Writing a Clairsentient Character

[Damage718]

In my WIP, there is a character who is sensitive to the strange (possibly supernatural) goings on in a mysterious town. There is no actual town there, though; it's one piece of land with a particular building in the middle of farmland.

But throughout the story, I hint, through dialogue, that something is "wrong" there. People either don't know what it is, or in this character's case, won't even talk about it. (For any diehard LotR fans, you may draw a sort of parallel to something like Fornost, where the rangers visit the abandoned/ruined city, but don't stay long, and it has a bit of a pall over it that something bad happened there.) She seems to know more than she leads on because she's so attuned to the place.

How could I convey this character's intuition/special empathy to a location? The MC perceives she is holding something back, but I want to include some other instances of her having this environmental clairsentience to the "town" without giving away the farm (no pun intended.) The only tie she has is she was the last child born there. But she seems to be the only one who possibly knows what secret the place might hold.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Ignoring clairvoyance for a second, normally you would write environmental cues. Uncanny wrongness. Silence amid evidence of human occupation is inherently creepy. A movie will take the shortcut of creaking swing set. But in your case not only does this need to be implied primarily through an extra sense (i.e., it doesn't take ESP to notice a creaking swing set), it needs to be done from without the POV character.

I'll reiterate your question to myself to ensure I understand it:
1. There is something wrong with the town.
2. A psychically sensitive character knows more about it than the POV, but doesn't want to talk about it.
3. You want to subtly convey this to both the reader and just as importantly, to the main character (POV). That is, you're not wanting to change POV in order to show any of this.

Thankfully, protagonists are usually observant. The first thought that comes to mind would be the psychic investigating something she had no reason to, and finding something noteworthy. It can be any degree of otherwise innocuous: a wooden top (the kind for spinning) in a butter dish. Psychic Jane lifts the lid and examines the top in a trance state, only coming out of it when the POV character asks her how she knew it would be there. Psychic Jane, of course, has plausible deniability: "I didn't. I just . . . I was curious."

They find themselves needing a resource: rope, lantern, etc. Psychic Jane quickly retrieves some from a utility closet or shed. It's reasonable to look there, but she found it just a bit too quickly.

Psychic Jane finds the overgrown entrance to the root cellar. As soon as the POV realizes it's there, she can't believe she overlooked it. Is Psychic Jane just paying more attention than her?

Psychic Jane finding scratch marks and gazing off into space while gracing her fingers over meat hooks might be too obvious. I don't know. Depends on what you're going for.

 

[Damage718]

Great insight, thank you. And yes, you reiterated the challenge I'm having correctly.

I slowly built up that there is something wrong with this pseudo-town (it was supposed to be a town but is only a baseball stadium and train station) with subtle hints from players who have played there before. The POV is new to the team so all this mystery town stuff intrigues and frightens him, especially when nobody wants to, or can talk about it. Thats when he learns the other character has some knowledge about it. Now, she is directly linked to it because she was born there, but has no real memory of it since she left with her family as an infant.

I know what I'm going to do with the town for the endgame. But trying to show how she is particularly sensitive to the place and perhaps why she won't talk about it is tough. This helps!