Thursday
As a writer, how do you clearly write unclear thinking? If your character is figuring something out and having trouble, how do you make that clear while conveying the obscurity of the character's thought process? I've struggled with even conveying basic thought at times, let alone the more complex, developing thoughts that a character could have. But I've found help.
Jodie Renner, in her article "Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction," breaks down thought-writing into two categories: indirect thoughts (or indirect introspection) and direct thoughts (or direct introspection). Knowing the difference allows writers to express the "thought-reactions" of their characters. Renner defines her new term saying the following:
Thought-reactions...are when that viewpoint character (and only the POV character--we shouldn't know the thoughts of anyone else in that scene) has an inner, emotional reaction to something that has just happened, or something someone has just said or done, whether it be anger, delight, confusion, frustration, surprise, or whatever. Or perhaps they're actively planning something.
Thoughts can be expressed in two main ways in writing, and each way has its own governing rules. Indirect thoughts are summarized thoughts. Not every thought a character has is worth knowing fully. Not everything can be stream of consciousness. For indirect or summarized thoughts there should be no italics. They also carry the option of being signified by a "he thought/she thought" tag, like dialogue.
The next step inward are direct thoughts. Direct thoughts are the exact unspoken words running through a character's head. Italics are an optional way of expressing these direct thoughts, but Renner emphasizes that direct thoughts never have a thought tag. Thoughts tags are superfluous in direct thought because it is obvious who is thinking.
To illustrate the difference, Renner uses some helpful examples of the same thoughts expressed both indirectly (summarized) and directly (exact wording):
Indirect: She opened the curtains. It was a gorgeous day.
Direct: She opened the curtains. What a gorgeous day.
Indirect: Jake took a step back, wondering what he'd done.
Direct: Jake took a step back. Holy crap. What have I done?
And for those of us, especially thick, or who function best with a list of "No's," Renner adds three "Nevers" for writing character thoughts. First, never use quotation marks for thoughts. Second, never say anything similar to "he thought to himself"; now that it has been pointed out, it's strange that we ever have the impulse to write something so obvious. Third, allow for characters to think in grammatically incorrect thoughts. Thoughts, even more than dialogue, have the ability to form loosely.
After reading Renner's definitions, I returned to my original problem. It's very hard as a writer to make a character realize something. It doubles the complication when you want the reader to realize the same thing at the same pace. In a short paragraph where I was struggling to accomplish both, I found Renner's advice helpful in revision, getting me closer to what I wanted.
The quick setting for this paragraph is a woman in a stand-off with a man. She's gradually realizes that the hold-off is about to break.
She could not think. Something was happening but she couldn't understand it. Then, out of her thoughts, as if in a dream, she found that she was watching the fingers of his hand: they were moving, slowly: up and down, up and down, as if they were strumming a harp to a slow, slow song. He's going to pounce, she thought, like a cat slowly swishing its tail. Her hands started to shake.
This paragraph needed more than just revision with Renner's ideas, but her breakdown of the types of thinking into indirect and direct thoughts helped me to realize how I needed to think about the paragraph. The revision with Renner's advice:
She could not think. Something was happening, but she couldn't understand it. Then, as if in a dream, her eyes drifted to his fingers. They were moving, slowly, up and down, up and down. Like they were strumming a harp to a slow, slow song.
Like a cat twitching its tail. Her hands started to shake. He's going to pounce.
The goal was to add tension as she (and the reader) slowly become aware of what is about to happen. "Something was happening" is indirect, summarized thought, and I left the thought tag because it added information: she couldn't understand what was happening. In what is now sentence two, after some general trimming, the narration describes a realization of seeing his fingers. Sentence two is between narration and indirect thought. She is realizing that her eyes have found a clue. Sentence three describes what she is seeing. Sentence four is her indirect thought about what she is seeing. And the in new paragraph she interprets what she sees through direct thought, and physical reaction.
Renner's strategies about what not to do helped clean things up and build cohesion. First, I identified and eradicated the amateur blunder of over identifying. My "she found herself" falls under the "he thought to himself" category and must be punished as such. Then I used Renner's advice about not forcing grammatically correct thoughts on my characters. This strategy adds to the revelation process. In succession, I have an indirect thought and a direct thought, both fragments beginning with the word like. The image she sees turns into her direct interpretation of what the act means.
Trying to capture thought, especially complicated or unclear thought, will continue to be tricky, but it should be because of the writer's content, not the writer's understanding of the kinds of ways to write thought. Adding Renner's ideas of Indirect thought and Direct thought and knowing the rules that apply to each, should help to clarify some of the mechanics of the writing. And most importantly that should allow you, the writer, to focus on the story you are trying to convey.
Bibliography
Renner, Jodie. "Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction." Resources for Writers. Accessed on July 31, 2013. <http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/2012/06/expressing-thought-reactions-in-fiction.html>.
About the Author
John is the Managing Editor for Rosemont's Rathalla Review. He's a terminal writer and perpetual student and coping well. His interests include philosophy and archetypes and the writings of C.S. Lewis and C.G. Jung. He presented a paper on C.S. Lewis's conception of archetypes at the C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society at Grove City College in 2008 and was awarded the Senior English Prize for research by Geneva College. A favorite bedtime read is J.E. Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols.
