Thought versus narration in the narrative

[KillerMuffin]

I've been thinking about this one for a while, particularly after reading a few threads on the matter and one person's half-italics story.

In a story you have basically two things. Speech and narrative. If it's not speech it's narrative and if it's not narrative it's speech.

Most stories are written from a character's view point rather than a narrator's. There's a reason why this is an important distinction. If a narrator is reporting someone else's thoughts, then the thoughts must be highlighted as thoughts. If a character is narrating and introduces his or her own thought, this is a gray area.

Let's introduce a story tidbit:

*****

John lounged in the bed and wished, for the thousandth time, that she would hurry the fuck up. He had a boner that hurt and he didn't want to miss Pamela Anderson's strip tease on Letterman. What was taking her so long? Was she retiling the shower in there?

"Baby?" Marsha's hesitant voice curled around the door a few moments before she peeked. "Are you ready?"

Ready? What kind of stupid question was that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

It must have worked because she smiled. A moment later she stepped into the room and stood still.

He felt like he'd just been kicked in the nuts by an elephant. He thought his dick was hard before, that was nothing compared to this. His jaw hit his chest and he couldn't shut it. His fingers convulsed. He wanted to throw himself on top of her and make wild caveman love to her, but he couldn't move to save his life.

Oh God, she was beautiful.

*****

This is, obviously, a third person story in John's point of view. It doesn't waver to Marsha's or the narrator's. The narrative is a combination of two things, thought and narration.

The questions are these:

Does an author need to differentiate between thought and narration? Take the last line of the tidbit, for example. "Oh God, she was beautiful" is not straight narration. It's a thought. Should it have been in italics? Should it have been delineated by something like "he thought?" How much of the above should have been italicized, according to your ideas of thought/narration?

My answer: I think not. I believe when the character is the narrator, then to make that character multidimensional that character must think. In this little cut, John was both narrating and thinking. Every part of the narration was colored by his attitude, which is a part of the thought process. Differentiating between thought and narration is, in my opinion, the wrong thing to do. The reason I think this is because I don't believe that narration and thoughts are separate things. I believe that narration is thinking on the character's part. While some instances are direct narration "He ate peas." and some are thought "Is that a bug in those peas?" these instances have the same weight in the narration.

I think that adding "he thought" would be detrimential. We already know who the narrator is, so we know who is thinking. The only reason to use attributives is if there is no other way to define who is speaking/thinking.

I think that use of italics is exactly like the use of exclamation points and adverbs. It must be used with care and moderation. Italics are hard to read, to start with. I use them for three reasons, almost exculsively. The most common is emphasis. As in "What in the hell? What is that?" The other is to put something into the story that has nothing to do with what's happening in the story. Example would be Absolution for Gretta MacClain. The character has a dream in the beginning--in italics--and later on bits and pieces of the dream are inserted into the text--in italics--but the narrator never acknowledges they exist. Here's a clip:

“No, I jes’ want to know one thing. Is that you in the picture?” His voice, still smooth and rich, was menacing. Her mind grasped at inanities. The air suddenly seemed chillier. The crack in the wallpaper over her countertop had spread.

Daddy slipped the noose around his neck and smiled at her...

He stalked toward her, stopping when she could feel his hot breath stirring all those fine hairs that were standing straight up on the back of her neck. “Is it you?”

Daddy and a few other men hoisted on the rope, pulling...

“Yes...” The word ripped from her throat, a tortured sound from a wounded animal. She squeezed her eyes shut, her heart pounding hard enough to beat its way out of her chest.

The last use of italics is for quoted material or titles of other works. I prefer to use italics for these rather than quotation marks. I like to reserve quotation marks for speech.

All things considered, I don't think that there should be a differentiation of thought and narration in narrative unless strictly necessary. By that, I mean that the reader would be confused without it. I don't believe that the use of italics should be widespread either. They can be used to indicate thought, but they shouldn't be used to indicate thought. Why not? I think that thought should meld seamlessly with narration, not be separated from it. To me, this is a very important part of learning to develop character. A character's attitude should be injected by word choice and thought into the parts of the narration that comes from that character's POV.

