SF: men forget how to speak.

[peterpan]

Just noticed that this was in the wrong area, so I am reposting it here.

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I had this idea that I am stuck on. The idea seemed fine as a daydream but on paper it is full of holes. It is meant to be silly, but the storyline is just too contrived at the moment.

The concept is a near future after men have (for no important reason) lost the power of language. Probably a virus. The effect on society is what matters.

The hero can speak (one in a million), but he has been brought up to believe by his abusive (and mad) aunt that speaking men are evil and are executed when discovered.

There may have been some historical incidents to support her claim but that is all old history now.

This is not explicitly told to the reader. They would probably guess such a twist but that is ok.

The aunt dies and he is inherited by a young woman of around the same age as him.

The body of the story is about their relationship.
He loves her, but thinks she will scream and call the cops to have him put down if he speaks.
She loves him and opens her heart to him all the time thinking he cannot understand.
She may grow suspicious of his intelligence and try to trick him into speaking, not realising the panic this causes him.

I would like a few jokes, like him listening to her laughing about how some guy was ripped to peices on an Oprah rerun yesterday.

I imagine the ending as super melodramatic, but what I have is a LOT contrived, and probably the main section I would like help with. What I have:
He watches an old movie with an evil manipulative speaking man who gets a woman into trouble. She is put on trial. During the trial for some reason the villain jumps up and confesses the whole thing. (these villainous speaking men are vain beyond any self preservation. Perhaps he just can't handle her getting all the credit for his brilliance)
Anyway, this situation repeats itself in real life. His lover is put on trial (for something she probably did commit, but is relatively minor) But to save her (and thinking her life is in danger) he leaps up and 'confesses' the whole thing, practically reproducing the movie verbatim.
At this point I guess there is an extended silence, then the jury fall about laughing. EVERYONE has seen that movie.

Afterwards, the woman, let of with a small fine or similar, explains how happy she is that he can speak, and how much money she can make by taking him to a talk show.

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Anyway, my request is HELP! HELP! Can anybody save that poor story!

 

[peterpan]

replies

Impetus
Virgin

Registered: Mar 2002
Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
Posts: 22
I like the concept. Here's what I'd do with it:

Romantic treatment:

Since men cannot speak, they are, every one of them, put in positions of subservience to women. They'd have to be. They can't convey information nearly as easily as women can. Men are given jobs as laborers almost exclusively, as it is the only thing that most of them can do. The entire sex starts to feel fairly down.

Enter hero. He can speak, but we dont' know that yet. He works at a button-stamping plant (or something similar). But he loves music. When he is not working he is at home (with evil aunt), listening to music. One day, Aunt walks in on him listening and hears an extra sound. Him. He is humming along. Shock! Aunt becomes cruel, takes away music. Tragedy!

Hero meets Girl. Falls for her but cannot express himself. They spend time together, relationship develops. One day, however, she has to leave (some reason or another.) Tension! The aunt finds out about her and refuses to let him see her anymore. He escapes the clutches of the aunt and runs to see the girl. She is almost on board her plane (spaceship, whatever) and to get her attention, he starts singing to her. She sees him, is schocked, and runs into his arms. Romance!

Fantasy Treatment:

Same setup, only this time we see things from the perspective of the women. A woman who runs a button-making plant notices that a certain group of younger men are acting strangly. She does nothing, though, because they are only men. The head man, the hero, is always looking at her, and she begins to become slightly taken with him. He is taken with her too.

Time passes, and she decides to take him as a personal servant, we'll call that as close as anyone really gets to getting married. Once he is hers, sex ensues. Once it is over, she 'hears' him say that he loves her. But his mouth does not move. The group of younger men have developed telepathy. Reveal! In shock, woman reports this to authorities, but they can find nothing. Woman eventually learns that they are part of a slow but growing resistance movement. She can join, or not join, their ranks and help, or not help, their pursuit of justice.

