Maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that in most cases of where I have seen it misused, it wasn't a stylistic choice by any sense that I could decipher. It was just that lazy. That's not to say that when author's does use it as stylistic choice, it is done for a reason, because overall that style brought something more than just a mere switch in perspective for a tiny brief moment. Edit: I'd also like to add that if you read my initial comment, I said "more often than not." So it wasn't an all encompassing comment that labels every author that uses it lazy. Yes, I do know that can be used properly and a stylistic choice by some.
Even if that is the case, it is still a poor argument. If one wishes to address the stylistic choice itself, or any given implementation of it, that seems to me to be far better than to simply toss out a comment that an author who uses it is "lazy," without any real knowledge as to whether the author is actually lazy or not.
I definitely see what you're getting at. But I honestly don't use a ton of inner dialogue, and when I do it tends to be thoughts that could read just fine without italics and still make sense.
Imagine watching a documentary on wombats. One is the BBC style whisper (despite surely being recorded in studio after the footage is taken) where the narrator is saying, "and here we see the wombat coming home after a long day of work." That informs us about wombats, but does little to bring to life the experience of being a wombat. Now, imagine if there was a tv where you could hook up electrodes and it could somehow make you see, smell, and feel what the wombat was feeling. That not only still informs us on wombats, but instead of a looking-at-the-wombat perspective where things are explained, we ARE the wombat where we empathetically understand the wombats experiences. I'll let you be the judge as to which style of fiction is a more engaging, connected, compelling experience, as there's no right or wrong answer... though, the bulk of contemporary fiction does the latter, letting us experience what it means to be a wombat, and older, more archaic or old-fashioned feeling fiction uses an external narrator to tell us about the story. Also, many/most literary or award-winning fiction is an in-the-experience style, and many/most best-selling page-turning fiction is the narrator simply informing of action. When you in the experience of a character, it's more real, visceral, powerful, etc, but also can slow down a story if you're just trying to create a quick, page turning, read. In-the-experience writing cuts out the middle man. We don't need to be told the character is thinking something, as instead of those thoughts being presented as information for the reader, they can just exist in the prose as experience.
It's probably more fair to say the writer has little to do with it, but that italicized internal thoughts is often lazy prose. When prose manages to function just as well or better without such a device, then using the device seems either redundant or required and making up for a lack of clarity or effectiveness in the prose. Or, perhaps it's readers that are lazy. I've seen instances where a story is told very clearly through a character's perspective, and then there's an internal thought in the form of a question, and the reader gets confused. In one case the reader commented on a manuscript "Is a narrator asking this, or am I supposed to be the one asking it?" which I don't even know what the hell that means. Nope, as per the pov established for the last 5 pages, the story is through the perspective of a character, so that question was from the character, a narrator didn't suddenly show up like the director's comments in a dvd, and I don't even know what that means that the reader thought perhaps they were, personally, supposed to ask that question. So, yeah, it's still a someone common technique, but that doesn't mean it isn't lazy. And even if it is lazy, that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, as readers can be dumb sometimes, and some genres find it necessary to write to specific audiences.
So suppose you have a scene in which John sees Mary, who he stood up for a date. You can say: John spotted Mary across the parking lot and hoped she didn't see him. But you can't say (in the view of those who believe this is lazy): John spotted Mary across the parking lot. I sure hope she doesn't see me. Is that a correct assessment?
