If clarity is a virtue, obscurity is an art.
We are not speaking here of confusion or opacity. We do not trade in the cryptic for the sake of exclusion. Rather, we refer to a rarer kind of refinement: the quiet elegance of a thing not built to trend, not engineered to echo, not designed to dazzle in the moment. But to last.
At The Postscript Society, we write fiction that lives in drawers, in memory, in private rituals. Not in trends.
We choose language that may never go viral.
We use formats — letters, typewritten notes, hand-folded ephemera — that resist the aesthetic of the scroll.
We avoid tropes because they are, by nature, shortcuts. And shortcuts flatten the terrain we most wish to explore: the complexity of human emotion, and the strange, sideways shapes of memory.
Here is why we have chosen obscurity over trend — and what it gives us, and our readers, in return.
I. The Trouble with Tropes
A trope is a path already paved.
The mysterious billionaire.
The rivals-to-lovers.
The dead girl in the first scene.
Tropes are efficient. They signal genre, set expectation, and promise resolution.
But for us, fiction is not about efficiency. It is about sensation.
We are not here to fulfill a reader’s expectation.
We are here to awaken something they didn’t realize they were missing.
That cannot be done with prefab scaffolding. That must be done slowly. With atmosphere. With tonal shifts. With character interiority that doesn’t announce itself in three-act arcs or studio loglines.
We prefer ambiguity to blueprint.
We prefer presence to pattern.
II. Fashion Is Fast. Style Is Eternal.
To write fiction that lasts, one must resist the lure of now.
This is not easy. Especially in an era when stories are increasingly judged not by their depth but by their resonance within the current zeitgeist. Social media rewards archetypes. Buzzwords signal relevance. Hashtags become genre.
But we do not write for the moment. We write through it — toward something more enduring.
Style, like scent, is not loudness. It is signature. It does not beg attention. It leaves an impression. You remember it not because it screamed — but because it stayed.
That is how we approach our stories.
Not to match the mood of the season. But to define one.
III. Obscurity Is the Companion of Originality
What has never been done will never feel familiar at first.
To embrace obscurity — that is, to step outside the pattern — is to risk misunderstanding. But it is also to create something real. Something felt. Something that might not have a name yet, but will be remembered once it does.
Much of our fiction is written without resolution in the traditional sense. Not every love is requited. Not every secret is revealed. Not every mystery is solved in a bow.
This is not carelessness. It is precision.
It is a belief that the reader’s emotional experience is more important than their certainty.
To be obscure is not to be inaccessible.
It is to trust that the reader is willing to meet the story halfway.
And they always do.
IV. The Language of Longevity
We choose our words the way others choose silk or stone: for feel and for permanence.
Trendy language dates quickly. One season’s voice is another’s cringe.
Instead, we write toward cadence. Toward tone. Toward something that sounds slightly out of time — and thus, timeless.
Our fiction bears the marks of ink. Of linen paper. Of past decades reimagined. Not because we fetishize the old — but because we believe certain forms have yet to be surpassed. The letter. The note. The journal. The envelope that arrives unexpectedly and changes your day.
Our language reflects this. It is restrained, not minimalist. Lush, but not perfumed. We aim for elegance — not for style points.
V. Noise Is Not the Measure of Impact
What trends often misunderstand is that attention does not equal meaning.
We are not writing for engagement. We are writing for engagement of the heart. Of the imagination. Of the interior world that only comes alive when no one is watching.
This is why we do not market our stories in the usual way.
We do not pitch, tease, trailer.
We send. Quietly. Steadily. By post.
The envelope may be slim. The impact never is.
A story told well, in private, with care — can change more than a thousand posts made loudly.
It does not seek attention. It earns memory.
VI. The Reader Who Finds Us
When you don’t chase the trend, your audience becomes a seeker.
Our readers are not chasing novelty. They are chasing meaning.
They do not need the world to approve of their taste. They trust their own.
And because of this, our fiction can go deeper.
Can pause longer.
Can stretch into emotional landscapes that would scare a trend-driven writer.
Obscurity filters out the need to please.
What remains is a space of quiet excellence.
We write for that space.
In Closing — The Beauty of Being Slightly Out of Step
There is a grace to being just slightly out of time.
Like a vintage photograph without a date stamp.
Like a voice you recognize, but cannot quite place.
This is how we hope our stories feel.
A little off the map.
A little harder to summarize.
A little slower to read — and harder to forget.
In avoiding the tropes of the moment, we are not rejecting relevance.
We are reclaiming resonance.
We believe fiction should not chase culture. It should shape it — one whisper, one character, one envelope at a time.
And so we write.
Not for now.
But for the next drawer opened.
The next quiet afternoon.
The next reader who says, this feels like mine.
With elegant defiance,
The Head Archivist
The Postscript Society
