A Note About ASL
Because ASL (American Sign Language) has its own grammar rules and sentence structure and is dependent on facial expressions and body language, it is impossible to write it in English just as it is signed. When reading the signed communication in this story, imagine it as a translation from ASL into English—and not a translation of words, but of concepts. The characters are communicating to each other what is printed, but they are doing it in a different way.
Chapter 1: The Workmanship
“I know you can do better than this, Lance,” were Mr. Rummer’s stony words. “You’ve gone from Bs to Fs. Could you please give an explanation for the change in your performance?”
My hearted thudded like the ground when it is bombed over and over again, as I stared into the man’s bleak, grey eyes overlaid with large, thick glasses. Taking a notepad and a pen from my pocket, I wrote: “I was not doing any better when I was making Bs. The teachers probably pitied me then. But ever since I quit trying to talk, I’ve been flunking oral exams and presentations. The truth is, I should have been flunked before because no could understand me.”
After looking at the note I had written, Mr. Rummer responded, “So basically, you’re failing because you’ve given up.”
“I’ve become realistic,” I wrote.
“If you wanted to enough, you could speak. Just stop worrying about what other people think. If you want your life to count for something, you can’t go on in fear.”
“I’ve been trying my entire life. I just can’t talk well.”
“When you were younger, you probably never imagined being able to read lips as well as you can now. You don’t even need an interpreter in your classes. If you keep trying, you could get just as good at speaking. The only way to fail is to give up.”
“I’m finished trying, Mr. Rummer.”
“Don’t you want to go to college, Lancen?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, don’t you at least want to make a difference? I mean, what’s the point of living and breathing, if you’re not contributing anything to the world?”
I looked away instinctively with my body shuddering against the bombs constantly landing in my chest. Though I had amunition of my own, begging to be used, I kept it tucked tightly inside me.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” Mr. Rummers questioned.
“No sir,” I jotted down hurriedly.
“Then you’re free to go.”
As I left the room, a refreshing breeze greeted my burning face. I walked down the hall, through the door, and into the majestic sunshine. Breathing deeply, I went the short distance from the school building to the lone car in the parking lot. I got in on the passenger’s side and sat down.
“How was it?” my father signed to me from the driver’s seat.
I shuddered again upon the remembrance of the dark office from which I had come. “The principal said I’m never going to amount to anything or do the world any good if I can’t talk,” I signed back. “And I can’t talk. So basically…”
“But he’s wrong of course,” my father’s hands responded, “God has an incredible plan for you, Song. He sees so much in you. You are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that you should walk in them. It doesn’t really matter what the principle of the school thinks you’re capable of doing!”
“Yes, I know.”
My father started the ignition. Leaning my head against the car window, I prayed, God, I trust You. I don’t have anything else to rely on. Please take my life and let it count for something. Let it bring You glory.
When at last we came to a neighborhood with all of the houses packed tightly together and separated by miniscule yards, we pulled into the driveway of a house with no flowers adorning the outside. It may have seemed a bit uncared for by visitors, perhaps the kind of house one would ring the doorbell, expecting a man to answer dressed only in a bath towel, with a half shaven face. But this same place beckoned us through the garage door and into the kitchen. Upon entering, the fragrance of wood entered my nostrils. I welcomed it heartily, for to me it was the very fragrance of passion, labor, and stability. Though our house held few luxuries when compared with most American homes, there was nowhere I would have preferred to come back to after the painstaking meeting with Mr. Rummers than this place.
Walking through the sawdust which covered the floor, I got a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, while my father turned on some music, sat down on the couch in the living room, and fashioned guitar parts. In my own silent world, I endeavored to focus my freshly wounded mind on American History, forcing myself to think in terms of questions, blanks, and complete sentence answers.
In the course of an hour, however, I had moved from a world of words to a world of wood, sitting on the opposite side of the couch from my father, gluing guitar parts together. My father and I worked intently without much signing—for our hand and eyes were preoccupied with the wood. This was the tranquil community we shared, sanctified from the clamor of the world outside. Though the world cut at us and abandoned us, this was our haven of healing.
At six o’clock, we washed the sawdust and wood glue from our hands and began making dinner. “Dad,” I signed, “can I go hang out at James’s house tomorrow night?”
“Sure. Do you want to take the car?”
“If it’s alright.”
“That will be fine. I don’t have any deliveries to make tomorrow. How is that rice coming?”