Sure you can. Were I your editor, I'd ask why your character is standing there like an idiot pontificating direct thoughts on his hope that she doesn't see him, though, instead of like, hiding, which is more telling, or having that hope presented more as part of his experience: John spotted Mary across the parking lot. He ducked behind a car, hoping she hadn't seen. What your sentence was lacking, perhaps, is a proper physical reaction. The problem that I often see in fiction that would italicize that direct thought, or even just think direct thoughts are super keen and have one a paragraph as I've sometimes seen, is that it becomes the stand-in for action. We don't get a proper, tangible, literal, physical action/reaction that also includes the internal thought process (often to the point it doesn't even need to be said, as it's implied, as in the case here where had he simply ducked behind the car we'd assume the motivations if the context is clear), and instead the physical action/reaction becomes the character thinking. To me, thoughts are passive and should only be indicated when it's really important and requires emphasis. It's as clumsy to me as the people who indicate the method of sensory input that is already clear. We're told the character can see the things they see, that they hear the things that are heard: he heard the bell chime... well duh, chimes are sound which is heard, so the 'he heard' is only significant if he was deaf before this moment. So to, to me, are thoughts clumsy if indicated directly and you're in a pov that is limited and through the characters eyes/experiences. It's like saying, see, look, my character IS capable of thought, as the emphasis becomes on the fact the character is thinking, not the thought. But shrug, it's done all the time, often in highly successful work where you can see italics and direct attributes in copious amounts, and sometimes both, as if that's no redundant twice over. I would argue that it wasn't an aspect of the prose that made the work successful, though. So doing it isn't going to score any points with agents or editors. Managing to not do it and still present clear prose will, though.
That makes sense. And that's how I would write it. I don't use direct thoughts in my writing. I'm just trying to figure out why an author might do so, as I see it fairly often. One thing that occurs to me is that is could be an attempt to capture a specific voice in third person narration without subjecting the entire narrative to that voice. In Joe Abercrombie's First Law books, the character of Inquisitor Glokta is provided with direct thoughts, in italics. The narration around that character and others also uses the more conventional method of conveying thoughts, but Abercrombie uses direct, italicized, first-person thoughts for Glokta to an extent that far exceeds what he does for any other character. Glokta has a rather distinct "voice" that comes across this way, and Abercrombie conveys it to the reader without having to utilize it throughout the entire narrative when in Glokta's POV. Perhaps that is a reason for the stylistic choice? I don't know if that's why Abercrombie does it, but it seems likely based on my reading of the work.
Yep. This is why chick-lit is usually drowning in direct, italicized thoughts. It usually just seems forced to me, though. Often what happens is the 'regular' prose is pretty distant and reported, and often flat and lifeless, but then the character chimes in with a quirky sort of one-liner. It never feels quite right to me, and almost makes me feel like the character is standing around listening to the narrator narrate, waiting for one-liner opportunities. It's something seen in popular fiction, because it can be got away with. At the same time, high quality fiction that has genre themes, subjects and styles, often doesn't do this kind of trope. Why? Because increasingly contemporary fiction is written through a character, not just about them, meaning the expectation is that the entire narrative is heavily voiced, since the character effectively becomes the narrator. But, yeah, pick up some mediocre (may still even be best selling) chick-lit, and you'll probably notice flat, reported prose and a quirky, one-liner-level direct-though-delivering character. Or, you can sometimes notice a dual voice, as the writer will have their own voice to the prose that doesn't feel like the character, and the character will have its own voice via dialog and direct thoughts. To me, it's all very awkward and disconcerting, as if the Pushin' Daisies voice-over narration is going the same time the characters are speaking, and the better, and usually more successful option, is to simply voice your entire narrative in the manner of your character, which makes for a better reading experience anyhow. It's funny how many common tropes in fiction end up seeming like parody when someone is well read and studies fiction. It's like pulling the curtain back and seeing the wizard, and the magic is never quite the same again (in many ways it's better). But yeah, I've tried to read chick-lit that had a prose heavily in the writers voice competing with the character's own voice, and it was hilarious in a meta-fiction sort of way where I imagined the character and writer both vying for attention, which was probably not the intended reaction. Oh, and as an example, instead of having a flat prose point out a car is red, and then a character think that car's as red as a baboons rear, you simply write through the character and in the prose depict the car through the character's eyes as being as red as a baboons rear. Of course, doing that for an entire novel is hard (though the reward high). It's much easier to simply report plot points and then fill in a ton of quirky one-liner direct thoughts, which is why it's done, in my opinion. For better or worse there are markets driven more by quantity than quality.
