New answers tagged technique
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I have read books where authors deliberately misspelled words to try to describe the character's speaking. However, I personally think that this makes it difficult to read and awkward.
Instead of focusing on how the character mispronounces words, think about the rate at which the person speaks. That's something easier to get across.
Example:
"Wha... ...
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Given that is this a serial, you may be misinterpreting the reader comments. From what you've reported, you've done exactly what you planned to. You've introduced a cliffhanger where the hero acts out of character. And you've successfully established that character to the point that people recognize that fact. More importantly, you've made them care. ...
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This is a fascinating question and I agree with the main response: to explain something like that, you probably need to introduce the mechanism earlier rather than later.
You left it ambiguous whether you were talking about a serial that’s already published, or a draft sent out to test-readers. The advice to revise the draft is extremely good if you are in ...
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Agree with the readers
Very recently, I came upon a bit of storytelling that almost made me lose interest in the story because I honestly thought it was a logical mistake that would have really taken me out of it.
Basically, an action the main character made changed the action of a different character, even though they were completely sealed off from one ...
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Given the phrase "After releasing an issue", I get the impression that you are releasing this story serially. I think is a significant part of the problem.
If you essentially ended this release of your story with this event, then the problem basically boils down to this. You had the main character do something wholly and completely out-of-character. By ...
4
There must be logic
I believe it is important to always let the readers understand the logic of your character's actions.
Even if the character is super evil, his motivation should be one the readers can sympathize with. Rather his methods are what could be despicable.
For instance, a villain wanting to save the world... by destroying society and starting ...
27
What you should have done, and should do in rewrite, is make it clear to the reader a traitor exists, perhaps make it clear a poison that does exactly that exists, etc. You can do that early in your book, in a story or fable.
The readers already believe the MC would never do this thing. So you need to hang a lantern on this behavior during the battle. Say ...
1
Human learning is like a mobile (the baby toy)
We start with our core ideas of knowledge, and then hang new ideas from them. These new ideas then give us spots to attach even more new ideas. It's kind of like an upside down bush. When teaching someone for this reason it is very important to teach things in this order. If you give someone ideas that they don'...
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You can associate your character with something else, thats easier to remember. For 7 you could use the 7 colours of the rainbow or the 7 weekdays. This is only appropriate for some storys though ,probably fantasy. Because the characters are either linked by destiny or some organization or a preordained plan, or because they all found connected artifacts...
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There are a lot of good answers above, and I'd like to reinforce what others have said: having timestamps around can be good or bad depending on the type of story being told.
I am now going to focus on the idea of timestamps as chapter subtitles. I say timestamps because, depending on the story, it can be hours, days (as in day 1, day 2, ...), dates, ...
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As of this answer, this question is marked as being "asked 19 hours ago". Is this a lazy way of SE to tell us when the question was asked? Should they have found a more organic way of telling us when questions are asked?
Books are full of numbers: they generally have page numbers in the corners, chapter numbers at the beginning of the chapter, etc. The show ...
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Another option beyond was has already been mentioned in other answers is to employ the descriptions of the surroundings. The specific use will of course depend on your timeframe.
If your story spans several weeks or months, you can drop hints about phenomena such a changing seasons, weather, holidays, etc. Small phrases like "first snows has fallen the day ...
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I found using dates/hours gets hard to track for the readers. They get ignored and the reader gets confused by the time skip.
I believe the best way is to have an overreaching "loud" story arc in the sidelines, echoes of which are accessible from every single other arc. Election campaign with scandal events unfolding in news. Celestial bodies in the sky ...
2
It is very important to give your audience tracking data where keeping track of the order of events is a matter of serious difficulty and/or necessity. I can think of several series of novels, of which S.M. Stirling's Nantucket/Emberverse series is probably the best example, which use a chapter header with the date(s) of the action in that chapter, it works ...
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I have seen the Chapter Subtitle method most often used in novels with complex plots and many moving pieces. It seems to be the most common method used in my reading experience.
