Hi Dee and thanks for the welcome. I thought the passage from TWH read really well - very professional (i've just looked up your showcase so now I see it's not surprising as you are an about to be published writer - congratulations). I take Harry's point about the risk of show not tell but the technique can be used very effectively in combination with dialogue whereas pure first person internal monologue doesn't perhaps combine so well because the writer has to use two different levels (?) of first person stuff and has the problem of inverted commas too.
Naomi

Coming in on the end of this - it's frightening how much happens on WW in just a few days away.

I wouldn't ever ban interior monologue. Whoever (sorry, I've only skimmed the thread) talked about free indirect writing is absolutely right (didn't know the French origin of what I think is a very unhelpful term, so thanks for that too). I don't think it works to put it in speech marks, though - too confusing and also I would say now very old fashioned. You just have to make sure it's really, really clear what's going on, but I don't see why you can't do something like:

She looked at him and thought, I bet you don't usually dress like that.

Darren, thanks for the plug for Russian Tea. Free indirect is so useful for a two-hander like that: makes it so much easier to handle the PoV shifts. I've just been revising a three-hander I wrote later (I can't resist technical challenge), and realising how much harder it is to do well with three, because you have to make it so much clearer.

Emma

Emma, I'm new to WW and I was the one who wrote about indirect free style. I can see that your solution would work well in lots of situations but what if you don't want to write 'and thought'? Can you still use the first person for thoughts without having to use inverted commas? I've seen writers use intalic for interior stuff but it seems bit of a cop-out - ie not using the writing itself to make clear what is going on.
Naomi

The problems inherent with interior monologue are consuming me at the moment. The novel I am working on at the moment deals with a single man and the way in which he views the world. There is dialogue and a certain amount of interaction with other characters, but by far the balance of the narrative is taken up with his interior monologue. I am very conscious of the fact that narratively speaking, this could become very tiresome very quickly, but as yet I haven't found a solution to this problem.

Another thought has just occurred and it is this - I believe implicitly in the show rather than tell school of writing and try to apply it to my work but this is another rule I seem to be breaking a lot, since there are occasions when you simply cannot render a characters state of mind by showing them engaged in an act. Inevitably, I find myself having to describe his state of mind. How do you folks counter these problems?

G

Naomi, this is the archetypal question that's next-to-impossible to think about without examples. Without sitting down and analysing a series of cases, I can't be sure, but I think it would be hard to switch into interior first-person monologue from third-person narrative without some kind of signal - subtler that 'he thought' maybe, but still there. If you keep it in third-person, free-indirect style, it should be fine - see any three pages of Jane Austen - though you still have to keep a very sharp eye and a clear head for on your tenses, since presumably the monologue - being in a sense silent speech - is present tense, when your narrative is past tense.

I personally get terribly confused if speech marks are used for anything except speaking aloud in fiction, but I'm quite willing to be told that I'm stupid. I quite like italics for this, but lots of people don't, so I tend to reserve them for my character remembering something that someone else said (rather than putting that - which isn't being spoken at the moment - in speech marks)

Perhaps a magnifying glass on a couple of chapters of Woolf or Joyce would come up with other ways of making it clear without a plonking 'she thinks' all the time. One compromise might be to just seed it once every now and again, and in between the reader would be ready for the switch - rather as you don't need 'he said, she said' for every line of a longish bit of dialogue. It's probably a case for writing the thing and posting here or asking your most honest nearest-and-dearest if it works.

gkay, don't forget that interior monologue is show, in one sense, because it comes from the character, and the more highly developed and idiosyncratic you managed to make their voice and character, the more showy and less telly any utterance of theirs becomes. It's very different from an omniscient third-person-narrator telling. I don't think it's tiresome in the least, if you get it right, and being aware of the pitfalls is step one of not falling into them (oh dear, that metaphor seems to have got a bit complicated). I'm having trouble at the moment with a narrator who's realising that a lot of her past wasn't quite as she's always thought it was, and the wretched thing is full of rhetorical, interior questions. I suspect second time around I'll have to evolve ways to turn some of them into some other form. I think it's a real suck-it-and-see question, that won't come right till you've finished the first draft, and can look back and see the balance and rhythm of the whole. It may well not be as unbalanced as it feels when you're in the thick of an individual chapter.