“It’s getting there.”
“Will it just be you and James tomorrow night?”
“His family will be there… and Elizabeth.”
“You’re going to make sure James and Elizabeth behave, I guess?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Alright, you can add the rice to the chilly now.”
After eating a meal characteristic of us, we pulled out two of our hand crafted guitars. My father began strumming some chords in the key of F. Noting this, my fingers drifted into picking solo notes up and down the frets and strings. The feeling of the wood, smooth beneath my finger, and the steel strings, pliable to my touch, indulged me. I lost myself in the vibrations. After a while, with my fingers still moving, I looked up into my father’s deep brown eyes. Perhaps the darkness of his eyes drove many people away from him, but it welcomed me in. His hair was dark brown also and curly and a short, unkempt beard surrounded his face providing him with a rustic appearance. My eyes dropped down to his moving fingers, which were also rustic with work and practice so that looking at them caused respect and pride to grow in my heart. Certainly, we were not a typical family, but we loved what we had—what we had been given of God.
As one fighting the ocean current, I struggled through the crowded hall at school the next morning, toward my locker. It was 6:55. If I did not get to homeroom by 7:00, I knew the teacher would take pleasure in mocking before the entire class—She did this to everyone who came late, bust she always found more to ridicule me about.
When I was near my locker, I saw Elizabeth surrounded by a group of students. Though the students’ mouths were moving rapidly and I knew exactly what they were saying, Elizabeth could not read lips. My urgency to get to class instantly evaporated as my emotions suddenly boiled in anger. I pushed through the group of students which enclosed Elizabeth, conscious that this action had thrown at least one person to the ground. Putting my arm around Elizabeth, I broke through the other side of the group. With out looking back to see the damage I had caused, I walked with Elizabeth to her homeroom, my arm around her securely.
“Are you okay?” I signed to her, after she had sat down at her desk.
“Yes. Thank you, Lance,” she signed back, as appreciation and respect revealed themselves through her eyes.
“Anytime,” I responded, turning swiftly and finding myself lost again in the ocean of the hallway. But as I worked my way back to my locker, I could still see Elizabeth’s relieved face in my mind, her weak smile, her sparkling eyes, her blonde, wavy hair. She was a sort of angelic princess, always there in the corner of my mind, and it was my duty and privilege to protect her. The look she had given me which said that she needed and trusted me was well-worth what I knew was coming when I entered homeroom at 7:05.
“What happened, Lancen?” the teacher’s lips read as I took my seat at the front of the class. “Let me guess: You forgot to set your alarm. No? You really enjoyed your shower this morning? I suppose it’s worth it to get a tardy for something that important. Oh, no, I know: Your girlfriend broke up with you?”
I started to write something down, but she stopped me.
“This is not writing class, Lancen. I want an answer.”
God, I can’t even answer for myself. She might as well just shoot me on the spot and save me this mortification, I prayed. But thank you that at least I don’t have to hear everyone laughing right now.
“I sense a lack of respect,” the teacher said.
I knew I could close my eyes and block out all that was happening around me, but that would do no good. So, I waited eagerly until the subject changed.
“So, I said, ‘Man, I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m deaf,’” James signed on Friday night. “And then, he just kept talking. So, I went and got my dad who told me the guy was asking me how I could talk if I couldn’t read lips. I was thinking, ‘Maybe it’s because I live in Memphis with people like you who don’t open their mouth when they speak.’”
“But he didn’t say that,” signed James’s father, Mr. Kirkpatrick.
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Customer service isn’t your calling, is it James?” I signed.
“He’s great at stocking though,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick immediately responded in defense.
“He’s our companies best,” added Mr. Kirkpatrick.
At this, the younger members of the dinner party instantly joined in the admiration of their oldest brother. “It’s because he’s so strong,” spoke the seven-year-old, Jenna, as she signed.
“Yeah, he’s strong,” copied Jessica, the five-year-old.
If I had remembered that James’s huge fan club sat before me, perhaps I never would have commented on his customer service skills. Even James laughed at his family’s avid admiration.
But Elizabeth, with her blue eyes glowing, smiled and signed, “They’re right.” Then her hand disappeared beneath the table, no doubt to be caught up in James’s hand.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick got up from her seat, gathering plates from around the table. Julie, the fourteen-year-old, helped her mother. They both vanished into the kitchen and when they emerged again, Mrs. Kirkpatrick spoke and signed, “So, let’s get this party started. What do ya’ll want to play?”
