advice for writing a stutterer from an actual stutterer;
okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!
we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.
we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.
we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word – it clings in there, so don’t forget it.
some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).
we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.
we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.
sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!
we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!
it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed – when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.
I hope this was helpful! feel free to add on and spread around!
I am not a person who stutters, but I am a speech pathologist, so I figured I’d add a bit to this. There are also several different types of stuttering (or the fancy term disfluency).
There are three main types:
The one most people think of is repetition. This can be a single sound repeated like, “S-s-save me a s-s-seat.” Or it can be part of a word repeated like the OP mentioned above where they get stuck on the second syllable. Or it can be whole word repetitions, “Can-can-can-can I go?”
The second type is called blocking or blocks. This is when the air or sound is stopped at lungs, throat, or mouth. It’s kind of impossible to write, but it would look like, “Can…” he seemed to be grabbing for sound, “I come too.” When someone is blocking, there is no sound and typically you can see the strain in the person.
The third type is called prolongation and this when someone gets stuck on a sound. They’re holding on to a sound but their lips, tongue and teeth aren’t moving. It can happen on any sound but it’s more common on vowels. This would like, “Caaaaaaaaaan I come too?”
Disfluencies can last anywhere from less than a second to up to 10 seconds. Typically, it’s from less than a second to up to 2 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it’s longer than you think.
Along with stuttering, there tend to be secondary behaviors which can come in a variety of types. The most common behavior is escape behavior that people who stutter have developed to try to “get out of” the stutter. Not everyone has secondary behaviors, but they can be things like turning their head to the side, rapid eye blinking, tucking their head, tapping fingers against their leg. This might also be when the rate of speech changes. After an instance of disfluency, a person who stutters might speak the rest of the sentence really fast in an attempt to “just spit it out.”
You might also get what are called “avoidance behaviors”. Avoidance behaviors are not necessarily bad but they might effect the rhythm and rate of speech. This could be talking around a word that’s hard to say or using starter phrases like, “Ya know,” a lot or what we call “anti-expectancy devices”. This would be something like talking in a sing song voice or a different accent or a silly voice because people tend not to stutter when they’re using those different parts of their brain. They might use a lot of filler words like “umm…” before difficult words.
Every person who stutters is different.
If you’re writing someone who stutters or if you’re friends with someone who stutters, the safest thing to do when they start to stutter is to let them say what they were trying to say in whatever time it takes them. Don’t get impatient or finish their sentences. If you’re really close to the person, you can ask them what they want you to do, but most people I’ve talked to (children and adults alike) just want to be able to have their say without constantly being interrupted.
NOW people with anxiety disorders can check their email replies and applications and stuff to make sure we’re coming across the way we want to
Do you have any idea how important this is right now? Making sure you sound right without having to ask a friend to proof read you? This just made my life a whole lot easier.
OMG analyzing someone else’s text to see if you’re reacting appropriately?!? To make sure you’re interpreting them the way they intended!
This is SO COOL
A couple friends of mine at my school are making a phone app like this for spoken English! It’s called ToneAware and it’s designed for autism spectrum people to be able to discreetly interpret the tone and/or mood of someone they’re having a conversation with and I’ve seen them demonstrate it, it works really well and is super cool !!!
Why I never mock or even bring attention to mispronunciation in a conversation, and will snap down anyone who tries to
Besides poverty, for many peoplevEnglish is a second (or third+) language and has weird rules too.
Most of the time, even when words are mispronounced, they’re still understandable if you make an effort. Just be patient and don’t look down on people who mispronounce!
Also social anxiety and/or autism (among other things) will do that to you – anything where you grew up reading much more than you spoke (and getting shut down for mispronunciation when you do speak up does a whole lot to *keep* you quiet, turns out)
This is part of why the concept of “proper English” and “speaking properly” in general is classist, along with ableist and racist.
This is part of why when tone policing people or applying respectability politics about the way they speak, is as well, and is also why implying someone is less educated and/or less important because of how they speak, is too.
Found this reddit post. This kinda makes me feel better. And it’s something I think about sometimes because I always feel like regardless of how hard I work on something I don’t get anywhere.
