

(one thing to note is if you do this and have html editing enabled, the program will think it’s code and it won’t be visible, so make sure when you do this it’s in rich text.)

They write ASL well. They start the first use of ASL dialog with a description of the sign so readers clue in that it’s ASL, and then unless the way the sign indicates something else (like sarcasm or emotion or stuff like that) they don’t usually describe it, which allows you to bypass the ASL grammar for smoother writing (grammar in ASL is much different than English. If that’s gonna be relevant to the fic narrative I’d include that but if not I’d say probably just stick to what you’d write if it were normal dialog)

Generally they stick to “signed” instead of “said” unless the character is speaking at the same time as well. Otherwise, they just treat it like regular dialog and I think the fic is stronger for it.

Behind the cut are a few of my favorite quotes that I think convey this well!

Keep reading

So. Here’s the thing. It’s ableist af to differentiate like this, just as it’s racist af to differentiate languages. Italics are used for emphasis; if the words being used don’t need to be emphasized, then using italics is useless. All it does is automatically Other the character. The same goes for using special characters to separate what the Deaf or mute character is saying. If you wouldn’t use it for characters who speak audibly, then don’t use it for a Deaf/mute character, either.

Now let’s talk specifically about writing sign language. (I’m not specifying ASL, because there are multiple dialects. Some of this is covered in the answer above, but I’m going to clarify, anyway, because the examples given behind the read more aren’t ideal.)

It’s okay to describe signing in specific situations. For instance, if the first character is Deaf and the second character is not, but does understand signing, describing the motions of language in the first two sentences is a great way to establish that they are, in fact, using sign language. Here’s an example:

ao3commentoftheday:

You have a few options, I think. 

You can keep the all-caps convention and explain in an author’s note at the top of the chapter that this is how sign language is usually presented in a written form. 

You can give generalize descriptions of movements without diving into all of the intricacies that are A) hard to describe in a narrative sort of way and B) potentially difficult to picture for a reader who hasn’t had a lot of exposure to sign language. 

You could also embed images or videos of the sign language motions (mid-fic or at the end of the chapter perhaps?) to give your readers a better idea of what it actually looks like. 

Anyone else have some ideas?

He makes a vertical fist, then circles it over the middle of his chest.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she tells him.

Boom. Your characters are speaking to each other in sign language. Continue writing their conversation conventionally, like you would for any other character. No italics; no special characters; no using phrases like, “he signed”. It can be inferred from the text that they are signing. Sign language is language, so you can use “he said”.

Also, sign language uses different grammatical conventions. You can’t just translate word for word. “Do you want to play?” becomes “Want play?” The rest of the words are assumed. Think of them like silent vowels.

It makes more sense to simply write out this dialogue, as opposed to describing the physical signs. Your characters are speaking; let them speak.

Another important part of sign language is body language. You’ve probably seen videos of translators who get “into it”. In reality? They’re just speaking. When you don’t have a voice to inflect with, you have to use your face and body to add that infection. There isn’t anything unusual about it. I guarantee that your Deaf/mute characters have seen it before, because that’s how they talk.

If you’re excited, you sign excitedly. If you’re flirting, you’re being flirtatious. Angry? I guarantee that translates into the way your hands moved. It isn’t necessary to describe what it would “sound” like; again, that only Others the character.

Treat your Deaf/mute characters like people. They are.

[cc: @ao3commentoftheday @weekendwritingmarathon and no offense intended to @genderfluidlancey <3]

Thank you so much for this important information @shiphitsthefan!

Against my better judgment, I will say that things can’t always be so ideal.

If all your characters understand ASL then, yeah you could just treat it like normal speaking. But if you have characters who don’t understand it you have to differentiate somehow or you could confuse the reader.

What if there is a scene where a speaking character who knows ASL purposefully doesn’t sign something? It might be irrelevant if the deaf character reads lips, but what if they don’t? If for the entire book you always used the same indicators for when that character is speaking then your reader might be confused when for some reason this time the character didn’t get what the other said. If you are in first person you could get around it, but not if you are in third. You would have to break the flow of the conversation to inform the reader that the character didn’t sign what they said on purpose.