Give those a shot

-I

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Mona
Really Experienced

Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Always Close By
Posts: 232
I like the premise of this story. Men that cannot talk, lol. If only sometimes!

Being a hopeless romantic, I am leaning toward the musical story that Impetus is sugesting. But I'm not understading the issue of inheritance. Are men slave labour is this new world? I do like the submissive male theory in this story, but maybe as they learn to trust each other, his taking control can be a turn on and not a threat to her.

And how are you going to link the talking male to getting into trouble?

But Dump the damn talk show idea! The story can have tons of jokes but for God's sake, End Romantic!

(Just a thought)

 

[peterpan]

And then I said...

Both those story suggestions could work but really I want help nudging what I have. At the moment the biggest problem is the brutal way I would have to drag the user through the plot points for that old movie + courtroom idea to work. Apart from that, it is exactly what I want: the melodramatic self-sacrifice in which the curse is revealed as a virtue etc.

More stuff:________

I am aiming for a satire of sterotypes. For example, although men are bad at comunicating, it will be a common belief that women are bad with maps. Men do all the driving and don't need road signs. It would be slightly indecent for women to read a map. Nevertheless the hero will be lousy at navigation and driving. They (the hero and his wife) will arrive everywhere late. Yes this is silly too, but not that much sillier than society in the 1950s is to us now.

I won't be doing it as a dom/sub tale in this case. The woman will probably be a misfit as well. There are insecurities on both sides.
Perhaps she loves to drive. That might be what she is in court for: "driving while a woman"

Women would have to run the government etc. Women that do sport might be looked down on though. Men chop the wood and tinker with the garbage disposal units and women brag about how good their man is in the home. I guess men's condition is sort of like autisim.

 

[karmadog]

Social Satire

With a deft hand this could be great social satire. I think before you go anywhere, you need to figure out what this world would be like. How did men lose the ability to speak? How debilitating is their condition? Did they lose only the ability to speak, or did they lose the ability to understand language? In one case, the men could still communicate using sign language or writing, in the other, they could be no smarter than a dog or perhaps a dolphin (language being closely related to intelligence, not to say that those who cannot speak are stupid, but those who cannot understand communication cannot learn what others before them have learned).

How the men lost their ability to speak is crucial. It must be believable or readers will never get beyond the setup. Perhaps a genetic disease that attacks only Y chromosomes.

One of the things that appeals about this idea is the whole idea that women are better communicators than men. I personally do not believe this is true. The first rule of writing (which is pure communication) is to write to your audience. If men do not understand the "subtlety" of female communication, wouldn't a good communicator speak plainly?

I think I'll leave it at that. Good luck!

 

[wildsweetone]

interesting concepts

much as i initially like the thought of silent men, i can't help but admit that i'd still like to hear them saying certain things.

how about giving them boundaries, allowing them to only speak with certain limitations?

 

[Impetus]

Lessee...Getting to the courtroom/movie bit...

Well, first off, *I* (emphasis because it may just be me) think that having men as subsurvient in this case isn't a matter of dom/sub as much as a necessary thing. If men can't talk, yet they are necesary for the survival of the species, then they have to 'pay their way' somehow. And really the only thing they'd be able to do is labor. Without the ability to communicate effectively, labor would be just about all they would be good at.

Of course, there is the option of sign language. Perhaps I'm the only one that didn't see this one earlier, but if you wanted to have dialogue between men and women, you could do so with sign language. Men would be able to 'speak' and 'read' it, while women would only have to know how to 'read.'

When...men...talked...it would...be...slow...and...awkward...

And the women would be able to respond with normal speach.

Anyway...

I think if you really want to get to that one particular point where the hero confesses and everyone has seen it before, you're going to have to change up some of the setup. Here's an idea on how you could get there...

The Man doesn't know he can talk at the beginning of the story

Instead of the Aunt Dying...she just disappears one day. (She is mad...) Everyone assumes she is dead and the Hero is passed on to the female.