Emma

There is a very useful chapter all about interior monologue in 'Self-editing for Fiction Writers' by Renni Browne and Dave King. (I found this book very good, useful and to the point.) This is what they have to say:

There is, arguably, no easier way to explore a character or express a reaction to events than through interior monologue. After all, you can let your readers in on exactly what your characters really think without having to filter that thought through dialogue and action. Interior monologue is an intimate, powerful way to establish a character's voice- and personality. And, as you might expect, interior monologue is so powerful and easy to write (though not easy to write well) that many fiction writers tend to overuse it... The sterling value of interior monologue mechanics is unobtrusiveness... First: Never, ever, use quotes for your interior monologue. It is not merely poor style; it is, by today's standards, ungrammatical... Don't have your characters mumble to themselves or speak softly under their breaths... Get rid of what are , in effect, speaker attributions i.e. he thought, he wondered etc If you're writing in the third person, you can just write your interior monologue in third rather than first person.... Never resort to italics unless they are the only practical choice.

They go on to analyse a passage of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a masterly example of how to do it. (Emma suggested this.)

Basically they recommend blurring the edges between description and interior monologue as the jump from eyes to mind is not such a big one. But this has led me to wonder about something else. To what extent should the prose used reflect the actual speech of the person through whose PoV the passage is being seen? e.g. if the person is not a very educated person should all of the prose from his POV, not just his/her dialogue, be in 'his/her' words? Any views on this? Sorry if this isn't very clear but I'm posting in a rush.

Ashlinn

This is intriguing. What about if a character starts talking to him/herself inside their head in a moment of crisis - like you do (well,I do!)when you're cross with yourself/ trying to nerve yourself up to do something? Like "interior dialogue"?

Is this a big no?

Sarah

Ashlinn, that's a great quote.

Sarah, as far as PoV's concerned, I think there's a complete spectrum of possibilities - again, we're really talking about free indirect style here. If you pick up a chapter of Austen, you can watch her slide from Austen's own narratorial (?) voice, via Emma's perceptions described in Austen's voice, into Emma's perceptions described in Emma's voice, and back, and then into someone else's PoV all in a page or so. I think it's a case of knowing exactly how far you are inside someone's head in any given sentence, and then using as much of their vocabulary and grammar (still in 3rd person, of course) as seems right. Also keeping exact track of moves from one to another. It's only if you as the writer don't have a clear idea of where on the spectrum you are that it's confusing for the reader. (The story Russian Tea that I've got in the archive at the moment was my first ever effort at something with a moving PoV, btw.)

Emma

<Added>

Sorry, that second para was responding to Ashlinn too.

Sarah, on principle I refuse to allow anything in writing to be a big no, ever. There'll always be a moment when it's just what's needed. I think what you mean - and yes, I do it too, and aloud - is probably just a particularly direct and immediate kind of monologue. I would use speech marks if they actually say it aloud, and if not, not.

Emma

I agree with Emma that interior monologue - if properly used (which is not to say that I use it properly) is show.

gkay, one thing that always strikes me reading published fiction is that there is plenty of tell going on. I think there are times you could just go so round the houses trying to show something that once in a while a direct tell is actually better.

Ashlinn, that's a really helpful explanation, and one I agree with. Will have to ponder your other question tomorrow, as right now am too tired to do any clever thinking

Sarah, I do that too, I'm sure we all do, so I'd say it was completely allowed on occasion.

Andrea

Thank you, Emma, Andrea and Ashlinn!

I will take a look at "Russian Tea" - also Jane Austen.

I've been looking at all the interior dialogue I use - lots of "wondered" and "thinking" going on. I stumbled onto this thread - it's really going to help me with my editing so thanks to everyone.

Sarah

I've been looking at all the interior dialogue I use - lots of "wondered" and "thinking" going on

Sarah, I know that feeling. You may be right, but two things might be making you feel more self-conscious about it than you need. I think quick signposts like this are relatively invisible to the reader (like 'said', for example). They don't impinge much beyond doing their job of keeping things clear. The other thing is that now you're looking for them, they probably jump out at you more. It's often one of the things that you can only tell with a fresh read after a break from it. Reading aloud is another way to hear it in some senses afresh - you may hear the words too often, or to your surprise you may not.

Emma

Most good writers use 'internal monologues' without need for any analysis or dissection, but as a simple reflection of real life and a way of imparting more of the characteristics of the individuals within the stories.

In our everyday lives we are aware that 'internal monologues' are a fundamental and natural part of our thinking processes. The major aspect of this in the written word is to make this as 'smooth' as possible. Short sharp and excited questions, repeated exclamtions of surprise, overuse of expletives that are 'out of character', may well cause the reader to become aware of the writing technique rather than the quality (enjoyment) of what is being read.

I am not in favour of using quotation marks for 'internal monologues' although I can see that, at times, these might be very useful. The important factor is how the writer wishes his/her readers to react to what has been written.

Reading aloud is always good advice but the writer must place him or herself in the role of the reader when this is taking place.

Len