Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Thinking?

This is topic Thinking? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Hello, I'm new to these forums so forgive me if you already hashed this over.
Anyway, I am writing in 3rd limited, but am uncertain on how to properly get across what the character is thinking.
All help appreciated,

Posted by Rahl22 (Member # 1411) on :

Phanto,

With a 3rd limited pov, you're allowed insight into a characters mind -- his inner thoughts. The 'limited' in the that term simply means that you are confined to ONE character at a particular time. So if your problem is that you want to express other characters thoughts and emotions, then you're going to have to show them somehow. However, if this is a significant problem -- consider switching to something else, like a 3rd omniscient.

Rahl

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 1563) on :

When I started writing seriously lo these many years ago, I was told that you could show what a person is thinking by italicizing the words in a regular paragraph. For example:

Jerod sat down. This stinks, he thought. I gotta get out of here.

(In the manuscript, it would be underlined instead of italicized, of course. But I don't know how to underline on this board. )

Lately, however, I've seen thoughts simply being expressed in the paragraphs. For example:

Jerod sat down. This stinks, he thought. I've gotta get out of here.

The paragraphs are written so that it is clear that the person is actually thinking the words.

The best way to learn how to do it, though, is to grab a few of your favorite novels and see how the authors handled it. Then use the method that works best for you.

[This message has been edited by AndrewR (edited March 31, 2003).]

Posted by mstammy (Member # 1216) on :

Instead of
Jerod sat down. This stinks, he thought. I've gotta get out of here.

Just write
Jerod sat down. This stinks. I've got to get out of here.

OSC does this all the time.

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Hmmmm...
Thanks for all the help so far. It is a boon.
Now take the following passage

" "Good morning, Burke." His voice was chillingly polite and the meaning of his words took a while for Marion to understand. Burke always manages to come at the worst time; I can see why he hates her. "

If anyone could explain what they would do to fix that paragraph, I would be appreciative.
Two questions:
1) When I go into her thoughts, I change tense, is this ok?
2) How do you use colons?

[This message has been edited by Phanto (edited March 31, 2003).]

Posted by kwsni (Member # 970) on :

You have to be careful with the 'he thought' tags. If you're in what OSC calls deep penetration, they can be annoying and distracting. But if you've been cruising along without someone's thoughts, and then suddenly they're there, you can lose the reader, because they won't know who's talking.

Let's see if I can find something from OSC to illustrate this.
From Enchantment:

quote:
Another leaf drifted away. It had to be a face. A woman asleep. Had she gathered leaves around her, to cover her? Or was she injured, lying here so long that the leaves had gathered. Was she dead? Was the skin stretched taut across the cheekbones like a mummy?

Now, You know this is what Ivan's thinking, but we've been deep in his head for almost the whole book, and thought tags would be unnecessary. So OSC leaves them out.

Sometimes, though, they're necessary. that's where your judgement comes in. You have to decide that you've been deep enough in someone's head for long enough that you can drop the 'he thought' tags.

Edit: OSC covers this in some detail in Characters and Viewpoint

Ni!

[This message has been edited by kwsni (edited March 31, 2003).]

Posted by Rahl22 (Member # 1411) on :

Apparently I completely misinterpreted this question! My most humble apologies!

::backs out of room quickly, with stupid grin on face::

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Could anyone adress my previous posting?

And also is there such a thing as floating 'thinking'. i.e.

1) I have the character think something, like " the room is awfully hot, he thought. "
2) I have the character say "Boy! The room is hot"
3) Now can I write something he thinks?

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Phanto, I'm utterly confused about the meaning of the paragraph. Who is he? Burke? Who is her? Marion? Then why does his inopportune appearance make him hate her? Perhaps more context is needed.

Whatever the meaning, your change in tense implies an ongoing situation. That is, at the end of the book "he" should still hate "her," and the narrator should still understand the reason.

I don't use colons much in prose, though I use them in technical writing. No matter what any of us says, you ought to pick up a copy of Strunk and White's Elements of Style to really feel confident in your punctuation.

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Someone said to read good books, any recomendations? Also, I want to know the rules of colon usage, not when to use them. Thanks.

Posted by Penboy_np (Member # 1615) on :

In that scenario, I'd personally prefer to use italics. I find that to leave the italics can sometimes make it a little more difficult to pick up the text is the character thinking.

Although, the drawback is that with large amounts of internal monologue, a page full of italics can hurt the eyes. I'd suggest taking a look at the piece as a whole and stepping back and considering how much thought is going to be used in the piece. If there's a large amount, then I'd suggest the second example suggested by AndrewR. If not, then italics might be your thing.

Posted by kwsni (Member # 970) on :

THe thing is, italics are distracting. Sure, it's easier to use them than to rely on your writing to make sure your readers know that this is your character thinking. But then that doesn't improve your writing any, does it?
As a reader, I get annoyed when an author's constantly changing back and forth. I don't care what the words look like on the page, I care about what they SAY. An author loses me very quickly if they have to rely on typeface changes to tell me somehting in a story. Thier writing should do that, not the book itself.

Ni!

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Sorry, kwisni, I have to contradict you there. Italics to indicate the thoughts of the POV character are an accepted convention, like capitalization and other forms of punctuation. Sure, a well constructed sentance can be read even if you don't use capitalization, a period, or even spaces...but it is easier to use the conventions that have already been established.

quote:
"Good morning, Burke." His voice was chillingly polite and the meaning of his words took a while for Marion to understand. Burke always manages to come at the worst time; I can see why he hates her."