One unique method I recall was used in The Neverending Story, where depending in which world the action was taking place in, the color of the text the book was printed in literally ...
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It is probably not going to be possible to keep your readers aware of the time and date all the time, at least not in an organical manner.
However, with regards to telling the timeline, it doesn't matter until your plots converge. And then we know "what day it is" because your characters are in the same scene, or one character's actions cause effects for ...
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What is it about? What will entice a reader to read it without deceiving them about the content? Is there a sentence in the text that will intrigue? What is your message?
Is any one of these the title?
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Embrace the conflict. Just like a screenplay, a scene can have an ACT I, ACT II, ACT III.
And people get absorbed in conflict, there should be some conflict in every scene, and your scene is built for conflict.
The Acts within a scene are obviously much shortened, perhaps to a single scene, but they still exist. For yours (call the brother Bob):
Scene ACT ...
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I think a lot of us have been damaged by the myth of inborn talent. When I've looked deeply into the biographies of the artists I've most admired, they've spent years working hard on the parts of their craft that seem most effortless. As an example, one of my favorite songwriters, Paul Simon, spent three straight years writing a new song every night, ...
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Try it as dialog... and then you'll also realize the situation could be seen as very prejudiced (code smell?) Let me show you:
Groff: I'm leaving before those Grobschookas get here.
Doff: Why? I mean, they seem a bit violent, but who isn't?
Groff: You don't get it, they are horrible.
Doff: In what way?
Groff: They eat babies.
Doff:...
3
It can't hurt to try.
If you have an idea for a story you can do it. For example there may still be some people around that have you "bookmarked" or are "following" you or whatever the system to keep track of authors / stories you are interested in is called where you want to post it. Maybe you are lucky and they will look at your post because it appears ...
1
Indirection is only a problem when reader can't tell which layer of the story they are on
Using a narrator that is retelling events from their life is a common literary technique. Many books do it well. In these books is it not uncommon for the narrator to then retell a story that was told to them. This is exactly what you have here. The trick to making it ...
1
It's all about how you handle it.
You're describing a flashback to hearing a third-hand story about a distant tribe. It's far in time, far in relationship (i.e. degrees of separation), and far in geography. You have to make it relevant, intense, and short.
Are you using indirection in the coding sense?
I would say don't think of it that way, because you ...
2
I think if any of us could tell you how to write like a Nobel Prize winning author, we wouldn't be in this forum :)
But, seriously, this kind of writing takes a great deal of experience and practice. John Steinbeck wrote dozens of short stories, novellas and novels before he wrote The Grapes of Wrath -- which I believe is the greatest novel ever written, ...
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I'll add to the already good answers:
effective ways to describe fear, doubt, exhaustion, love...
There are a lot of writing guides out there, some more general, some more specific. Some bad, some good. I'll tell you about my experience with a book called "the Emotion-Thesaurus" that a friend gifted to me and I'm using (even if not consistently).
As ...
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Too much detail
Any time I wish to make the reader uncomfortable I start describing things or people with too much detail. Human beings are great for that because when we observe people we see them as a person. We are so used to humans that the pile of talking meat does not seem weird to us at all. Now on the other hand if we lets say see a robot, a 1960s ...
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I like this question! There are a lot of marketing type posts if you google "blog checklist," but I found a few useful references.
Here's one that has a lot more on the keeping-your-content-focused portions of the checklist, which may help you if trying to figure out if your blog posts are "enough"
https://www.successfulblogging.com/blog-checklist/
As ...
0
Creepy normally scare people away. Maybe its just their eyes that are an issue not counted as murderous but just don't look straight into them. As someone who has a family trait of both resting bitch face and murderous eyes when all I'm doing is just my normal neutral expression it does turn some people off I look at people who are joking and they'll think ...
1
There was a short story I read a while ago, where a character was clued in to some mental meddling by another character answering a question word-for-word the same on three occasions in the text, with none of the little variations people toss in or without (apparently) realizing or commenting that they'd already answered. The questions were far enough apart,...
