Introspection
Introspection is the type of prose that most writers tend to forget about. Especially if you approach writing from the experience of watching films or maybe theater plays. In those, you can’t (easily) portray thoughts, only what is said out loud.
In books, though, it is a very strong tool. Books are told from the perspective of the main characters. The best thing you can do, is make the reader feel like they are the character. To really immerse them in their world and their head. Well, what’s better than literally reading their thoughts?
When to write introspection
You’d use introspection for the benefits it has.
- To show contrast: a person does/says something, but thinks something else. (This reveals character better than anything.)
- To communicate information that isn’t natural to say out loud, or nobody is around to hear it. (The information itself can be quite bland or objective.)
- To show the thought process before arriving at a conclusion or action. (Remember my chapter on Beats. Big, decisive actions require buildup. Show a character’s thoughts as they problem solve, consider options, convince themselves to do it.)
- To ramble about a topic for a longer period without being interrupted. (Not the best benefit, but alright.)
For me, introspection isn’t about getting your thoughts on the paper. It’s about getting the character’s thoughts on the paper.
As such, after I’ve written a few paragraphs, I ask myself: “What would the character think about this? How would they react, internally?”
If I have nothing, or it’s not interesting, I continue. If I come up with something valuable, I write it as introspection.
Stories are literally about characters trying to reach a goal but encountering obstacles. This means they constantly need to “problem solve”. To think about the task at hand and find a way to overcome it. A lot of that can be shown through introspection, as that’s the form that fits best.
In my stories, I usually aim for a balance between “problem solving with others” (through dialogue, through working together) and “problem solving on their own” (through introspection and then acting on their decision).
One of my short stories (for The Saga of Life) applies the “contrast” trick. It starts with somebody asking loads of money (from the king) to build a ship and fight pirates. The king is skeptical and asks if that’s true.
They say: “Of course!” But you immediately get their thoughts: It’s the truth, alright, just not the whole truth.
It’s a natural thought. People convince themselves that their lie isn’t actually that bad. But that simple thought also immediately shows character and adds mystery.
How to write introspection
As mentioned at The Four Elements, different authors use different ways to tell the reader “hey, this is a thought”.
Inline
I call this “inline” because I have a programming background. Others might call it a “direct POV” ( = Point of View) or “deep POV”.
The idea is the same. You directly display the thoughts, with no additional markup or tag like “he thought”.
To do so, the thought needs to take on the same tense and writing style as the rest of the text.
The advantage is that it takes fewer words and looks consistent. The disadvantage is that it might be unclear what is a subjective thought and what not, and some thoughts are therefore hard to express this way.
Will he even recognize me anymore?
I take off my hat to make sure my signature red hair is visible.
Will he even care? Dang, I’m wasting too much time and energy. It’s just a simple business meeting. Get yourself together, Sarah.
The thoughts and the action flow into each other without transition or “thought tag”.
Tagged
This adds a tag to indicate something is a thought. This allows you to play more with the wording and tense of the thought, as readers realize it’s a separate thing from the rest of the prose.
This is a terrible idea, he thought. The plan was destined to fail, as it hinged on a tiny margin of error and some random chance.
If even one guard starts his shift a second too late, he thought, we’re done for.
Untagged
This allows removing the tag by using a different way to mark thoughts, usually italics. (Some authors might use a different styling, but italics are surely the most popular. And the prettiest, if you ask me.)
I should have grabbed something to eat. Sarah’s stomach growled endlessly as she walked into the building. The suitcase in her hand felt heavy, her arms limp, her vision swimming. If I blow this deal because I’m too hungry to think, I’ll never hear the end of it.
When I started out, I used tagged thoughts, then untagged, and now inline. To me, this feels like the strongest method. You never break the flow and you are really inside the head of the character. You’re inside the head so much that you don’t need to tag thoughts in any way: they flow naturally from how the character narrates the story.
At the same time, this progression was necessary to fully appreciate introspection. The first few stories I wrote using inline thoughts, I really struggled to make them work and flow naturally. For newer writers, perhaps for a first draft, tagged thoughts might be the simplest to employ.
Some do a mix of inline and untagged. Deliberate thoughts are inline, but “sudden” thoughts or realizations are in italics. I think this is fine, though it has confused some of my readers before.
Conclusion
Whenever something happens in your story (of some significance), ask yourself how the character narrating this story would react. What would their thoughts be? What would their thinking process be?
If it’s interesting and helps the story, add it through introspection.
In my experience, the amount of introspection goes up as your target audience grows up. Adult literature can have so much introspection that the story stands still for ten pages. Not my type of story, but it’s pretty common. Kids literature might only have a few funny thoughts there and there.
Many of my stories are young adult, or for “all ages”, and employ a mix. There is quite some introspection, but never so much that the story comes to a standstill.
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