Exlplaining Lead Character Thoughts?

[HeyAll]

For mainstream, 3rd person books, the kind you'd see in a bookstore, some books gladly explain what the lead character is thinking.

But there are big name writers who say to avoid going into the lead character's thoughts, and instead show everything through action.

It's the show-don't-tell concept.

thoughts?


For me, I've always explained everything like there's no tommorow. It's the easiest way and what I've always known.

Not explaining, in 3rd person, or explaining less, is interesting to me. But it takes a lot more skill to use that technique of showing everything through small details.

 

[lovecraft68]

I do a mixture, often the MC is reacting to what's happening and interacting with the other characters so even though the reader is in their head its as if they're reacting as he does.

At times I will have the MC be thinking of what just happened, what they are going to do, perhaps thinking back on something the reader was not privy to for some exposition, but I try to keep it light.

In my novels I don't do a lot of narrative or go on and on about the background, the sunset, what everything smells or looks like, my character's actions, thoughts and dialogue drive everything, and I try to keep the internal thoughts of the MC minimal especially if I want to pull off some misdirect or a twist

 

[gunhilltrain]

If I do thoughts, I'll usually put them in italics. If it's in the first person, I might write, "It struck me that, blah-blah-blah." Or I might go directly into the italics. This lady has some huge tits. I did once write almost exactly that.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think absolutely, 100% get into the character's head. That IS part of the action. Reporting what a character is thinking is not telling, it is showing. It's part of the show.

I write in both third person and first person. In my third-person stories, I'm trying to transition to the free indirect style. It's the closest third person style to a first person style.

Example:

A more traditional style is this:

Max looked at his body in the mirror. He wondered if women would find find him attractive.

Free indirect style is this:

Max looked at himself in the mirror. Would women find him attractive?

With free indirect style, even though it's in third person POV, the narrator and character POV are merged much of the time.

It's been around for a long time. Jane Austen was one of the first practitioners.

To me, erotica makes no sense if you aren't getting into the minds of the characters doing erotic things and revealing what they are thinking.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think absolutely, 100% get into the character's head. That IS part of the action. Reporting what a character is thinking is not telling, it is showing. It's part of the show.

I write in both third person and first person. In my third-person stories, I'm trying to transition to the free indirect style. It's the closest third person style to a first person style.

Example:

A more traditional style is this:

Max looked at his body in the mirror. He wondered if women would find find him attractive.

Free indirect style is this:

Max looked at himself in the mirror. Would women find him attractive?

With free indirect style, even though it's in third person POV, the narrator and character POV are merged much of the time.

It's been around for a long time. Jane Austen was one of the first practitioners.

To me, erotica makes no sense if you aren't getting into the minds of the characters doing erotic things and revealing what they are thinking.

I think HA question isn't how to do it, but to what extent do you do it? Like a balance between what moves the story and what becomes too much, as he said the Show V tell balance.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I tend to write contemplative stories which are more mood than plot, so thoughts are often expressed as part of the protagonist's inner narrative, but not as exposition. In that regard, I'm definitely show don't tell, with the little details doing the work.

I reckon if you can hear the wheels going around, clunk clunk, my writing's not smooth enough. It should all be seamless.

Edit: I'd cut out a comment about writing close third person, which I use a lot for the same reasons Simon's given. I'd often wondered what that's called. Tips hat to Simon, for knowing .

 

[SimonDoom]

I think HA question isn't how to do it, but to what extent do you do it? Like a balance between what moves the story and what becomes too much, as he said the Show V tell balance.

But it's not show v. tell. That's a false dichotomy in this case.

Revealing what a character is thinking is showing, not telling. Telling is when the narrator describes and characterizes things apart from what is actually happening.

It's telling when the narrator says "Mr. Bean was a curious chap."

It's showing when the narrator gets into Mr. Bean's head and reveals what Mr. Bean is thinking that demonstrates he is a curious chap.

Often, the character's feelings and thoughts are the meat of the story.

I think the basic answer is it all depends on the purpose of the story. HeyAll's stories tend to be relatively short (by Lit standards) fun stories often with incest themes. A lot of my stories are similar. In stories like that there's no need to overdo the description of what the character is thinking. Just focus on the stuff that serves the story's purpose. It doesn't serve the story's purpose, probably, to get into Mom's head while she's having sex and report that she notices a stain on the curtains while son is boffing her on the sofa. So get rid of that stuff.

 

[KeithD]

thoughts?

My thought is, isn't it great that there is such variety and so many different effective approaches in fiction?

 

[MelissaBaby]

But it's not show v. tell. That's a false dichotomy in this case.

Revealing what a character is thinking is showing, not telling. Telling is when the narrator describes and characterizes things apart from what is actually happening.

It's telling when the narrator says "Mr. Bean was a curious chap."

It's showing when the narrator gets into Mr. Bean's head and reveals what Mr. Bean is thinking that demonstrates he is a curious chap.

Often, the character's feelings and thoughts are the meat of the story.