Your turn!

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

KillerMuffin,


I agree. My only quibble with your post is that when you wrote this in your conclusion,

"All things considered, I don't think that there should be a differentiation of thought and narration in narrative unless strictly necessary,"

--you didn't repeat this sentence from your opening:

"If a narrator is reporting someone else's thoughts, then the thoughts must be highlighted as thoughts."


Rumple Foreskin

 

[Madame Manga]

Seamless is good. I like seamless. When I first started writing, I never set off character thoughts with italics, quotes, or white picket fences. I let even direct quoted thoughts flow with the narrative, and since I almost always write a story entirely in one character's POV, I believed there wouldn't be grounds for confusion. I've read many stories that used the seamless style (your example being a good example) and it's effective, IMO. It's clean and unfussy and makes basic sense.

However, one reader, o so long ago, told me that she preferred boundary lines clearly drawn between narration and thoughts. I got nervous. ;-) I experimented. I added "He thought" to every thought, or I italicized them, or I used those furshlugginer single quotes--I never could make up my mind on that score. That should have tipped me off that I was overcompensating.

I hope I've realized that by now, though I sometimes revert to fence-building; just because one reader among many expressed a preference, it ain't marching orders. There is such a thing as over-formal, constrained-by-the-rules writing. Clarity, simplicity, lack of clutter--all of these are more important than pleasing your ninth-grade English teacher.

That said, I think I know why that reader and others might prefer fences: because a lot of writers do not stick to single POVs. They mix 'em up within stories, within scenes, even within paragraphs--and I'm sure I've read (or suffered) multiple POVs within sentences. It's like unbranded cattle running free on the range. Which thoughts are whose? It's enough to make anyone start peddling barbed wire.

MM

 

[Octavian]

Killer Muffin

“John lounged in the bed and wished, for the thousandth time, that she would hurry the fuck up.”

We would never allow such language in our Sunday School. Ending a sentence with a preposition, indeed!

 

[Svenskaflicka]

KM has a very good point. Leaving out redundant words makes a story even stronger. However, this should only be done by someone who IS good at writing. Only when you know the rules for correct writing, should you try to break them. Otherwise, it will just sound like you have a poor grammar.

 

[takingchances42]

Boners feel great, they don't hurt. Someone who feels like he has been kicked in the balls when he sees a beautiful woman has a bizarre medical condition, and needs to see a doctor immediately.


Whoops! Sorry, just thinking aloud there...

 

[wildsweetone]

call me the devil advocate

Interesting thread! WSO thought. I wonder if i can do it justice.

***

John lounged in the bed and wished, for the thousandth time, that she would hurry the fuck up. He had a boner that hurt and he didn't want to miss Pamela Anderson's strip tease on Letterman. What was taking her so long? Was she retiling the shower in there?

"Baby?" Marsha's hesitant voice curled around the door a few moments before she peeked. "Are you ready?"

Ready? What kind of stupid question was that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

It must have worked because she smiled. A moment later she stepped into the room and stood still.

He felt like he'd just been kicked in the nuts by an elephant. He thought his dick was hard before, that was nothing compared to this. His jaw hit his chest and he couldn't shut it. His fingers convulsed. He wanted to throw himself on top of her and make wild caveman love to her, but he couldn't move to save his life.

Oh God, she was beautiful.

I wish she'd hurry the fuck up John thought. He had a boner that hurt and he didn't want to miss Pamela Anderson's strip tease on Letterman. What's taking her so long? Is she retiling the shower?

"Baby?" Marsha's hesitant voice curled around the door a few moments before she peeked. "Are you ready?"

Ready? What kind of stupid question was that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

It must have worked because she smiled. A moment later she stepped into the room and stood still.