“‘Spoons!’” said Jared, the eleven-year-old, signing with large, repetitive movements.
“Yes, ‘Spoons,’” the twelve-year-old, Joseph, agreed with slower lips and more passive hands.
“No, no,” pouted Jessica, “I hate that game. I’m always the first one out.”
“Alright, calm down,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick interfered. “Let’s find out what our guests want to play.”
Elizabeth and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“I want to play ‘Go Fish,’” Jessica announced.
“But it’s not your decision,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick reminded her. “What do you think, James?” she asked Mr. Kirkpatrick.
“I think most everyone here is too old to enjoy ‘Go Fish.’ And we haven’t played spoons in at least two months. So, who’s up for spoons?”
Though the uproar was not loud enough for me to hear, I sensed a sudden rising of tension and commotion. It was settled. We began a long, aggressive game of ‘Spoons.’ Gradually, the table of ten dwindled down until the final two, James and Joseph competed in the championship. We all watched as Joseph got four of kind first and grabbed the one remaining spoon.
“You may be good at playing guitar, but you really suck at spoons,” James told me when he, Elizabeth, and I were in his room later that evening.
I laughed. “Yeah, too bad you and Elizabeth can’t even tell whether I’m a good guitar player or not.”
“Well, you look cool when you play,” Elizabeth commented.
“Thanks…”
“Do you remember when we were little, how Elizabeth’s grandmother used to make fun of you when you played guitar, Lance? She thought it was just weird that a deaf kid would play guitar.”
“I guess I was too focused on playing to look up and notice criticism back then. I just remember that we would rake her yard and she would pay us in chocolate chip cookies afterward and she would tell us those weird stories about child-eating monsters.”
“Oh, yeah, I could never forget that. How is your grandmother doing, Elizabeth?”
“She’s hanging in there,” Elizabeth responded hesitantly.
“Is she taking care of you?” I signed.
“I guess you haven’t been over in a while, Lance. I’m taking care of her.”
“It’s that bad?”
“She might have to go into a nursing home soon.”
I looked away, ashamed that I had not inquired of her grandmother more recently. “But where will you go then?”
James answered for her. “If it happens before Elizabeth graduates, she’s going to come live here.” We all knew what would happen after Elizabeth’s graduation. She and James had been planning it for as long as I could remember. This year, James was a senior. After he graduated, he was going to a get steady position with his father’s company. Then, a year later, when Elizabeth would be out of high school, they would get married, buy a little house, and start a family. Though their anticipation grew as the time drew closer every day, that night the idea remained like the moon seen through the window, neither spoken of nor reached for, but present, still, in its resplendence.
Because ASL (American Sign Language) has its own grammar rules and sentence structure and is dependent on facial expressions and body language, it is impossible to write it in English just as it is signed. When reading the signed communication in this story, imagine it as a translation from ASL into English—and not a translation of words, but of concepts. The characters are communicating to each other what is printed, but they are doing it in a different way.
Chapter 1: The Workmanship
“I know you can do better than this, Lance,” were Mr. Rummer’s stony words. “You’ve gone from Bs to Fs. Could you please give an explanation for the change in your performance?”
My hearted thudded like the ground when it is bombed over and over again, as I stared into the man’s bleak, grey eyes overlaid with large, thick glasses. Taking a notepad and a pen from my pocket, I wrote: “I was not doing any better when I was making Bs. The teachers probably pitied me then. But ever since I quit trying to talk, I’ve been flunking oral exams and presentations. The truth is, I should have been flunked before because no could understand me.”
After looking at the note I had written, Mr. Rummer responded, “So basically, you’re failing because you’ve given up.”
“I’ve become realistic,” I wrote.
“If you wanted to enough, you could speak. Just stop worrying about what other people think. If you want your life to count for something, you can’t go on in fear.”
“I’ve been trying my entire life. I just can’t talk well.”
“When you were younger, you probably never imagined being able to read lips as well as you can now. You don’t even need an interpreter in your classes. If you keep trying, you could get just as good at speaking. The only way to fail is to give up.”
“I’m finished trying, Mr. Rummer.”
“Don’t you want to go to college, Lancen?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, don’t you at least want to make a difference? I mean, what’s the point of living and breathing, if you’re not contributing anything to the world?”