There is a bit of a problem here because we don't know which character is the POV, nor do we know what is being spoken aloud. We don't even know how many characters are involved in this scene. So of course we can't really tell you how to phrase this.

Inlining the POV character's thoughts in italics is a good way to let the reader experience the story with the character. Using sentence tags like "he thought" are acceptable, but for introspective characters could rapidly become burdensome. Italics are also good because you can simply look at the page and see how much space is used up by entirely internal narrative.

Posted by kwsni (Member # 970) on :

I know they're accepted, but they still drive me crazy. And I'd rather see a writer use their own talents than a crutch like a change in type face.

Ni!

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

The change in type face is not a crutch--it is pretty much industry standard.

New ways are fine but when they make the story hard to follow, then they are a way to turn off readers and publishers.

That said, I don't use italics to indicate a dream state---if you have the person go to bed, or fall asleep and then relate a dream and have them wake up after a scene, the reader will know they dreamed.

If you stay in POV then no need for italics as all things stated are the POV characters thoughts---I hate when a writer says he thought, he saw, he felt---ect---if you do the job right then the reader knows it is the POV character. Instead of He saw the sun came up. Better to say The sun came up. Period. If you are in POV then the reader knows so and so saw it.

Shawn

Posted by JK (Member # 654) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mstammyInstead of: 'Jerod sat down. This stinks, he thought. I've gotta get out of here.'
Just write: 'Jerod sat down. This stinks. I've got to get out of here.'

Not that I'm contradicting this advice, but I find that the latter form of expressing a character's thoughts works much better in First Person. For anything where the narrator is not the viewpoint character, it doesn't work so well, for me at least.

As for italics, they're dandy as far as I'm concerned. As are 'he thought' tags, since they're much the same as 'he said' tags.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

Ok, first go find one of R.A. Salvator's books. I would suggest some of his later books where he stays in the 3rd person limited more. I have noticed that he uses 3rd person omnimpiant allot, but then started moving more towards 3rd person limited. Actually he is probably one of the few authors that I have read that can do 3rd person omnipitan well.

Also do yourself a favor and get "Characters and Viewpoints" Some of the other fiction writing books are good also, but OSC does the best I've read so far. Read this book then pick up a novel and read it with a more objective view of what the author is doing. Viewpoints they use, when they switch, and how. Most of what I know is based on what I've been learning along with the books I read. If there is an author that writes books you can't put down, that would be a place to start looking for the "how" its put together.

Posted by uberslacker2 (Member # 1397) on :

I'm pretty sure that OSC uses italics also (however, this might be a misplaced piece of my scattered brain). I would use Italics as a form of quotation marks. In the same fashion that you don't need to put "he said" after every line of dialogue, just especially confusing ones, I don't believe you need to put "he thought" after every internal thought. Writing is an art, do it however it fits best in your story.

When it comes to using standard typeface for thinking I would refrain from using that on one sentance thoughts. What I've noticed in OSC's writing (I'm thinking of the scene from EG where Ender leaves the battle school and bean is thinking) is that most of his first person thoughts are about a paragraph long and he breaks paragraphs when he's done with his character's thought monologue. Those two things form a pretty concise style that I've never had any trouble reading.

(As a note, I can't think of many instances where OSC only has characters think for a sentence. I read somewhere that a pragraph is the true idea, not a sentence.)

Uberslacker

Posted by Penboy_np (Member # 1615) on :

I feel it all depends on length. If it's a huge piece of thought and this will be prodominant throughout your work, then I would avoid using italics and try for some alternative, simply because reading two or three pages in italics will to terrible things to your eyes.

Also, I believe Mr. Card tends to avoid using italics and used primarily a 'he/she thought' denotation, and then accepting that as a carry on piece of information until it switches back to the omniticient view. Try looking at Enchantment, it's got some good examples there.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Okay, I would say that generally italics indicate stream of consciousness thoughts rather than explicit thoughts. If you have a character deliberately thinking, that probably shouldn't be in italics. And of course you should only include stream of consciousness to illustrate the character's thoughts, not as a vessal for the reader to experience the story. Cherryh is probably the upper bound for how much stream of consciousness you can include, and she's a master at it.

In other words, if the character is actively thinking something, then don't use italics. Use them when the character's thoughts are kind of acting on their own, so to speak--popping up unbidden.

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Survivor, perfect idea! I love it!

Wow, now I am getting excited about writing.

Posted by WileyKat (Member # 652) on :

I hate to be Mr Pedantic, but I couldn't let...

quote:
"Good morning, Burke." His voice was chillingly polite and the meaning of his words took a while for Marion to understand. Burke always manages to come at the worst time; I can see why he hates her."

...pass without comment. There's a bit of a grammar issue in the second sentence. "The meaning of his words" seems to be a touch over-active. Also, there's a tense issue. Ideally, I think it should read...

quote:
"Good morning, Burke." His voice was chillingly polite and it took a while for Marion to understand the meaning of his words. Burke always managed to come at the worst time. It was obvious why he hated her.

There's a double entendre issue as well. More to the point, italics for thought annoy me - I have a tendency to skip over them as unnecessary fluff (wrong, but *shrug*). Either do it as explicit thought (It seemed like a good idea, he thought) or as outright statement (It seemed like a good idea.)

Reading through the first chapter of "Shadow Puppets" on the website - it's all there.

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Interestingly enough, I did an edit sort of like that shortly ago, but I like the idea of making "It was obvious why he hated her" a new sentance.

Thanks,