Culture clashes and quiet characters in writing

[Jubal]

Thinking about how to write a character better and thought I'd ask for advice.

In one of my current WIPs I have a character who is designed to look a bit like a typical fantasy "barbarian", though he's really more of a goatherd and pipe-player by temperament: he's from a hill-folk culture, doesn't speak the lowland language well initially, is often treated as if he's going to be a bit of a brute but is actually a great storyteller with a strong connection to landscapes and parts of the world that the more urbane characters might miss.

But in a bouncy pulp fantasy, I want ways to get snappy dialogue and humour with him can be tricky. Of course culture shock/mistranslation humour is a thing, and I do use a few of those cracks early in the book where him not knowing in-world euphemisms etc is a bit funny and helps me explain various concepts to the reader because there's a character who needs to learn about them. But if it keeps running beyond a certain point then rather than being a contact-humour thing it can easily veer into jokes that end up coming at the expense of the person who doesn't understand. As such, I want to make it pretty clear that he's learning the language as the book goes on, make it clear even from early on that he's not lacking in thought complexity even if he's not always expressing it well, etc.

But then I'm still left with this character who is from a less sedentary, more fluid culture than the main characters, is in a sense quite straight-laced, but isn't the straight man for jokes to be bounced off. The other three characters include one very witty character who's the most point of view type, one scholarly-punny character who is the straight man for jokes, and a dwarf who's a kind of nervous but sweet character who doesn't always read social situations well and has a lot of dwarf-society insights which I find easier to make funny. And then this fourth character, the hill-folk guy... often he doesn't get into the conversations as much, because it's easy to get the roles otherwise: the scholar does the informational bit, the wit adds banter, the nervous character makes observations that are either irrelevant or astute, and then the other guy kind of gets left out sometimes.

Maybe this is more of a problem than I think: he's still a good character and he has a lot of distinctive serious character and emotional moments: he's a character who's finding his way in the world and working out what sort of person he is, and there's quite a bit to be written for that. But all these aspects do make me worry I'm under-writing him.

Any thoughts welcome!

[JessMahler]

I hope you've had this figured out long before now, and feel free to ignore this incredibly late reply --
But what jumps out at me here is you talk about him learning the language and culture of the others, but nothing about HIS culture and views.

Everything you say the others bring, he brings also from a wildly different perspective -- what knowledge does he have to offer that isn't out of books but out of knowledge of the world? What type of humor do his people excel at? What is he observing that the others miss because they aren't used to being constantly alert to guard the flocks?

One of my teachers said there was a question on one of those IQ type tests asking to pick which object 'didn't belong'. It was an axe, a rope, a hammer and a saw. You were 'supposed' to pick the axe, hammer, and saw, because they are all tools. But people from non-industrial societies tended to pick the axe, rope, and saw -- because that's the set of tools you use to fell a tree.

What is your hill-guys axe, rope, and saw?

[Jubal]

Late replies area always welcome here! And I've barely got any writing done in December - about 400 words on this book in total as the time's been hoovered up between other projects and family stuff - so the advice is still very welcome and that's a good set of principles.

Definitely think that has poked me to work out some more about his society: aspects of it I've had pretty laid down for a while, but mostly in the big scales (what they eat, how they live, where they live), rather than detail points on the idioms, expectations and social relations within that society. I think the shepherd's alertness is a good point as well, that's an angle I hadn't thought of. Thank you!