I looked away instinctively with my body shuddering against the bombs constantly landing in my chest. Though I had amunition of my own, begging to be used, I kept it tucked tightly inside me.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” Mr. Rummers questioned.
“No sir,” I jotted down hurriedly.
“Then you’re free to go.”
As I left the room, a refreshing breeze greeted my burning face. I walked down the hall, through the door, and into the majestic sunshine. Breathing deeply, I went the short distance from the school building to the lone car in the parking lot. I got in on the passenger’s side and sat down.
“How was it?” my father signed to me from the driver’s seat.
I shuddered again upon the remembrance of the dark office from which I had come. “The principal said I’m never going to amount to anything or do the world any good if I can’t talk,” I signed back. “And I can’t talk. So basically…”
“But he’s wrong of course,” my father’s hands responded, “God has an incredible plan for you, Song. He sees so much in you. You are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that you should walk in them. It doesn’t really matter what the principle of the school thinks you’re capable of doing!”
“Yes, I know.”
My father started the ignition. Leaning my head against the car window, I prayed, God, I trust You. I don’t have anything else to rely on. Please take my life and let it count for something. Let it bring You glory.
When at last we came to a neighborhood with all of the houses packed tightly together and separated by miniscule yards, we pulled into the driveway of a house with no flowers adorning the outside. It may have seemed a bit uncared for by visitors, perhaps the kind of house one would ring the doorbell, expecting a man to answer dressed only in a bath towel, with a half shaven face. But this same place beckoned us through the garage door and into the kitchen. Upon entering, the fragrance of wood entered my nostrils. I welcomed it heartily, for to me it was the very fragrance of passion, labor, and stability. Though our house held few luxuries when compared with most American homes, there was nowhere I would have preferred to come back to after the painstaking meeting with Mr. Rummers than this place.
Walking through the sawdust which covered the floor, I got a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, while my father turned on some music, sat down on the couch in the living room, and fashioned guitar parts. In my own silent world, I endeavored to focus my freshly wounded mind on American History, forcing myself to think in terms of questions, blanks, and complete sentence answers.
In the course of an hour, however, I had moved from a world of words to a world of wood, sitting on the opposite side of the couch from my father, gluing guitar parts together. My father and I worked intently without much signing—for our hand and eyes were preoccupied with the wood. This was the tranquil community we shared, sanctified from the clamor of the world outside. Though the world cut at us and abandoned us, this was our haven of healing.
At six o’clock, we washed the sawdust and wood glue from our hands and began making dinner. “Dad,” I signed, “can I go hang out at James’s house tomorrow night?”
“Sure. Do you want to take the car?”
“If it’s alright.”
“That will be fine. I don’t have any deliveries to make tomorrow. How is that rice coming?”
“It’s getting there.”
“Will it just be you and James tomorrow night?”
“His family will be there… and Elizabeth.”
“You’re going to make sure James and Elizabeth behave, I guess?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Alright, you can add the rice to the chilly now.”
After eating a meal characteristic of us, we pulled out two of our hand crafted guitars. My father began strumming some chords in the key of F. Noting this, my fingers drifted into picking solo notes up and down the frets and strings. The feeling of the wood, smooth beneath my finger, and the steel strings, pliable to my touch, indulged me. I lost myself in the vibrations. After a while, with my fingers still moving, I looked up into my father’s deep brown eyes. Perhaps the darkness of his eyes drove many people away from him, but it welcomed me in. His hair was dark brown also and curly and a short, unkempt beard surrounded his face providing him with a rustic appearance. My eyes dropped down to his moving fingers, which were also rustic with work and practice so that looking at them caused respect and pride to grow in my heart. Certainly, we were not a typical family, but we loved what we had—what we had been given of God.
As one fighting the ocean current, I struggled through the crowded hall at school the next morning, toward my locker. It was 6:55. If I did not get to homeroom by 7:00, I knew the teacher would take pleasure in mocking before the entire class—She did this to everyone who came late, bust she always found more to ridicule me about.
When I was near my locker, I saw Elizabeth surrounded by a group of students. Though the students’ mouths were moving rapidly and I knew exactly what they were saying, Elizabeth could not read lips. My urgency to get to class instantly evaporated as my emotions suddenly boiled in anger. I pushed through the group of students which enclosed Elizabeth, conscious that this action had thrown at least one person to the ground. Putting my arm around Elizabeth, I broke through the other side of the group. With out looking back to see the damage I had caused, I walked with Elizabeth to her homeroom, my arm around her securely.