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The specific details you choose don't matter as much as how you wield them. You want to start out with details that are incredibly subtle. These are less to clue your readers in and more to reward close readers and give "aha!" moments on rereads. Then, move to details that are more noticeable but don't give a complete picture so that your readers start ...
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Brandon Sanderson uses shadows which point the wrong way, towards the light instead of away, in at least one of his books to mark when something is wrong.
Maybe your being should similarly warp physics in various subtle ways?
When he speaks, things close to edges on counters tend to fall off.
Water won't boil when he is present.
Gravity seems weaker.
They ...
4
I don't think any of the other answers has covered that this is really a point of view question. Your eldritch character doesn't need to look different, act different, have funny traits or even speak in a different typeface. In fact, it's perhaps better if there's nothing identifiably odd about him at all. Just make your point of view character ...
2
Things change, things that shouldn't.
In one scene they have blue eyes, some time later, they are grey.
A tattoo that used to be a bird now is shows a flower.
Their hair grows from short to long in way too short time.
Their clothes change when they really have had no opportunity to change them.
When they need some item, they already have it in their ...
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Demonstration
All humɑn beings ɑre born free ɑnd equɑl in dignity ɑnd rights. They ɑre endowed with reɑson ɑnd conscience ɑnd should ɑct towɑrds one ɑnother in ɑ spirit of brotherhood. — Universɑl Declɑrɑtion of Humɑn Rights.
Ideally that text would have invoked a subtle feeling of oddness since:
Actual Answer
If you want to invoke a feeling of oddness ...
9
As I interpret your question, you're not interested in specific behaviors or traits that will mark the person as alien.
Though, they seem for all appearances and seemingly all mannerisms to
appear as human, they are not. The human eyes, but not mind, are
fooled. Something is very off about this being, and everyone knows it.
The characters ...
32
Have animals react to them strangely
It's a trope (with a surprising amount of real-world evidence) that animals can sense things wrong with the world that people can't. Impending earthquakes, cancers, nefarious intentions etc.
Dogs raise their hackles and stare, cats slink out of the room. Easy to explain by him/her/it saying 'yeah, dogs and cats just don'...
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With a repetitive bit of narrative, verbatim.
Every time someone interacts with the eldritch they:
His eyes wandering, he shuffled his feet and cleared his throat before he responded (to the eldritch).
No one ever remarks that that's what everyone does (until the reveal, and someone does figure it out), but if everyone shuffles their feet and then ...
8
What you're describing is basically Uncanny Valley, which is a fairly active area of research.
As leftaroundabout says in his answer, this has clear implications for CGI. If you want your CGI to model a monster of some kind, we don't have a mental map of how that should work; but for humans we do, and mismatches are jarring on an instinctual level. Even ...
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All body movements are like would seem to just fulfill the purpose, and like a human would describe them, but they don't actually follow the physical laws of mechanics.
Essentially, the character moves like a human in a 2000s video game, but without the obvious graphics imperfections.
Most of the movements we do in everyday life are actually more ...
2
In addition to what others have mentioned, I think you can achieve a lot with creepy oddities about the face.
Eyes
Not blinking (or less frequently, the eldritch probably realizes this is something people do)
Looking at you straight without having the eyes dart around
Lack of reflection
The eyes show up weird in photographs (i.e. they always have red eyes)...
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Something is very off about this being, and everyone knows it.
Except it's not. When someone is very off, people steer clear. The creepy guy who hangs out in front of the supermarket makes his creepiness known by asking out any woman unfortunate enough to engage him in conversation for 5 seconds. The creepy little girl likes to talk in depth about dead ...
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Instinct warns your other characters that there is something other about this one. He has never been observed to lose his temper in situations where that would be expected nor has he exhibited fear when that was appropriate.
You say everyone knows it, so the occasional Jesse is weird comment or thought would not be unusual. You wish to avoid this, so the ...
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