He felt like he'd just been kicked in the nuts by an elephant. He thought his dick was hard before, that was nothing compared to this. His jaw hit his chest and he couldn't shut it. His fingers convulsed. He wanted to throw himself on top of her and make wild caveman love to her, but he couldn't move to save his life.

Oh God, she's beautiful.

***

this was an exercise worth doing, i highly recommend everyone have a go.

i myself perfer to slam the reader right dead centre of my character's thoughts. the best way i've seen other authors doing this is by using italics. HOWEVER, the italics should be used sparingly. I believe it's a modern 'trick of the trade', and if it's done well I believe we'll see more of it.

I don't think there is a strict 'rule' for use of italics. Like so much in grammar these days italics is an evolving phenomenon.

 

[Quasimodem]

Originally posted by Octavian
Killer Muffin
"John lounged in the bed and wished, for the thousandth time, that she would hurry the fuck up."
We would never allow such language in our Sunday School. Ending a sentence with a preposition, indeed!

To quote Churchill, one last time: That is the kind of pedantic pedagogury, with which I will not up put!"

 

[Quasimodem]

On Second Though

On second thought, there may be some neophyte writer who is right now puzzling over the generally proper rules and format for quotations.

If there isn't, please skip the following.

If there is, here it is. Use it, or break it at your peril!



STANDARD QUOTED DIALOGUE FORMATION


Only direct quotations are offset with quotation marks. Direct quotations of thoughts are also direct quotes, hence the quotation marks.

For clarity's sake, direct quotations of thoughts are also sometimes put into italics, often both quotation marks and italics.

It depends upon what format the author choses, but once the author has chosen a format, s/he MUST stick with it consistently.


Examples:

I said, "The moon is made of blue cheese." (Direct quotation, in 1st person narrative.)

I told the guys that the moon is made of blue cheese. (Indirect quotation, in 1st person
narrative.)



" Will they believe that the moon was made of blue cheese," I wondered. (Direct quotation of a thought in 1st person narrative.)

I wondered if the guys would believe that the moon was made of blue cheese. (Indirect quotation of thought in 1st person narrative.)


Bob said, "The moon is made of blue cheese." (Direct quote, in 3rd person narrative.)

Bob said that the moon was made of blue cheese. (Indirect quotation, 3rd person narrative.)



Bob thought, "I wonder if they will believe the moon is made of blue cheese?" (Direct quote of though in 3rd person narrative.)

Bob wondered whether his friends would believe that the moon was made of blue cheese. (Indirect quotation of a thought in 3rd person narrative.)


You may write contrary to this formula, as indeed you may write contrary to many other accepted formats. This is merely the standard, accepted, and "expected" format.

If you have a reason to write contrary to accepted format, or even if you write against format merely to be contrary, you run the risk of being misunderstood.

At the least, you may piss off the reader for unnecessarily springing a different formula upon him.

 

[Weird Harold]

I've been thinking about this one for a while, particularly after reading a few threads on the matter and one person's half-italics story.

I think Quasimodem's citation clarified the issue admirably.

From QM' post:
"Will they believe that the moon was made of blue cheese," I wondered. (Direct quotation of a thought in 1st person narrative.)

I wondered if the guys would believe that the moon was made of blue cheese. (Indirect quotation of thought in 1st person narrative.)

The question of quoting thoughts directly or indirectly is really the same as quoting speech directly or indirectly -- both are forms of "dialogue" and the old saw about "show not tell" applies to both internal and external dialogue.

When to show the character's exact words and when to summarize them in narration is always a choice each author must make for themselves. There is a distinct difference in the impact of direct quotations over indirect quotations.

For example:

Ready? What kind of stupid question was that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

In the above example, you chose to use an indirect quotation of his internal question. I would have chosen to make it a direct quotation as part of the entire statement he was really making:

Ready? What kind of stupid question is that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

Changing the thought to present tense makes it clear that it's an immediate response to her question even though he doesn't say it out loud.

Narration is in general indirect reporting of the story. There are times when direct quotation of the character's thoughts works better than narrating them indirectly, and my personal choice is to use italics for direct quotation of thoughts to distinguish them from "speech" and from the general narration.

Another factor to consider is the style of a first person narration -- a conversation style where the narrator is "talking to the reader" needs fewer direct quotations of the narrator's thoughts than a more formal style would.

 

[Whispersecret]

I think there are many acceptable ways to show internal thoughts. Each author uses what he is comfortable with and/or thinks is appropriate to the story he is writing. I think the number of POVs used will have an impact, as Madam Manga mentioned. I think that the writer's style will influence it too. One also has to take into account the tone of the story, and even the setting.

I have used nothing to indicate the thoughts, because I've delved so deeply into the character's POV that it's obvious.

I have used italics (with the thoughts in present tense, first person), but only sparingly. Too much of this is annoying. When I see too much italicized thinking, it makes me want to tell the character to shut the fuck up so I can get on with the story.

I have also tagged the thoughts with "he thought." Again, it's a case-by-case decision.

I do not, however, put the thoughts of a character in quotation marks, mainly because I've never seen that in print. Anywhere.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Um.

I'm not asking how to delineate thought.

I'm asking if we should delineate thought and why or why not.


I need to be more clear, I think.

 

[horny_giraffe]

It sometimes feels a little self-conscious and even affected when I write a character's thoughts in words--unless they are about to say something and hold it back for some reason. IRL, I almost never narrate sentences to myself, in words. Rather than saying to myself "Hmmmm....I wonder what that woman looks like, naked," I may surreptitiously glance at her ass shifting underneath her jeans as she walks away along the sidewalk.

Writing out a character's full thinking process may imply that the readers lack the necessary intelligence to make their own inferences.

Perhaps I could write this differently:

Ready? What kind of stupid question was that? Making an effort to sound aroused instead of irritated, he cleared his throat. "I can hardly wait."

Maybe something like this:

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. Then, clearing his throat, he cooed to her "I can hardly wait."

 

[wildsweetone]

I'm not asking how to delineate thought.

I'm asking if we should delineate thought and why or why not.

i apologise KM, i must have misread your initial post.

i think delineating thought should be done on an individual story basis.

suggested italic use:

when thoughts are in conflict with events.

when the author wishes to 'shock' the reader by putting them directly into the head of the character.

 

[ronde]

One of the qualities I admire in good writing is the effortless way in which words are converted to meaning as I read. I don't have to think about what is going on or who is saying or thinking what; the understanding is there by means of the style and structure.

To this end, I think delineation of thought from narrative is necessary, but this delineation does not have to be so blatant as a tag, italics or quotation marks.

In first person, the source of the thought is obvious. Speech is denoted by quotation and thought can stand on it's own.

Third person becomes a little more difficult unless there is a definite POV. When the POV changes, the change must be definite, or the reader is likely to become confused. In such cases, I might "tag" the thought to the originator, but this would probably be a "he thought, then she thought" situation. I would rather avoid the confusion by clarifying the POV.

I used to put thought in quotations, but a respected author on this site advised against their use. I tried steering the reader with other cues, and found the reading to be smoother and less confusing.

 

[jon.hayworth]

"Cogito, ergo sum."
"I think, therefore I am."

Descartes wrote these words when trying to distinguish the meaning of being human. - Human beings think! Therefore surely if our characters are portraying human beings then they too must be given thoughts.

I would contend that if dialogue is to be treated as being distinct from narrative then thoughts deserve to be seperate again. For our characters thoughts must obey the same rule as both dialogue and narrative - they must advance the story.

I think that is my answer to KM's question. However the thread and a discussion with Wildsweetone led me to a whole lot of other thoughts.

Now I want to shift tack. How should we express thoughts, well we can use double inverted commas for speech ", and single inverted commas for thought '. After which we write the inevitable "he said" or "he thought". - BORING!!!!!

The convention of using one typeface (font) reflects the needs of conventional printing technology, to change a typeface midline and maintain even letter spacing was nearly impossible - the compositor's nightmare. So constrained by technology a set of style rules evolved.

We are the first writers who are free of these constraints, the wonderful world of electronic publishing allows us to do anything, and I believe that we should experiment with different ways of communicating with our readers.

The use of italics for characters thoughts should be only the start. How about using different colors for dialogue to show which character is speaking. There are endless creative possibilities in the humble PC and at the moment none of us are really exploring them. Think no more "he saids" etc. The colors could be selected to show the characters fundemental personality traits.

If these ideas make you recoil in horror imagine how people in the 15th and 16th centuries felt when they saw the first printed books and found that the printers had got rid of the illuminated capitals. - Technology will inevitably bring changes. When Caxton set up his printing press he went round asking people how they spelt words so that he could evolve some form of consesual standard English Spelling - before that everyone had their own or their teacher's ideas.

jon

 

[Whispersecret]

To answer the question then:

YES. Of course I want to get into the characters' heads when I read. That's one of the main advantages to books over movies! That intimacy with the characters is irreplaceable (sp?). My reading experience is greater, deeper, more emotional when I can share in the character's thoughts.

As a writer, if you stay out of their heads, I think you run the risk of having shallow characters. You simply cannot SHOW everything that goes through a character's mind through their actions or facial expressions. Well, let me amend that. You COULD, but it would end up taking forever. Conciseness is a virtue, even if it's not a word.

 

[Justin_Thyme]

Thought vs. narration

Man, what a fantastic thread. Thanks KM for introducing the subject.
Like many, I too have pondered the subject and, when I felt it necessary, have used the single quote mark (apostrophe) to delineate thought. I would love to use italics to indicate thought or, perhaps, book titles, but find that whenever I submit text in italics it ether comes through as unimbelished text or, worse yet, uninteligable giberish.
Yes, I suppose there are many who would suggest my entire submission is uninteligable giberish or, perhaps, unsavory in its entirety. Nevertheless, I believe there are times when thought should be delineated and, until shown the error of my ways, I guess I will continue the use of the apostrophe.
And, yes, I have seen some of the threads describing how to submit test that contains italics. Guess I'm just too d***** old or stubborn or both, to go to whatever trouble is involved to do it.
JT

 

[Whispersecret]

Is the single quotation mark (') for thoughts a British phenomenon? I have never seen this in any book I've ever read, but I live in America. I'm thinking this may be one of those "flat" vs. "apartment" or "biscuit" vs. "cookie" things.

 

[Weird Harold]

Is the single quotation mark (') for thoughts a British phenomenon? I have never seen this in any book I've ever read, but I live in America. I'm thinking this may be one of those "flat" vs. "apartment" or "biscuit" vs. "cookie" things.

I think it's more a Usenet or online phenomenon, because I see it in circumstances where italics isn't an option because of ASCII limitations. An alternative I sometimes also see is using slashes like quotation marks to mark /Italics/.

I often see asterisks used in Sci Fiction and Fantasy novels to mark telepathic thoughts to distinguish them from private thoughts.

One of the reasons I chose to post at Literotica is that Laurel has always accomodated Italics and bold text by accepting submissions in MS Word or Rich Text Format.

Justin, Simply uploading stories in Word format with a note in the comments that the story contains italics is all that's required. You can do the conversion to HTML tags and cut and paste into the submission form to save Laurel some work, but it isn't necessary to keep the Italics in your stories.

 

[Madame Manga]

Is the single quotation mark (') for thoughts a British phenomenon? I have never seen this in any book I've ever read, but I live in America. I'm thinking this may be one of those "flat" vs. "apartment" or "biscuit" vs. "cookie" things.

The British usage is single quotes for dialog and double quotes for other things, which is opposite from American usage. There are many other small differences between the systems, such as when to enclose punctuation in quotes if it is not part of the original quotation. (Americans tend to put it inside, British outside.)

It all goes under, "We are two countries separated by a common language." ;-)

MM

 

[Weird Harold]

We are the first writers who are free of these constraints, the wonderful world of electronic publishing allows us to do anything, and I believe that we should experiment with different ways of communicating with our readers.

The use of italics for characters thoughts should be only the start. How about using different colors for dialogue to show which character is speaking. There are endless creative possibilities in the humble PC and at the moment none of us are really exploring them. Think no more "he saids" etc. The colors could be selected to show the characters fundemental personality traits.

If these ideas make you recoil in horror imagine how people in the 15th and 16th centuries felt when they saw the first printed books and found that the printers had got rid of the illuminated capitals. - Technology will inevitably bring changes. When Caxton set up his printing press he went round asking people how they spelt words so that he could evolve some form of consesual standard English Spelling - before that everyone had their own or their teacher's ideas.

An interesting theory, jon.

I don't really think it will catch on though, for a variety of reasons.

One is the effect multi-colored text can have on epileptics.

Another is the problem of eye-strain. Over the years, millions of dollars have been spent trying to develop fonts that are "easy-reading" and reduce eye-strain. Multi-colored text or individual fonts for each character would be a counter-productive effort in the search for text that is "easy to read."

I have seen some baby steps in the direction of using different fonts and colors, both in books and on web-pages, and found that, for me at least, they increase eye-strain and reduce the readability.

KM's question really boils down to what is easiest to read without confusion. Close Desire posted a reference (in an older thread on this subject) to a style guide that agrees with KM, and QuasiModem posted one in this thread that disagrees. I don't think there is any one right way to puctuate thoughts.

As Iposted eralier onthis thread, I think that Italics should be used to post a direct quotation of thoughts -- where the thoughts are reported "verbatim" -- and no punctuation is required when the thoughts are simply reported or narrated.

As long as the story is readable, I don't think the punctuation choice really matters. The whole point of punctuation is to make things comprehensible and if the meaning of what is written doesn't change because of missing punctuation then the punctuation doesn't matter.

 

[wildsweetone]

isn't it odd...

how so many can be stickler's in the comfort zone...

i'm all for trying new innovative ways of presenting work. after all, that's part and parcel of the editing process. presentation.

i think that virtually nothing can be incorrect so long as it is consistent throughout the piece of work.

perhaps it's worth considering... a little exercise if you will... write one story and force yourself to use a different method other than you normally use for defining differences between characters.

i mean, change something: colour, font, size, etc. most keyboards have innumerable options and even the basic Word programme has a large option of symbols which can be used instead of the basic few.

surely it's one of the ways of growth as a writer, to try new things... to set new boundaries... to go where no man has gone before...?

grief! how radical. thinkin' outside the square

 

[BigTexan]

Wow, I'm new here (okay so I've been lurking over in story feedback for a while) and I've never ventured into these parts before. My first foray into the depths and I find a thread like this! Cool beans! Now I'm delurking, as it were, to subject the good writers of Lit to my opinion.

I have been told since my earliest days that you NEVER use quotes around thoughts. However, I have read several books and a few short stories where the author did use quotes around thoughts.

Now I find this thread and I find it fascinating. KillerMuffin asks "if we should delineate thought and why or why not." I would have to say that there is no ONE right answer to this, however, in general, I don't think you should delineate thought. Certainly not in the context that KM gave.

BUT: If not delineating the thought would confuse a typical normal reader then I think it should be set apart, either by quotes or italics or perhaps by writing it in some obscure foreign language. Just kidding about the foreign language thing.

This all goes back to my personal belief that the first most important job of the writer is to communicate clearly.

Anyway, that's my opinion. And thanks for listening.

BT

 

[Octavian]

Originally posted by Madame Manga.

"The British usage is single quotes for dialog and double quotes for other things, which is opposite from American usage."

This is not the case. We use double quotes for dialogue.

You are right, though, when you say we are separated by a common language.