Think Like A Pro

Handling Thought in Third Person

By Mary Rosenblum

 

 

            Thought…a character’s internal monologue…is a powerful tool in fiction.  It enables the author to stay out of sight and let the character give the reader valuable and necessary information.   It richly enhances characterization and adds depth to that character’s behavior.  But it can also drive the new writer nuts.  Used incorrectly, those thoughts can actually weaken the story and detract from its strength. 

 

The Punctuation Blues

            The first question that troubles most novice writers is:  How do I punctuate a thought?  Once upon a time, thought was often enclosed in quotation marks, the same as spoken dialogue.  That is no longer the style.  Modern prose does not punctuate dialogue in any special form, although some publishers insist on casting direct thoughts into italic.  Since italicized prose does not ‘sound normal’ to most readers, this can be problematic, but not all editors will accept a request to leave direct thought in regular type.   Actually, you do not need any specific punctuation. It is your job as author to make it clear from the context of the paragraph that the character is thinking.  Since the sentences are not enclosed in quotation marks, they are clearly not dialogue, and therefore they are thoughts. 

            You can always use a tag line to indicate the thought or the originator of the thought, just as you use ‘Andy said’ or ‘she said’ in order to indicate the speaker of a line of dialogue.  But you don’t need to use that tag line unless the reader might attribute the thought to the wrong character.

            “You don’t say.”  Carolyn narrowed her eyes.  “I would have thought Ernie took care of stock requests.”

            “I guess Sanny’s in charge now.”  Jean bit her lip.  Should she tell dear Carolyn about yesterday’s memo?  “Hey, I’d better get going.”  She smiled.  Nah, it wasn’t her job to spread the bad news.  “See you at dinner.”

            Here, it’s going to be pretty clear to nearly all readers that Jean’s question about telling Carolyn the news and decision not to is a thought rather than something said out loud and it is not the author’s intrusion.  We know that because the thought is presented in Jean’s voice; Nah, it wasn’t her job to spread the bad news. That’s not the author speaking.

 

Direct Thought

            You can write thought in two different forms.  One is ‘direct thought’.  That is, you essentially quote the Point of View character’s exact thoughts.  This is the form of thought that many publishers insist on casting into italic.  This is the form most novice writers tend to use, and it is not necessarily a good choice. 

            Pay attention to how you think.  Most of the time, we think in single words, images, sentence fragments.  We do not think in dialogue – in long, grammatically correct sentences in other words.  Yet many novice writers insist on letting the character go on and on with paragraphs of those long sentences.  And readers, who are all experts on human behavior after all, know that this is not how people think.  So the thoughts feel ‘wrong’.  And your story suffers.  Here’s our above example using Jean’s direct thoughts. 

            “You don’t say.”  Carolyn narrowed her eyes.  “I would have thought Ernie took care of stock requests.”

            “I guess Sanny’s in charge now.”  Jean bit her lip.  Should I tell dear Carolyn about yesterday’s memo?  “Hey, I’d better get going.”  She smiled.  Nah, it’s not my job to spread the bad news.  “See you at dinner.”

            If you notice, this doesn’t read quite as smoothly as the first example.  Those ‘direct thoughts’ stand out a bit and give us a bit of a ‘bump’ as we read.    Generally, our actual thoughts would be more fragmented, although the meaning of those thoughts might be ‘No, it’s not my job to spread the bad news’.  But most readers will find that this example ‘jars’ because we know how we think and this isn’t it. 

 

Tell Us What They Think

            Essentially, paraphrased thought is the meaning of the character’s thoughts, only you don’t pretend that this is what the character is actually thinking. 

            “You don’t say.”  Carolyn narrowed her eyes.  “I would have thought Ernie took care of stock requests.”

            “I guess Sanny’s in charge now.”  Jean bit her lip.  Should she tell dear Carolyn about yesterday’s memo?  “Hey, I’d better get going.”  She smiled.  Nah, it wasn’t her job to spread the bad news.  “See you at dinner.”