I think the basic answer is it all depends on the purpose of the story. HeyAll's stories tend to be relatively short (by Lit standards) fun stories often with incest themes. A lot of my stories are similar. In stories like that there's no need to overdo the description of what the character is thinking. Just focus on the stuff that serves the story's purpose. It doesn't serve the story's purpose, probably, to get into Mom's head while she's having sex and report that she notices a stain on the curtains while son is boffing her on the sofa. So get rid of that stuff.

I'm with you.

The characters thoughts are a form of dialogue.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I tend to write contemplative stories which are more mood than plot, so thoughts are often expressed as part of the protagonist's inner narrative, but not as exposition. In that regard, I'm definitely show don't tell, with the little details doing the work.

I reckon if you can hear the wheels going around, clunk clunk, my writing's not smooth enough. It should all be seamless.

Edit: I'd cut out a comment about writing close third person, which I use a lot for the same reasons Simon's given. I'd often wondered what that's called. Tips hat to Simon, for knowing .

I think I get it. If I express my character's thoughts, it's usually directly related to what is going on at the moment. Sometimes it's what they considered saying to another person, but they think better of it before it comes out of their mouths. Or sometimes they regret saying something, and then they immediately think that they made a mistake. Why did I have to say such a dumb thing?

 

[Melyssaha]

I think absolutely, 100% get into the character's head. That IS part of the action. Reporting what a character is thinking is not telling, it is showing. It's part of the show.

I write in both third person and first person. In my third-person stories, I'm trying to transition to the free indirect style. It's the closest third person style to a first person style.

Example:

A more traditional style is this:

Max looked at his body in the mirror. He wondered if women would find find him attractive.

Free indirect style is this:

Max looked at himself in the mirror. Would women find him attractive?

With free indirect style, even though it's in third person POV, the narrator and character POV are merged much of the time.

It's been around for a long time. Jane Austen was one of the first practitioners.

To me, erotica makes no sense if you aren't getting into the minds of the characters doing erotic things and revealing what they are thinking.

I love this post! Very helpful, thank you!

 

[NotWise]

For me it would depend on the story. if it's a romance then you'd better get into the the lead characters head. If it's action, then maybe you'd do action first and thought second.

 

[TadOverdon]

In limited/tight third-person I sprinkle short, italicized character thoughts through the text.

It's way too easy to overdo it. But I'd rather do it than either repeatedly use "he/she thought" tags or try always to communicate the character's thoughts through action.

Bearing in mind that most people most of the time do and say what they do with the intention of hiding their most important feelings rather than showing them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

In limited/tight third-person I sprinkle short, italicized character thoughts through the text.

It's way too easy to overdo it. But I'd rather do it than either repeatedly use "he/she thought" tags or try always to communicate the character's thoughts through action.

Bearing in mind that most people most of the time do and say what they do with the intention of hiding their most important feelings rather than showing them.

If you've established a limited third person voice right, I find you don't need either italics or a tag to designate thoughts, context alone can do it for you.

 

[TadOverdon]

If you've established a limited third person voice right, I find you don't need either italics or a tag to designate thoughts, context alone can do it for you.

I'm doing it wrong, then, but I'm still sometimes more satisfied with the approach than with other ways I've tried.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm doing it wrong, then, but I'm still sometimes more satisfied with the approach than with other ways I've tried.

You aren't doing it wrong, you're doing it your way. It's a matter of style.

Having said that, I agree with EB on the best way to do it.

Just grabbing a quick random sample:

Isabel strutted up the driveway, while Ramona followed slowly behind. She’s really swinging those hips, Ramona thought, is she putting a little extra into it on my account? She dismissed the notion as silly. Everyone in the valley wasn’t hitting on her, for crying out loud. She wondered how old Isabel was. Forty perhaps; there were fine lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes, but her figure was taut and lean.

 

[SimonDoom]

I am trying to think of stories in third person POV that do NOT communicate the thoughts of the lead character. I can't think of many. I can think of some suspense stories that don't. For instance, the horror story The Lottery does not, if I recall, get into the heads of the characters, because if it did it would give away the secret. But I don't think this approach usually would work with erotic stories. Does anyone have examples?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm doing it wrong, then, but I'm still sometimes more satisfied with the approach than with other ways I've tried.

As Melissa says, there's no right or wrong way to designate inner monologue - or at least, I don't think there's a conventional way to do it. I probably do it a lot - or a little, it's not something I've actually quantified, to be honest - which is the reason why, I guess, I don't feel the need to use sign posts.

Nowadays I shy away from using italics, except minimally, because I've had html cock-ups that in a few cases turned stories into a mess which needed resubmissions to fix. I've still got a few chapters with html errors I couldn't be bothered fixing - which shows how unimportant the emphasis actually was.

 

[TadOverdon]

You aren't doing it wrong, you're doing it your way. It's a matter of style.

Having said that, I agree with EB on the best way to do it.

So, I've tried it both ways this morning, revising a paragraph which is entirely the interior ruminations of my MC.

Tight third-person works a little better in this instance than italics, in my judgment-of-the-moment.