“Are you okay?” I signed to her, after she had sat down at her desk.
“Yes. Thank you, Lance,” she signed back, as appreciation and respect revealed themselves through her eyes.
“Anytime,” I responded, turning swiftly and finding myself lost again in the ocean of the hallway. But as I worked my way back to my locker, I could still see Elizabeth’s relieved face in my mind, her weak smile, her sparkling eyes, her blonde, wavy hair. She was a sort of angelic princess, always there in the corner of my mind, and it was my duty and privilege to protect her. The look she had given me which said that she needed and trusted me was well-worth what I knew was coming when I entered homeroom at 7:05.
“What happened, Lancen?” the teacher’s lips read as I took my seat at the front of the class. “Let me guess: You forgot to set your alarm. No? You really enjoyed your shower this morning? I suppose it’s worth it to get a tardy for something that important. Oh, no, I know: Your girlfriend broke up with you?”
I started to write something down, but she stopped me.
“This is not writing class, Lancen. I want an answer.”
God, I can’t even answer for myself. She might as well just shoot me on the spot and save me this mortification, I prayed. But thank you that at least I don’t have to hear everyone laughing right now.
“I sense a lack of respect,” the teacher said.
I knew I could close my eyes and block out all that was happening around me, but that would do no good. So, I waited eagerly until the subject changed.
“So, I said, ‘Man, I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m deaf,’” James signed on Friday night. “And then, he just kept talking. So, I went and got my dad who told me the guy was asking me how I could talk if I couldn’t read lips. I was thinking, ‘Maybe it’s because I live in Memphis with people like you who don’t open their mouth when they speak.’”
“But he didn’t say that,” signed James’s father, Mr. Kirkpatrick.
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Customer service isn’t your calling, is it James?” I signed.
“He’s great at stocking though,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick immediately responded in defense.
“He’s our companies best,” added Mr. Kirkpatrick.
At this, the younger members of the dinner party instantly joined in the admiration of their oldest brother. “It’s because he’s so strong,” spoke the seven-year-old, Jenna, as she signed.
“Yeah, he’s strong,” copied Jessica, the five-year-old.
If I had remembered that James’s huge fan club sat before me, perhaps I never would have commented on his customer service skills. Even James laughed at his family’s avid admiration.
But Elizabeth, with her blue eyes glowing, smiled and signed, “They’re right.” Then her hand disappeared beneath the table, no doubt to be caught up in James’s hand.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick got up from her seat, gathering plates from around the table. Julie, the fourteen-year-old, helped her mother. They both vanished into the kitchen and when they emerged again, Mrs. Kirkpatrick spoke and signed, “So, let’s get this party started. What do ya’ll want to play?”
“‘Spoons!’” said Jared, the eleven-year-old, signing with large, repetitive movements.
“Yes, ‘Spoons,’” the twelve-year-old, Joseph, agreed with slower lips and more passive hands.
“No, no,” pouted Jessica, “I hate that game. I’m always the first one out.”
“Alright, calm down,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick interfered. “Let’s find out what our guests want to play.”
Elizabeth and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“I want to play ‘Go Fish,’” Jessica announced.
“But it’s not your decision,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick reminded her. “What do you think, James?” she asked Mr. Kirkpatrick.
“I think most everyone here is too old to enjoy ‘Go Fish.’ And we haven’t played spoons in at least two months. So, who’s up for spoons?”
Though the uproar was not loud enough for me to hear, I sensed a sudden rising of tension and commotion. It was settled. We began a long, aggressive game of ‘Spoons.’ Gradually, the table of ten dwindled down until the final two, James and Joseph competed in the championship. We all watched as Joseph got four of kind first and grabbed the one remaining spoon.
“You may be good at playing guitar, but you really suck at spoons,” James told me when he, Elizabeth, and I were in his room later that evening.
I laughed. “Yeah, too bad you and Elizabeth can’t even tell whether I’m a good guitar player or not.”
“Well, you look cool when you play,” Elizabeth commented.
“Thanks…”
“Do you remember when we were little, how Elizabeth’s grandmother used to make fun of you when you played guitar, Lance? She thought it was just weird that a deaf kid would play guitar.”
“I guess I was too focused on playing to look up and notice criticism back then. I just remember that we would rake her yard and she would pay us in chocolate chip cookies afterward and she would tell us those weird stories about child-eating monsters.”