ASAN is proud to announce the release of “Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism”. These essays discuss growing up undiagnosed, navigating the world as an autistic adult and the power of learning we’re autistic
its really weird to see all these articles about how people who have ADHD have sleeping problems but the issue I have is that if you look at it as a matter of your circadian rythym being out of sync? of COURSE you’re not going to be able to sleep. we don’t say people who can’t fall asleep at 4 pm and sleep 8 hours have insomnia, because that’s not a normally agreed upon time to sleep and its not your bodies time to sleep. if you tell someone to go to bed at 10 and they can’t sleep till 3 am sometimes in just not insomnia. people with ADHD are often wired to sleep from 4 am to 12 pm ish because of the delayed onset of melatonin but if you let us go to bed at the time we need? most of us actually sleep pretty well and consistently.
wAIT THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT EXISTS
“For most adults the onset of melatonin is around 9.30 pm; in ADHD children compared to controls this occurs at least 45 minutes later, and in adults with ADHD even 90 minutes (van der Heijden ea, 2005; van Veen ea 2010). After melatonin onset, it normally takes 2 hours to fall asleep, but in adults with ADHD it takes at least 3 hours (Bijlenga et al, 2013).”
Look at me awake at 1:47 am and reblogging this post.
So I’m actually trained in therapy for addressing insomnia and one of the things we learned is that a good chunk of sleep problems are societal disorders – as in they WOULDN’T EXIST as problems if society didn’t assume everyone was on the same circadian rhythm and that being up and working 9-5 was mandatory/normal. Blew my mind and made so much sense. You are not the problem, society is literally the problem.
If you’re struggling with mental illness and everything seems hopeless and/or impossibly difficult right now, I want you to know three things:
First thing: I believe in you.
Second thing: Everyone struggles with being happy–it’s not just you. You’re not struggling alone. Because the crap fact is, our brains are wired to hold onto the negative–fear and doubt and uncertainty, anxiety and trauma and bad memories–as a survival mechanism. Human beings aren’t wired to experience long-term happiness–it’s like asking an operating system to do something it was never designed to do.
But, that being said? We’ve always been innovators, always pushed at our limitations. Our progress is marked with people who were told, “that can’t be done” and who replied with “the fuck it can’t”. So while these might be the brains we inherited, we still have the ability to hack the system, tweak it, make upgrades. It’s a lot of buggy, imperfect, trial-and-error work, but it’s possible.
Third thing: You are worth the effort of flipping off evolutionary bio-psych to be happy.
its really weird to see all these articles about how people who have ADHD have sleeping problems but the issue I have is that if you look at it as a matter of your circadian rythym being out of sync? of COURSE you’re not going to be able to sleep. we don’t say people who can’t fall asleep at 4 pm and sleep 8 hours have insomnia, because that’s not a normally agreed upon time to sleep and its not your bodies time to sleep. if you tell someone to go to bed at 10 and they can’t sleep till 3 am sometimes in just not insomnia. people with ADHD are often wired to sleep from 4 am to 12 pm ish because of the delayed onset of melatonin but if you let us go to bed at the time we need? most of us actually sleep pretty well and consistently.
wAIT THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT EXISTS
“For most adults the onset of melatonin is around 9.30 pm; in ADHD children compared to controls this occurs at least 45 minutes later, and in adults with ADHD even 90 minutes (van der Heijden ea, 2005; van Veen ea 2010). After melatonin onset, it normally takes 2 hours to fall asleep, but in adults with ADHD it takes at least 3 hours (Bijlenga et al, 2013).”
Look at me awake at 1:47 am and reblogging this post.
So I’m actually trained in therapy for addressing insomnia and one of the things we learned is that a good chunk of sleep problems are societal disorders – as in they WOULDN’T EXIST as problems if society didn’t assume everyone was on the same circadian rhythm and that being up and working 9-5 was mandatory/normal. Blew my mind and made so much sense. You are not the problem, society is literally the problem.
It’s called delayed sleep phase disorder, it is commonly comorbid with ADHD and OCD, and it’s only debilitating because of societal expectations. I’m forced to work night shift because I have the most severe form of DSPD (cannot fall asleep before 4 or 5AM no matter what) which causes other problems with my life because people don’t comprehend that I sleep during the day.
Oh…
This is why we call it “neurodiversity.” These conditions are often more about brains working differently than them straight up malfunctioning. Our society just isn’t built to accommodate a wide array of brain types.
Oh my god
in societies that still sleep in groups outdoors- you know, like most of humanity has been doing for vastly longer than walls and houses have been a thing- people naturally fall asleep and wake up at different times, so in a given group of sleeping people there’s always a few people awake to make sure that there’s no threats around. As in, humans actually evolved to naturally do this.
Queer Fiction Writer 