Because here, I discovered, I want the slight intrusion of the narrator's POV. Lauren's drifting a bit, in a reverie that her focused mind won't twig to until the next paragraph. Since she's less aware of her own thoughts, the voice of an observer works better. And I do rebel against an entire paragraph of italicized, more-or-less grammatically constructed "thinking" as unnatural.

But for brief interior reactions - a sentence fragment or short phrase - formatting as first person dialogue set apart by italicization reads as more immediate, and therefore better, to me. The character is speaking, after all, simply not aloud.

 

[GateWraith]

I do rebel against an entire paragraph of italicized, more-or-less grammatically constructed "thinking" as unnatural.

But for brief interior reactions - a sentence fragment or short phrase - formatting as first person dialogue set apart by italicization reads as more immediate, and therefore better, to me. The character is speaking, after all, simply not aloud.

I second the motion. Granted, I've only published one story on Lit. Actually, I haven't written a fiction story in over 25 years (I'm more of an essayist), so I haven't even begun to get my sea legs yet. But I used a third-person limited format and dropped a few italicized lines in there to show inner dialogue because it's easy and quick and requires less overall sculpting of the paragraph. I'm gonna have to crawl before I can do the Argentine Tango.

 

[KeithD]

I think using italics for short and infrequent thoughts is clear for the reader and would be a good way to do it if the predominant U.S. publishing style supported doing it, but it doesn't. And since I want to write what flies in the marketplace, I avoid using it. What is sanctioned is putting it in double quotes or just running it in text while, in both cases, using narrative to identify it as thoughts. Sticking to Literotica publishing, of course . . . italics seems fine as Laurel accepts it.

 

[PennameWombat]

I second the motion. Granted, I've only published one story on Lit. Actually, I haven't written a fiction story in over 25 years (I'm more of an essayist), so I haven't even begun to get my sea legs yet. But I used a third-person limited format and dropped a few italicized lines in there to show inner dialogue because it's easy and quick and requires less overall sculpting of the paragraph. I'm gonna have to crawl before I can do the Argentine Tango.

My personal usage is to not use italics for inner thoughts. I usually use double quotes for spoken dialogue. Mostly I just use running text with descriptive tags or just the context where it's clear (or should be clear.) I will on occasion put it into single quotes if I want to highlight it as a strong thought that the narrator has and is resisting actually speaking the words.

I personally do not like reading long strings of italicized text, so prefer not to use it myself. I limit italics to names of things, such as a book or song title, or in an upcoming story, video game titles.

I've never had complaint on this point. I did have a couple of comments that my spoken dialogue was unclear, and I worked out one of those was where I was too strict in following the "get rid of 'he/she/whoever said' tags" that was, once again, discussed in another recent thread. So I'm more careful on that and usually err on having 'said' tags in there If I'm getting confused.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

To get a little high-brow, here's what Camus thought about the American novel and its show vs tell philosophy:

"It does not choose feelings or passions of which to give a detailed description, such as we find in classic French literature. It rejects analysis and the search for a fundamental psychological motive which could explain and recapitulate the behaviour of a character... Its technique consists of describing men by their outside appearances, in their most casual actions, of reproducing without comment everything they say down to their repetitions and finally by acting as if men were entirely defined by their daily automatisms... This technique is only called realistic thanks to a misapprehension... it is perfectly obvious that this fictitious world is not attempting a reproduction of reality, pure and simple, but the most arbitrary form of stylisation. It is born of a voluntary mutilation performed on reality."​

Maybe you disagree. Hell, maybe I disagree. I just really wanted to quote Camus.

 

[LAHomedog]

To get a little high-brow, here's what Camus thought about the American novel and its show vs tell philosophy:

"It does not choose feelings or passions of which to give a detailed description, such as we find in classic French literature. It rejects analysis and the search for a fundamental psychological motive which could explain and recapitulate the behaviour of a character... Its technique consists of describing men by their outside appearances, in their most casual actions, of reproducing without comment everything they say down to their repetitions and finally by acting as if men were entirely defined by their daily automatisms... This technique is only called realistic thanks to a misapprehension... it is perfectly obvious that this fictitious world is not attempting a reproduction of reality, pure and simple, but the most arbitrary form of stylisation. It is born of a voluntary mutilation performed on reality."​

Maybe you disagree. Hell, maybe I disagree. I just really wanted to quote Camus.

Camus. Shit, have you read Camus? I had to study him and write a paper about him in grad school. Sheesh. I'd rather have needles in my eyes. At least, he gave us "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." At least my fading memory says he did

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

Camus. Shit, have you read Camus? I had to study him and write a paper about him in grad school. Sheesh. I'd rather have needles in my eyes. At least, he gave us "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." At least my fading memory says he did

I read Camus in undergrad, which means I scanned the notes and wrote the exam. With my second degree I was exposed to his philosophical essays, which I enjoyed. Mainly because I very much enjoyed marking all his slams on other writers and the communist party. No one does it better than the French!

He had lots of opinions on Sade, if I recall correctly. Might be worth revisiting to sharpen my smut!