On Writing: Making Characters Think Out Loud

[Aruban]

I just finished my first story (10 chapters, almost 100,000 words), which contained quite a bit of direct thought. The story from which mine derived used it, and I liked it. Like everything else in my story it was an experiment and it was far from perfect, but reader reaction was uniformly positive. I received dozens of emails and public comments in the vein of "I liked knowing what the characters were thinking." Although I received negative feedback (or, ahem, constructive criticism) on other points, I don't think anyone complained about the use of direct thought. One fellow was put off at first by the use of italics but then sent me a retraction, indicating that he'd tried to skim the story the first time and was able to follow it better the second time. Based on reader reaction, I would not hesitate to use direct thought again, though I would always try to be careful with it.

 

[CMatthews]

This is one of those tough things that writers face every day. I've seen it crop up more than a time or two around the site. Since Literotica has no guidelines on how to format thought in the text, the author must figure it out for her or himself. Feel free to use examples!

How do you make use of a character's thoughts in a narrative? What purpose would it serve to use actual thought from the character instead of simply having him say it or having it in the narrative? How can you tell when it's appropriate to have a character think and when it's not?

Do you need to make it obvious that a character is thinking as opposed to whatever else is happening in the narrative? Does this depend on the POV you're using? If so, how?

If you do need to make it obvious that this particular set of text is thought as opposed to narrative or speech, how do you tag it? How do you format it? Does it make a difference if there's a lot of thought-text within the story?

Any other ideas on using character thought?

That is a good question!