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Challenge #327
Mar. 18th, 2024 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverToday's challenge: Write a couple of paragraphs of a scene where two people are communicating with each other without speaking. For example, they might be a couple who know each other so well, they can communicate with just expressions. Or maybe your characters are captured and gagged - they might be able to grunt, but they can't form words.
The caveat: Describe what the people are doing, but don't directly tell the reader what they mean. One way to encourage you to do this is to tell the scene in first-person, from the point of view of the person who doesn't know what the other person is trying to say. Example:
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She caught my attention with a jerk of her head, then stared pointedly at the pile of straw behind me in the corner. When I shook my head, she rolled her eyes and jutted her chin at it again. With one foot, I reached as far as I could and toed away a bit of the straw, enough to see a glint of dull metal. That's where she'd hidden the knife.
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The caveat: Describe what the people are doing, but don't directly tell the reader what they mean. One way to encourage you to do this is to tell the scene in first-person, from the point of view of the person who doesn't know what the other person is trying to say. Example:
----
She caught my attention with a jerk of her head, then stared pointedly at the pile of straw behind me in the corner. When I shook my head, she rolled her eyes and jutted her chin at it again. With one foot, I reached as far as I could and toed away a bit of the straw, enough to see a glint of dull metal. That's where she'd hidden the knife.
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