During the body of the story, the Man is listening to music. You could make his CD player his most prized posession if you wanted an extra touch of drama. And one day, deeply in love with the female and in a wonderfull mood, he finds himself singing along. I know, I know, music again. But I like music. So, huge revalation, he can talk. He practices talking to the song he listens to. The song that he is listening to is a song about confessing love. You'll have to come up with some clever lyrics for it, you'll see why soon.

Right, so the aunt returns unexpectely. Shock! She accuses the female of *stealing* the hero from her. Gasp! It's taken to trial and things are looking bad, like the Aunt will likely get him back. Sadness! Then, right at the end, the Hero steps up and confesses...quoting word for word the song that everyone knows. Humor! (You could make it a different type of song, just anything that would make a good song and still fit good here. Confession, Denial, Save me, Missing you, something). The Aunt, outraged and crazy, looses it, and upon seing this, no one is going to give the Hero back to her. Revalation! Girl falls for him, Hero avoids crazy aunt, aunt taken away. Success.

Good grief, that was hard to come up with. Anyway, hope it's helpfull. Good luck

-I

 

[peterpan]

much as i initially like the thought of silent men, i can't help but admit that i'd still like to hear them saying certain things.

It is a bit sad.

Re the singing, I still wish to keep the plot point that the man thinks that speaking will get him killed. Thus singing would appear as suicide and also a bastard thing to do to her if she loves him.

Believablity will emerge in the writing (or not) . Mostly what I am afraid of is grinding out ten pages of setup (eg for the courtroom idea) when the actual story I have in mind doesn't really have to do with the plotpoints mentioned but just the interaction of the two people.

I will also just go ahead and write it as well as discussing here. Sometimes these things just flow out and problems disappear before you reach them.

 

[peterpan]

Re: Social Satire

How the men lost their ability to speak is crucial. It must be believable or readers will never get beyond the setup. Perhaps a genetic disease that attacks only Y chromosomes.

In one way the reason does not matter at all: in the absence of any evidence, or regardless of it, some of the population would know it was an act of god; some would know it was a virus; and only a small proportion would simply not know.

 

[wildsweetone]

wow

If men can't talk, yet they are necesary for the survival of the species, then they have to 'pay their way' somehow. And really the only thing they'd be able to do is labor. Without the ability to communicate effectively, labor would be just about all they would be good at. - Impetus

good grief, i can't believe it took so long for this to hit me!

reality is that mute men and women can communicate and they are found in ALL walks of life. is anybody awake here?

even in fantasy one must respect the differences in others, don't you think?

again, no offense intended.

 

[Impetus]

reality is that mute men and women can communicate and they are found in ALL walks of life.

Well I've been wrong before, but...

I figured that jobs that require a great deal of communication (verbal or otherwise) would be exponentially more difficult to pull off as a person of non-speaking background. This immediately made me think of managerial positions, what with all the cell-phoning and such.

With a little more thought, I see now that not *all* positions would be cut off. We've all seen wall-street stock-brokers communicating with hand signals across the floor, right?

Sort of a strange place to be discussing the mute, I suppose...

Right...moving on.

-I

 

[peterpan]

Anyone on this site could be deaf and mute naturally. There are lots of jobs out there that anyone can do, so long as they can somehow input and read text. Stephen Hawkings etc. Not where I am going but no matter.

 

[wildsweetone]

knotting it with your plot lines peterpan, it is part of being human to want or need to communicate with others. where there is a will there is a way, as they say. the key would be in what way they would communicate.

unless of course there is no will.

 

[peterpan]

I am thinking the condition is like autism.

Yes, language is part of human nature, but I suspect it is also a part of the hardware of the brain. For example, isn't it weird that someone can be dislexic and still cope in other ways. That seems really specific to me.

It is certainly possible to have will without language. Animals have will but have little language. Pack animals have more language than others, but I don't think the others have less will.

Anyway, the 'hero' will be able to communicate, he just thinks she would hate him if she knew.