Wow. The first day of Spring. Damn, I still have those two pounds to lose from Christmas. Wish I planted those crocuses last year, but then, the squirrels would just have them hidden all throughout the lawn. At least I’d see some signs of spring. What did my husband mention about Friday night? Did I feed the cats? When is their next vet visit? When is my dentist visit? Did I schedule a mammogram?
What if our characters spewed out all the stuff that goes on in their brains? I often wonder what that would be like. The plot would never proceed; the hero would no doubt go out and find a beer, and the evil protagonists would win out.
So how do we, the writer, decide what to give away of the minds rambling. From what I’ve heard, women are much different than men. We must have a thousand thoughts to their one, forcing the internal dialogs in my novels to be more one-sided.
I’ve tried to question men about what they think about. As a generalization, forgive me guys, their thoughts seem not to be so wrought with what-ifs. Apparently, a million years ago, that trait helped out in the survival of the species. I can just hear it now. His brain thinks, ugh, I go kill and find food.
Hers is much more. Does he like me? Will he feed me? Will he warm with me tonight? Maybe I should get some more tree branches, just in case. Will it smoke? What if the fire goes out? Who is that female and why does she have a warmer fur than mine. Who is her mate? Should I find some berries?
I digress. So. How much to add of the internal dialog? My first writing had very little and it was void, like watching a movie. After reading that critique, always the over-achiever, I made my characters blather incessantly. Ouch.
How much of internal dialog, as a reader, do you want to read? Do you think the amount of male dialog should match the female?
Help me out.
[wppb-register]
I love Susan’s thorough comment!
What I’ve recently pointed out to a writer for whom I beta read was that he kept giving out internal thoughts in present tense and italics, when that thought was too obvious from the detailed body language he used. Example (my own not from the book):
“Why did you leave me, David?”
He bent his head, avoiding my eyes. He shuffled to the window.
Is he drowning with guilt? (in italics)
That was a pattern throughout the book. When a writer “shows” instead of “telling” why add the telling afterwards?
As I’m very aware of the amount of internal thoughts I add in my writing, I try to “show” as much as I can through body language to end up writing less rather than more.
(I just joined Bloggers Unite on Scribophile; that’s how I came here)
Greetings from Greece!
Maria
Wow!!! I get so few visitors! So very nice to meet you. I agree. What I see a lot is that the reader “Tells” and then “Shows”
Thanks for stopping by!
If you’ve finaled in all those contests, you must have answered this question for yourself.
When I write third person limited deep POV, I show internal dialogue in two ways: mostly in the character of the scene narrating their own story in past tense and with present tense discrete thoughts (in italics, similar to those rambling thoughts you gave as an example).
In psychological circles, an overabundance and excessive length of discrete thoughts is called perseverance and is an indication of mental illness (like when a mind runs on out of control). Because of that, I usually limit the length of such discrete thinking, usually to short sentences or sentence fragments peppered throughout the narration. I’ve noticed many authors, especially those writing in first person and present tense do not make a distinction between narration and discrete thinking and do not use italics.
I like to use a character’s own narration (internal dialogue/past tense) to tag their external dialogue in one or, at the most, two sentences at first, until I get deeper into the story, maybe the end of the first chapter.
Hope this helps,
Susan (S.B.K. Burns) Sci-Fi Romance Author (susanburnsauthor.com)
Still couldn’t figure out logging in with my WordPress.com credentials, but the Facebook button worked for me.
I really love your thoughts in this post. IMHO, it’s OK to ramble. I actually named my first blog “ramble.” A lot of my deeper thoughts in my blog posts read like one train of thought leading to another. The beginning of this post reads like that as well. It’s a writing style I personally enjoy reading.
In character development, everything is subject to editing. Some rambles your reader may not want to stick with. I’ve set aside some books that rambled on unnecessary topics. But sometimes a character rambling serves the important purpose of moving that character’s journey forward in some way. Those are the most interesting rambles to read.