Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/41845
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You see this a lot in video games: a silent protagonist who can somehow communicate with the rest of the world with seemingly no or few words. Usually, it's hand-waved away by simply assuming from the player that they _know_ the protagonist and the other person understand each other somehow, even if one of them isn't saying much.

I want to incorporate a "silent" protagonist into my story. The reason is that he's an alien who can't really speak the language of the people he visits on foreign planets. The way he communicates is by pointing at things of interest, doing certain gestures or showing images of things on his smartphone-like device. He is also very expressive, so you can tell most of the time in what kind of mood he is or how he perceives what he's told, such as being annoyed when someone asks a stupid question. Most of the people he talks to seem to innately understand him despite his unusual method of communicating. There is no specific explanation to that, so no weird telepathic powers he uses on people, or anything. He does however communicate telepathically with his own kind.

Could a silent protagonist like that work in a _visual_ medium, like a movie or tv series? Are there any good examples I could look into to get a better idea on how I could implement such a protagonist?

Original score: 3