the scenic route
Jun. 15th, 2023 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliCertain characters are going to see our hero for the first time.
Going to have to describe what they see to make it credible that they regard him as a threat without his actually doing anything threatening.
Mind you, the first thing is going to be how he's carrying a sack, coming out of a place where they know he might have looted something. The reader is wiser, but they aren't.
The second thing, I think, will be to play up his appearance. They will at first take him for an old man and only then realize he is, in fact, under age still. This is correctly taken as a sign of magic. (Liminality often is.)
Which may suffice. They are, in fact, contributing to the problem by wrongheadedness. Can't give them too many excuses.
Going to have to describe what they see to make it credible that they regard him as a threat without his actually doing anything threatening.
Mind you, the first thing is going to be how he's carrying a sack, coming out of a place where they know he might have looted something. The reader is wiser, but they aren't.
The second thing, I think, will be to play up his appearance. They will at first take him for an old man and only then realize he is, in fact, under age still. This is correctly taken as a sign of magic. (Liminality often is.)
Which may suffice. They are, in fact, contributing to the problem by wrongheadedness. Can't give them too many excuses.