“Oh, yeah, I could never forget that. How is your grandmother doing, Elizabeth?”
“She’s hanging in there,” Elizabeth responded hesitantly.
“Is she taking care of you?” I signed.
“I guess you haven’t been over in a while, Lance. I’m taking care of her.”
“It’s that bad?”
“She might have to go into a nursing home soon.”
I looked away, ashamed that I had not inquired of her grandmother more recently. “But where will you go then?”
James answered for her. “If it happens before Elizabeth graduates, she’s going to come live here.” We all knew what would happen after Elizabeth’s graduation. She and James had been planning it for as long as I could remember. This year, James was a senior. After he graduated, he was going to a get steady position with his father’s company. Then, a year later, when Elizabeth would be out of high school, they would get married, buy a little house, and start a family. Though their anticipation grew as the time drew closer every day, that night the idea remained like the moon seen through the window, neither spoken of nor reached for, but present, still, in its resplendence.
3 comments:
It's a really good start. I'm looking forward to reading more. I do have a few critiques and they are mainly just stylistic things, but just thinking from the perspective of a deaf guy, it seems like there should be even more description and less dialog. I mean, granted, he's supposed to be good at reading lips, but I would imagine that what he would "hear" would be more like concepts than dialog. Maybe, and I know that this is a big change, but it almost seems like instead of quoting the characters, it might make more sense to summarize what they are saying.
For example, with dialog like this:
“Is she taking care of you?” I signed.
“I guess you haven’t been over in a while, Lance. I’m taking care of her.”
“It’s that bad?”
“She might have to go into a nursing home soon.”
You could sort of summarize it like this:
I asked if Elizabeth's Grandmother was taking care of her now. She replied that things had taken a turn for the worse and now her Grandmother was the one being taken care of. She even added that her Grandmother might have to go to the nursing home if things didn't improve soon.
If you put it that way, you're basically saying the same thing, but you're saying it in a way that seems more consistent with the character. You might even want to think about the story like as something that he would write down, since he definitely seems to be more prone to writing than to talking.
And like I said, description could really emphasize his character too. From what I've heard, if someone doesn't have one of their senses, the other senses are often heightened. You might want to really try to convey that to the reader, not necessarily by just telling us that he has heightened senses, but by describing the world around him through the eyes of his heightened senses. Obviously, he has a great sense of vision because he has really developed his ability to read lips. Let us see what he sees. One example of a place where more description would help is on the last scene. It took me several paragraphs before I really "got" that they were sitting around a family table and I still don't feel like I could really distinguish the family members from one another. I'm not saying that you have to go Jane Austin on the descriptions, but it seems that since your protagonist has a good sense of everything in the world around him aside from noise, then that should be what you really emphasize. What is it like to read lips? Is reading Elizabeth's lips different from reading Mrs. Kirpatrick's lips? Are there little qualities about that experience that sets them apart?
I think I really like the direction of this so far. You're building tension in the first chapter and I think you have some good characters, they just need to be defined a little more and they'll be amazing.
And I'm really proud of you just for producing a story of any length at all, much less one that is destined to be amazing. That takes a lot of persistence.
Thanks, Tyson. I really appreciate it, and everything you said makes sense. You've definitely given me some things to think about.
Although, it would be absolutely painstaking for me to take out the dialog since that is one of my favorite parts of writing. And you know how horrible I am at summary anyway. But I also understand how useful it could be in allowing the reader to experience with Lancen.
You think that even when Lance is reading lips it should be summary? Did you notice that the first scene is the only place that at school was the only place he really read lips rather than signs in this chapter? I guess there were some things you didn't catch--like who's deaf and who's hearing--but I'm sure that was my fault for not showing it enough.
More discriptions of what he sees is a wonderful idea, although it would probably lengthen the story considerably, depending on how much I of it I do.
I've actually already finished the whole first draft and I'm almost half-way done with the second. But I'm definitely willing to make a third, which is basically what I would have to do to take your advice.
So, thank you so much. Your comment excites me. It makes me realize, if this thing is going to be really good, I have a lot of work to do. But, reversely, if I do a lot of work, this thing could be really good.
Yeah, it's all about putting lot's of work into it and refining it and everything. I've written scripts that went through 8 to 9 drafts before. I understand that it is definitely going to lengthen the process, but at the same time, isn't it worth it?
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