Character thinking words to himself.
[If you want to show a character thinking words to himself, without actually speaking them aloud, follow the same punctuation and capitalization rules but eliminate the quotation marks.]

The quote above, is somthing I found on the internet concerning how to structure ‘character thinking’ paragraphs.

Two things have me a bit confused about this business of a ‘character thinking’:
First, is tense. My novel is written in First-person Past Tense, yet it seems that when a character is thinking, one must switch to Present Tense. Is this correct?

Second, are there any other speech tags besides, ‘I thought’ that can be used to show that a character is thinking? I want to stay within the accepted conventional writing form so I do not confuse the reader. So, should the author always use, ‘I thought’ to signal the reader that the character is ‘thinking’, or are there a few more one can use for the sake of variation?


Thanks
Azel

If the novel is told from the MC's pov then 'I thought' should not be necessary, as the reader should automatically assume these are the character's thoughts.

<Added>

That should probably be should not always be necessary since there will be instances where it is necessary, but it is very like he/she said which can also be cut out most of the time.

I have to say, I think I'd only switch into present tense if I were using a thought-tag

I walked down the road, looking about me. Then I caught sight of John. What on earth was he doing? I hoped he wasn't trying to meet me. I was glad to see him turning down King Street.

but

I walked down the road, looking about me. Then I caught sight of John. What is earth he doing, I thought. I hope is isn't trying to meet me. Oh, good - he's turned down King Street.

Emma

I was going to post a sample sentence, but I could not figure out how to indent the sentence. The preview does not indent.

Azel

For the sake of argument, we'll just assume it's indented, shall we Azel.
Post away.

The story is written in first-person, past-tense. Here is a sample of my problem with ‘character thoughts’ and ‘tense’. The first paragraph sample is the first draft, in which I wrote, ‘Is that me,’ and ‘This is a tired face...’ (Present tense). After being told by some of you to remove the ‘I thought’ and to place characters thoughts in past tense, I revised the paragraph to read ‘Was that me? (in italic) and ‘It was a tired face...’ (Past tense). My grammar is weak, so it may not be correct, but you should be able to see the problem. ‘This is’ seems stronger to me than, ‘It was’, but if I need to stay in the past tense the second paragraph is correct. (I used the underline to indent the paragraph. It is not part of the writing.}



As I dried myself, I looked toward the large mirror and was startled by my face, my body.
__Is that me, I thought, the neck length wet black hair, the thin face, the sunken eyes with dark circles? This did not look like a young women just out of her teens ready to embrace and enjoy her young life. This is a tired face that has seen too little sleep. This is a face full of fear of the coming day.


As I dried myself, I glanced at the large mirror and was startled by my own face.
__Was that me?—the neck length black hair, the thin face, the sunken eyes with dark circles. This did not look like the face of young woman just out of her teens ready to enjoy life. It was a tired face that had seen too little sleep. It was a face full of fear of the coming day.

Thanks
Azel

I think either is fine, and at a quick read so is the grammar.

The first one wouldn't be fine without 'I thought' to flag it. You don't need the italics for 'was that me?', though - it's perfectly obvious what's going on., and it's not usual.

With my copy-editing hat on I'd say that neck-length should be hyphenated, by the way.

Emma

Come to think of it, if the whole second paragraph is her thinking, the first one should perhaps be:

As I dried myself, I looked toward the large mirror and was startled by my face, my body.
__Is that me, I thought, the neck length wet black hair, the thin face, the sunken eyes with dark circles? This does not look like a young women just out of her teens ready to embrace and enjoy her young life. This is a tired face that has seen too little sleep. This is a face full of fear of the coming day.


I also wonder whether, if it's her thinking, her voice might think 'doesn't' and 'that's seen' rather than 'does not' and that has seen'. And 'didn't' in the past-tense versionJust a thought.

Emma

Thank you Emma for the help. It’s good to know I can have it either way. I prefer the ‘I thought’ present-tense version for the second paragraph. And you are right, she would probably ‘think’ in word contractions.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find revision very slow work. When I wrote the first draft, I was producing 1000 to 1500 words a day. Now that I am working on my revision, I am doing good to get through 200 or 300 words a day. At the rate I am working, it will take over a year to finish my first revision.

Azel