Writing Ideas: Quiet Characters

do you have any tips on how to write for a quiet character living a comfortable life abruptly being forced to adapt to a rowdy and somewhat violent environment?

Writing Ideas: Quiet Characters

common literary & character tropes

Beware the Quiet Ones: When the character who is hardly ever upset about something, suddenly raises their voice, the world turns upside down and seems to come to an end. There is an unleashed raging or cold speech of epic proportions that not even the most demented character in the story would want to sit through. This rage is almost always expressed verbally, though violence can also be included. Another version could be when the heroes' team is in low spirits, and The Quiet One, fed up with all the sulking, throws the table (or something else) to the side and gives a Rousing Speech to their comrades.

Elective Mute: It turns out that a character assumed to be unable to talk actually can speak, they just choose to be silent most of the time.

Emotionless Girl: An enigmatic female character who appears to be entirely emotionless. Whether she actually is emotionless depends on the story and often on her level of characterization.

Heroic Mime: A hero who never speaks.

Silent Scapegoat: Somebody who willingly takes the blame for everyone else's wrongdoings.

Suddenly Speaking: A character who was initially silent eventually reveals that they can speak after all.

The Quiet One: A character who does speak, but not as much as the other characters.

The Stoic: Quiet demeanor tends towards the brusque or outright rudeness, though there are a few polite Stoics. Some stoics may try to give the impression of a lot going on inside, cultivate an air of mystery and confuse other characters with cryptic one-liners. The Stoic sometimes displays emotion when under extreme stress or in other highly emotional situations, but their usual repertoire consists of mild boredom, detached interest, Dull Surprise or dignified disdain. The Stoics in ancient Greece were philosophers who believed that self-control is the highest virtue, and detachment from strong emotions and passion would give them greater insight in their quest for truth. They also thought that emotional reactions to the inevitable were silly; given that We All Die Someday, what is grieving over death but a judgment that the inevitable was somehow wrong? Stoics would later be criticized for fatalism and apathy.

The Voiceless: A character isn't shown speaking, but might still be capable of speech.

Tranquil Fury: This character can range from happy or stoic, but their anger is more quiet (but still dangerous). What defines this trope is the tendency to become deadly serious when it gets deadly serious.

Examples

In the story "The Six Swans", collected by the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen among others, a Fallen Princess must make six shirts out of nettles and can't make a sound for seven years or the spell that transformed her six brothers into swans will never be broken. She manages to keep all of these conditions and gets to break the spell. This is an example of the Elective Mute trope.

Peter in Jumanji, who talks to no one but his older sister Judy ever since their parents' death by car accident. Once Alan gets out of the game and finds his parents are also dead, Peter starts talking to him as well.

Charles Wallace was an Elective Mute trope a child in A Wrinkle in Time. By the time of the later books, he has grown out of it.

Irish Mythology: The battle trance Nuada enters before the first battle of Maige Tuired is sometimes described as a battle fury. However, unlike The Riastrad, the famous "Warp Spasm" of the hero Cu Chulainn, Nuada does not become a berserker, but instead becomes exceptionally calm. This is an example of the Tranquil Fury trope.

Older Than Steam. Shakespeare's Henry V has the eponymous character's Tranquil Fury reaction to the tennis balls.

Dead Poets Society: The shy and insecure Todd Anderson spends most of the film struggling to get out two full sentences and is overlooked by the school and his parents. After his best friend kills himself, the school tries to bully him (and the other boys) into pinning the blame on their favorite teacher — and he leads half the class in an outright rebellion against the headmaster.

Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather is famously very soft-spoken, even hoarse, but an extremely menacing screen presence.

In the original novel The Godfather, both Vito and Michael Corleone were noted as young men for being soft-spoken, understated, and reasonable, especially in contrast to many of their Sicilian immigrant and first-generation compatriots. They go on to become in turn the most feared "Family" heads of their generations, while still rarely raising their voices above a normal speaking tone.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

This is already quite a specific character, and it seems you have a rough idea of your storyline. I don't want to intrude too much on your story, so I compiled tropes and examples in literature as well as other media that are somewhat related to what you described, and you could perhaps incorporate these (& edit as needed/desired) to further flesh out your specific character and plot. Consider which direction you want your story to go; what reactions you want your own character to show once they're thrust into that new environment (Will they continue to be quiet? Will they go the other end of the spectrum? Perhaps somewhere in between? Will they succeed in "adapting" in this new environment?). Do go through the sources for more information and examples. Plus these previous posts that may be useful as well:

On Shyness ⚜ On Mutism ⚜ On Introverts

Word Alternatives: Quiet ⚜ Five-Factor Model of Personality