SANJIESAN LORE / Documents in fiction
Write an in-world announcement for its original audience
An invented notice can sound artificial when it explains things every resident already knows. Library of Congress teaching guidance asks about a source’s creator, audience and purpose. Applied to fictional documents, those questions help you decide what the writer would actually include and what a later reader must infer.
Choose the action the notice should cause
Invent a notice about temporarily moving a town’s evening market. Decide whether its writer wants traders to relocate, residents to avoid a street or a particular group to report elsewhere. Pick one principal action. Write the practical details needed to perform it, including the place and relevant time convention. A notice does not need to explain the founding of the market unless that history matters to its immediate purpose.
Use missing context deliberately
A resident may understand a familiar square name without explanation, while a visiting character does not. Let that gap create a small action: asking directions, following the wrong crowd or comparing the notice with a map. Do not make the notice conveniently translate every local reference for the visitor. At the same time, give readers enough surrounding context to understand the consequence; obscurity alone does not create depth.
Compare the public and private versions
Write a short private message by the same official about the move. It may include doubts or inconvenient details excluded from the public notice. Decide whether the difference is deception, brevity or a different practical purpose. Keep facts that must agree, such as the location, consistent unless the discrepancy is intentional. The two texts should reveal a decision-making situation, rather than serving as duplicate paragraphs of exposition in different typography.