Your Guide to a Successful Writing Career
HOME   |   CONTACT   |   ADVERTISE!   |   HELPFUL LINKS   |   ARTICLE INDEX


Crafting Fabulous Fiction:
What Are They Thinking? Portraying Your Characters' Thoughts

by Victoria Grossack

One of the advantages that the medium of written fiction has over other forms of storytelling -- such as film and theatre -- is that novels and short stories allow readers easy access to characters' thoughts.

Now, I'm not saying that other literary art forms never let us experience the inner workings of characters' minds. Who doesn't know some of Shakespeare's great passages? Consider Hamlet's, "To be or not to be," Richard the Third's, "Now is the winter of our discontent," and the balcony scene in Romeo & Juliet: "Romeo -- wherefore art thou Romeo?" These all give us wonderful insights to the characters' minds. But they are soliloquies -- the character is speaking ostensibly to him- or herself -- and thus, some would argue, there is an air of the artificial about it, because people normally don't speak so long and certainly not so eloquently aloud to themselves (although in Romeo & Juliet, Romeo happens to be conveniently eavesdropping -- but this is not something that Juliet realizes at the time). Therefore, soliloquies are not always used and the chance to learn what the characters are thinking is often not possible. In theatre, the emphasis is more on dialogue than anything else and so what the spectators experience is conversation.

In film, thoughts are occasionally given -- perhaps by the reading aloud of a letter, or by showing the character not speaking but having his voice speak anyway. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen showed a conversation between two parties with subtitles. But in film, the emphasis is on the visual, and internal thoughts and occasionally even the dialogue are sacrificed, to make room and time for chase scenes and special effects. This is not a complaint, mind you; just an observation.

So, if we really want to experience characters' thoughts -- and what could be more intimate, than to see into another person's mind? -- we're best doing it in regular text, i.e., the printed page (or an audio version of the same). But showing characters' thoughts is tricky. Here are two issues that need to be addressed:

  • How do you make sure that the reader knows that these words are part of a thought and not either dialogue or part of the regular text?

  • How do you make sure that the reader knows which of your characters is doing the thinking?

There are a host of other issues that could arise, but this is a little column, so let's limit its scope.

How you meet these challenges depends very much on other choices that you have made for your story; nothing happens in a vacuum. In particular, the person and point of view are critically intertwined with how you show your characters' thoughts.

Distinguishing Thoughts from Everything Else

Thoughts are like dialogue in that they are associated with individual characters and that they can be given verbatim. They are different from dialogue in that the rules surrounding them aren't as concrete as the rules governing dialogue. In other words, the grammar gendarmes probably won't come out to get you when you do one thing instead of the other. On the other hand, some techniques are smoother than others.

So, let's work through some examples.

A. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and said, "I can do this."

The above is dialogue, as is made obvious by the quotation marks and the word "said" -- used to attribute the speech to John. Instead of saying these words aloud, John could think them. In that case, you could write:

B. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, "I can do this."

This is awkward, because quotation marks are generally used to signal dialogue. Another technique is to employ italics. So here's another possibility:

C. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, I can do this.

I've even seen, in print, options B & C combined to create writing like the following:

D. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, "I can do this."

Now, I'll interject some opinions. I am not keen on using italics. I think they should be used sparingly, because italics, I believe, tire the reader -- especially if you have a lot of interior monologue. They're distracting, and, I believe, should be saved for special occasions.

There's also something else to realize about italics: they imply that you are giving the exact thoughts, in other words, word for word. The same thing goes for the use of quotation marks. But if you're using the first person or a third person intimate, you don't have to write it this way. You can imply it. Let's go through a few more possibilities.

E. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, he could do this.

Notice that the entire sentence is now in third person and the verb in the thought has shifted from the present tense can to its past tense could.

F. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase. He could do this.

In version F, we have removed the word thought altogether and turned the single sentence in the earlier examples into two sentences. The first sentence, "John stopped in front of the stairs," is important because it lets the reader know who is doing the thinking.

Then, as we are in third person intimate, we slide very naturally into John's optimistic self-evaluation of his stair-climbing ability in the next sentence -- in other words, into his mind and feelings - even though the word thought is not to be found.

G. I stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, I could do this.

In example G, I've switched to first person. Although there's nothing really wrong with the sentence above, in a way, there's a redundancy of meaning. In first person, nearly everything -- unless explicitly shown to be otherwise -- is a thought of the narrator's.

H. I stopped in front of the long, steep staircase. I could do this.

In example H, can you almost sense the quick intake of breath as the narrator looks at the long steep climb and decides to tackle it?

We've come up with eight different versions of representing almost the same thing. Some methods may be better, some may be worse; others will or will not suit depending on what you're trying to do.

Column Index

Copyright © 2012 Victoria Grossack
A version of this article appeared at the Coffeehouse for Writer's Fiction Fix.
This article may not be reprinted without the author's written permission.


Victoria Grossack studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Dartmouth College, and has published stories and articles in such publications as Contingencies, Women's World and I Love Cats. She is the author of Crafting Fabulous Fiction, a step-by-step guide to developing and polishing novels and short stories that includes many of her beloved columns. With Alice Underwood, she co-authored the Tapestry of Bronze series (including Jocasta, Mother-Wife of Oedipus; The Children of Tantalus; and Antigone & Creon), based on Greek myths and set in the late Bronze Age. Her independent novels include The Meryton Murders, in which she channels the spirits and styles of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie, and Hunters of the Feather, the first in the Crow Nickels (chronicles) trilogy, a set of novels that gives a bird's-eye view of the world. Victoria is married with kids, and (though American) spends much of her time in Europe. Her hobbies include gardening, hiking, bird-watching and tutoring mathematics. Visit her online at https://www.facebook.com/victoria.grossack/.
Search Writing-World.com:

This free script provided by JavaScript Kit

Becoming a successful writer isn't just about mastering great writing skills. It's also about overcoming the challenges and obstacles of the writing life: Rejection, fear of failure, lack of time, writer's block, the "Am I Really a Writer?" syndrome, and, of course, friends and family who just don't get it.

Fortunately, you're not alone. We've all been there. So here's a handy "survival guide" that will bring you inspiration, motivation, support and good old-fashioned advice to help you through the tough times. Don't let those writing gremlins keep you from achieving your dreams!

More from Moira Allen:

Copyright © 2024 by Moira Allen. All rights reserved.
All materials on this site are the property of their authors and may not be reprinted without the author's written permission, unless otherwise indicated.
For more information please contact Moira Allen, Editor
Please read our Privacy Statement.