Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44851
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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, and the answers casual enough, that it wasn't obvious, obvious, but it could've been enough to be noticed (or even not-noticed, but make someone twitchy) before the character brought it up.

So, maybe you could have some... echoes in people's POVs about this character. Little sentences or fragments or observations that just happen to be word-for-word the same across some otherwise different POV's - because the perfectly ordinary responses to perfectly ordinary actions by this character are, well, _in universe_ scripted out.

If the POVs and the characters are otherwise not overly similar, ie, wouldn't use the same phrasing or vocabulary, it wouldn't come across as "just" reusing phrases but could create a subtle flatness or repetition that could be unnerving.

This would pair exceedingly well with Wrzlprmft's suggestion of playing around with subtle linguistic changes - using subtly different or altered versions of characters or fonts when referring to this person, to give a subtle sense of difference.

If, or maybe when, you need to make it increasingly obvious, you could have characters begin to notice similar turns of phrase - but not (at first) think anything of it... maybe a glance to the last person who said the exact-same-thing in the last scene, maybe a half-smile when it's echoed since it was expected, or someone "quoting" rather than saying the phrase, or more than one saying it in unison (again, possibly "on purpose")... there are reasons people might use the same phrase (usually quotes or inside jokes), so it can be subtly noticed and called out without becoming overt right away, and only later escalate into this echoey mindless repeat of a phrase even when it's clear it doesn't apply the way it seemed.

Original score: 1