What about the inverse? If you have a speaking character who knows ASL purposefully not speaking what they are signing so that only other characters who know it can understand? If normally that character speaks while they sign you are going to confuse the reader.

As a writer, it is your duty to make things clear for your reader. You need to avoid breaking their suspension of disbelief, you need to give them the information as easily as possible and in a consistent format. Readers learn the format of a book/story, I feel like some people don’t get this. Different authors use different formatting to tell their stories and it includes everything, from the way they skip time, break scenes, indicate dialogue, indicate chapters, their voice, their style, etc. The job of a good writer is to make sure ALL of those factors are clear and constant so that the reader can dig into the story, after a couple of chapters it should become second nature to them to know that whenever ****** shows up it’s a time skip. If suddenly you use ****** and there is no time skip, they are going to be confused, and confusion takes them out of the story. It breaks the flow of the narrative.

That is bad writing.

That is why head hopping is bad.

That is why you need to watch your tenses.

Because your reader will learn to interpret your writing and turn it into a story. And if you give them mixed signals, you might as well have written: “And suddenly Godzilla killed everyone and Aliens took over the planet” in the middle of a sex scene.

I understand you may be looking at this from the perspective of representation and possible discrimination. But writing is a job. When you write you have a purpose, to tell your story as effectively as possible, and authors need to make adequate decisions based on that goal. 

And you know what? I WOULD use special signals for speaking characters if I think it would make it easier for the reader to understand my story. Both of the situations I detailed here could happen just as easily when characters speak more than one language. I’m Latin American, okay? I honestly don’t think it’s racist to differentiate between my language and English in a story. Not everyone speaks Spanish. Now, if the story was taking place in Spain then that would be a problem… Same for if maybe the story the anon is writing took place in maybe an ASL school, or a school specifically for deaf students. If everyone or almost everyone in the story speaks ASL then you can go right ahead and just use normal speaking tags. BUT you will need to signal when a character doesn’t understand ASL.

Just like if I wrote a story about magical pixies who have their own language I would signal when they are speaking that language the human characters don’t understand. I don’t think there is a difference at all. It’s not racist or ableist. It’s not about saying “look this person speaks differently” it’s about saying they are speaking in this particular language that other people in this story don’t speak in.

I say think of the situation. If almost the entire cast of characters speaks ASL then you should indicate that at the start of the story and write ASL like you would spoken English, because it is the main language spoken in your story. AND then you would signal when people are NOT speaking ASL. It would be pretty weird if I set a story in Spain and then during the entire book used special signaling to let people know they are speaking Spanish. So don’t do that with ASL. If on the other hand you have a story where everyone speaks English and only some characters speak ASL, (maybe it’s a side character or a sub-plot) then you find a way to signal when ASL is being used instead.

That’s my opinion. And I want to reiterate that my point is that I don’t feel this differentiation are because of a sense of “otherness,” they are simply a restriction of the medium that we have to circumvent somehow. It’s like using motion lines when drawing a fast moving object, the still image you created can’t convey movement, so you need to use special signaling to help the viewer. It’s the same, books and fanfics can’t easily convey things like people speaking a different language easily, so sometimes we need to use signals to help our audience. 

That’s my opinion, as a writer. And honestly, like I said, if we were talking about Spanish I would not feel offended at all, because I am a writer, so I understand that sometimes these things are necessary so the story flows better. It doesn’t say anything else besides “they are speaking in this particular language.” And sometimes the reader might need to know about that! That’s all.

my dude as a Deaf guy i love when authors try to differentiate ASL because holy shit! that’s my fucking language there

and ASL isn’t English! I don’t want authors to treat it like English. I feel awkward if it’s treated like just another language, because it’s not. It’s an important part of my culture, it’s an art form, and it’s very different from the spoken word. So if the author describes the sign, that’s wonderful! If they use gloss, that’s also wonderful! If they don’t, that’s also wonderful! If they use English with ASL grammar that’s my fuckin jam. It’s all good.

Also a lot of stuff doesn’t translate well into English anyway. So. YMMV is what I’m trying to say here, I guess.

Yall are taking different approaches to the exact same thing, and nothing I’m reading says you actually super disagree with each other. 

❤ your enthusiasm makes me happy

this whole thread is awesome