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Young Writers Society


writing someone who speaks in crytic and short matter



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Gender: Female
Points: 171
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Wed Mar 15, 2017 2:54 pm
ewolf20 says...



"what is to know, is not known"

what you see here is something I tried doing, but I can't seem to make it ambiguous enough. One of my characters more or less speaks like this minus the slang and idioms (since he apparently does not understand those concepts). Now the hard part is how to go about this? Some have suggested that i should think backwards, reduce the explicit and the implicit, and try to make it out of context. These, funnily enough are, are unclear to understand for someone who got hit in the head a million times.
  





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Wed Mar 15, 2017 3:10 pm
PrincessInk says...



Try using short metaphors. To be cryptic you tend to speak vaguely. It's different from avoiding the question, which typically means a drawn-out answer. You do answer the question, but you also confuse everybody :)

But sentence construct is also important. If you forcefully try to phrase things in cryptic manners, you could end up frustrating the reader. Your example, "what is to know, is not known" has a rather awkward structure and it's hard for me to understand.

And maybe you can take the ambiguity from your character's experience. After all, what a character says or does depends on their history.

I'm not so experienced at writing cryptic characters, but I hope I helped!
always daydreaming, always clumsy
  





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We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind