Inner thoughts/feelings

[Anahid21]

In the grand honor of "showing" and not "telling," I was thinking about stories I read where the author occasionally mentioned what a character felt or thought: "She felt guilty inside." "He thought her a fool."

Is this considered telling? If yes, how do you show "guilty" with action? Or do you simply omit such thoughts and assume the readers will make the conclusion through what they know about the character?

[Fillanzea]

Internal monologue and/or body language. Or tying it to other memories or sensory impressions.

Get specific with it. Guilt has a lot of dimensions: the knowledge of having done something wrong, internalizing the judgments of deities or authority figures, fearing the judgments of other people, the fear of being found out...

"When X's fingers brushed against hers at the breakfast table, she was sure that Y could see everything written on her face." That's more specific than just "she felt guilty." And it's anchored with an image.

"He thought her a fool"--the first thing that comes to mind is to convey it through dialogue. If he thinks he's a fool, maybe he tells her so! Maybe he does it a little more subtly, trying to explain simple things to her in the belief that she doesn't understand them. I try to keep eye-rolling to a minimum in my fiction, but maybe he rolls his eyes. "The backspace key is over there," he said. "It makes the letters go bye-bye."
Or again, if he's the viewpoint character, you can go with internal monologue.
"It hardly seemed possible to him that she could have spent twenty-two years on this earth and still think that a mushroom cloud sounded like a nice accompaniment for an omelette."

Internal monologue can lean way over to the "telling" side, so it's something to be careful with, but if you have to tell, tell interestingly.

[Maxinquaye]

I've got a lot of thoughts, internal dialogue going. Here's a snippet from the WIP I'm revising now.

The windows up near the ceiling were open, blowing a warm breeze down at him. But the door opened again, and Ralph came in. He stood there, looking down at the floor.

“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” He asked.

Michael sidled, away from Ralph.

“We could help each other, you know. None of us can do it alone.”

Michael’s teeth clenched. Couldn’t he go away? Why did he try to talk. What could they talk about? Classes? Homework? Or maybe sit an snicker at fights that Ralph had never fought, that Ralph ran away from, that Ralph looked to others to fight? That was the help he was after. Nothing more. Michael had enough of his own.


If it works, I'm not sure yet, but that's how I do it. Blending in a lot of thoughts, and stuff. I will probably have to think hard about each passage like that when I get to revise language.

So, I'm not really sure I can answer your question...

[Cyia]

You can interject the literal thoughts. One of the agents who had my MS pointed that out as something she liked - said it brought the reader closer to the character.

[Matera the Mad]

Michael sidled, away from Ralph. -- remove comma!
:tongue

[Anahid21]

Michael’s teeth clenched. Couldn’t he go away? Why did he try to talk. What could they talk about? Classes? Homework? Or maybe sit an snicker at fights that Ralph had never fought, that Ralph ran away from, that Ralph looked to others to fight? That was the help he was after. Nothing more. Michael had enough of his own.

See, this is what I'm talking about. I may have lots of that in my writing too. (currently I do, but I'm doing major revisions and need to know if I should get rid of it.)

For example I have a scene with two guys talking, one verbally attacking the other to get him to reveal his secret. Meanwhile the girl in the scene is having an internal dilemma: she knows what the first guy is doing is wrong but won't stop him because she too wants to hear the second guy's secret. I need to know if I can "internal monologue" her to show this.

[Albannach]

Using felt or thought or saw to me is a dead giveaway that I've drifted out of my MC's PoV. Who else would have done that?

By the way in "Michael's teeth clenched...." my thought was: how did they do that without his help. Sorry. :tongue

[Use Her Name]

Telling the emotion is telling. She loved him needs to be shown. How is love shown? I feel that no character, or author should "say" what the feeling is they are trying to convey.

[blacbird]

Like habañero peppers in cooking: Best used sparingly.

caw

[kaitie]

I do this to an extent, though rarely with the word "thought." For some reason that's always turned me off. I'm more likely to have it just be in the narration, though I'm too lazy to find an example now, but similar to the above, I suppose.

I think for me the question tends to be, "am I hitting the reader over the head with this?" A lot of times, thoughts aren't really necessary because someone will write something where the thoughts are just reinforcing all of the other really obvious things going on. I think it works best when the thoughts aren't necessarily what's expected. I'm not really sure if that makes sense, but that's my thinking on it. If it's being used as a lazy way to tell the readers something, or if it's just repeating what's already obvious through all the other contextual clues, then it probably isn't necessary. :)

[Fillanzea]

For example I have a scene with two guys talking, one verbally attacking the other to get him to reveal his secret. Meanwhile the girl in the scene is having an internal dilemma: she knows what the first guy is doing is wrong but won't stop him because she too wants to hear the second guy's secret. I need to know if I can "internal monologue" her to show this.

Who is the point of view character?
If the girl is the point of view character, you can use internal monologue. If she's not, then no. Consider: if this scene were a movie, how would the actors reveal the subtext of the scene? How do you make the girl's actions say both "curiosity" and "token resistance"? (If someone were goading someone else into revealing a secret, and I didn't want to hear it, I would get up and leave, if I didn't think I stood a chance of talking the first guy down.)

I don't think internal monologue usually works in omniscient. Usually omniscient POV is told by a hidden narrator who has access to the characters' thoughts and feelings, but that hidden narrator doesn't let someone else's stream of consciousness take over to tell the story. One of the reasons omniscient POV seems old-fashioned is that it does tend to require a certain amount of telling.

[Libbie]

Yes, technically it's considered telling, but telling isn't always bad. What's bad is when there is too much of it, and when it's used where something more deft and immediate could be used instead.

There really isn't a way to get around telling the reader how a character felt internally. It's not like saying, "Bob left angrily," when you can say, "Bob clenched his fists and slammed the door on the way out."

[Libbie]

Meanwhile the girl in the scene is having an internal dilemma: she knows what the first guy is doing is wrong but won't stop him because she too wants to hear the second guy's secret. I need to know if I can "internal monologue" her to show this.

Not unless she's the POV character, or unless you're writing in omniscient.

[Libbie]

Using felt or thought or saw to me is a dead giveaway that I've drifted out of my MC's PoV. Who else would have done that?

By the way in "Michael's teeth clenched...." my thought was: how did they do that without his help. Sorry. :tongue

Oh, man. Don't ever read my writing. You'll hate it like crazy. I don't stroke readers' need for literal meanings at all. ;)

[Lady Ice]

Telling the emotion is telling. She loved him needs to be shown. How is love shown? I feel that no character, or author should "say" what the feeling is they are trying to convey.

Change the negatives into positives. When I tried to follow the rule 'Don't tell', I ended up writing unbelievable actions for the characters.

If you think about it, when you tell you're sacrificing a chance to show something about your character and indeed your voice as a writer. Maybe your voice is one which tells but chances are that it isn't.

'He thought her a fool'

Quite a formal stuffy way of saying it; let's say this is Character A's thoughts:
'He sneered at her inability to open the tin; the way she stabbed at it with a knife in that vulgar fashion.'

This is how Character B might think:
'Though it was pretty funny to watch Mary stabbing at the tin with a knife like some crazed murderess, B held back his laughter. She was silly, undeniably, but with that same conviction B knew she was his.'

If you're writing in omni, avoid judgement. 'Mary was ugly' is a judgement. If elaborated upon, it's forgiveable in 1st person as it allows you as a reader to get the sense of this character. Is he making a witty observation or is he cruel?

The other drawback with telling is that it can seem unconvincing to the reader. It looks like you're unable to show the emotion so we're just going to accept that he feels guilty and move on. If your character is fleshed out enough, sometimes their motivations aren't always clear, not even to you. Most people don't just feel 'guilty'- they have contradicting thoughts and emotions. One person might interpret it as guilty; someone else might interpret it as frustration at the person's failure.

[Stunted]

My rule is that if the character felt with words, or in a pattern that falls like words and if it's something that the reader can't infer (the two tend to happen together), then it's ok to use something like, "She felt like a piece of shit."