            The author has translated Jean’s fragmentary thoughts into ‘Should she tell Carolyn about yesterday’s memo?’  Those are not the actual words she is thinking, but they give us the gist of those actual thoughts.  But isn’t this ‘telling’ and shouldn’t we always ‘show’?  Well, yes it is telling, but in this case, we’re going to dress that telling up so that the reader doesn’t notice that we’re telling anything.

            If you preserve the character’s voice, by using that character’s vocabulary and speech patterns, readers will not even notice that this is actually your version of the character’s actual thoughts.  In the above example, that ‘dear Carolyn’ and ‘Nah’ give us the sense that we’re overhearing Carolyn’s thoughts.  The author isn’t likely to call Carolyn ‘dear Carolyn’ and would probably use a more proper ‘No’ rather than ‘Nah’.  But these two small language details give us the sense that this came from Carolyn rather than the author. 

            Here’s another example of thought dressed up to seem like the character’s own thoughts, even though it’s paraphrased:

            Jeremy hiked through the tall grass, swinging his stick like a sword, lopping off the grass heads.  Rorke was wrong.  He slashed through a clump of milkweed.  Jerk was dead wrong about Dad, was just jealous ‘cause his stupid father was a fat nobody who worked at that bank.  A rabbit burst from the grass under his feet and he raced after it, swinging the stick wildly. 

            Jeremy is angry, thinking about Rorke’s comments about Jeremy’s father.  But by putting those paraphrased thoughts into Jeremy’s voice…he thinks of Rorke as a jerk, uses ‘cause instead of because, and thinks of Rorke’s father as a fat nobody…a reader will absorb these as Jeremy’s thoughts and speed right on without even a jar.  Below, contrast the same passage written with a neutral, grammatically correct narrative voice – without using the character’s voice.

            Jeremy hiked through the tall grass, swinging his stick like a sword, lopping off the grass heads.  Rorke was wrong.  He slashed through a clump of milkweed.  His friend was dead wrong about his Dad, Jeremy thought angrily.  Rorke was just jealous because his father worked at a bank.  A rabbit burst from the grass under his feet and he raced after it, swinging the stick wildly. 

            Although the two passages convey the same information, notice that the first one conveys a stronger sense of Jeremy’s emotions and state of mind.  We don’t need ‘thought angrily’.  It’s very clear from Jeremy’s thoughts that he’s angry at Rorke.  Paraphrasing thought and using the character’s voice not only avoids the ‘jar’ of direct thought, it also permits us to deepen the characterization. 

 

Thinking of Backstory

            One of the most common ‘thinking’ mistakes made by novice writers is the ‘backstory reverie’.  The story starts out with dramatic action and a strong hook.  Then the Point of View character pauses and proceeds to think about the past events in his or her life at great length.  Of course this hands the backstory to the reader, but it does so at the price of readers and a sale.  While the hook promises us a great read, the story nearly instantly comes to a screeching halt while we review the character’s past year. 

            This is not a good start.  While thought and memory are great tools for giving the reader backstory, hand that backstory out in small bits rather than a huge dump of information.  You don’t have to give the reader all the backstory until you’ve reached your climax scene. By then, it’s too late for more backstory, but that still gives you most of the book to work it in as needed.  Very rarely do real people pause in their daily lives to relive the past year.  So don’t force your poor characters to do it either. 

            While thought is a valuable and potent tool for including backstory, giving the reader information, and deepening characterization, it tends to work better as paraphrased thought rather than ‘direct’ thought.  Do keep direct thought to a minimum and your character’s thinking will seem much more real and much less noticeable.  

            Thought is a valuable took in the writer’s toolkit.  It allows the author to give the reader insights into character motivation and is a great way to bring in bits of backstory.  Learn to use it well, don’t overuse it, and you’ll all layers of richness to your story.