My other WIP is at about 30k words out of (I guess) 120k. I can't put excerpts up but will give some background It has several characters looking at a shared central event from their perspectives. Each one gets 4 chapters, like:- - 1st-Person direct interior monologue - framed short story - soft 3rd-Person narration using MC as POV - 3rd-Person The interior monologues I've found hard to get guidance on from Google. I found these threads and posts really helpful, but my question is about timing rather than style. https://www.writingforums.org/entry/directly-and-indirectly-reported-thoughts-inner-monologue.66176/ https://www.writingforums.org/entry/direct-and-indirect-correlate-with-showing-and-telling.66177/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/indirect-vs-direct-thought.162819/page-2 https://www.novel-writing-help.com/interior-monologue.html https://writersedit.com/fiction-writing/literary-devices/literary-devices-stream-consciousness/ I haven't yet run into problems around categorization, how to introduce and format monologues for the reader, and what sorts of monologue to employ. I've settled into a style - the character daydreams in real time and when it's useful they talk to the reader as if they're an invisible bystander. Technically it might involve some shifts from interior to exterior, or from 1st-person to 2nd-person, or the whole thing might really be in 2nd... I haven't got my head around that, but so far that's all fine. Within this I have a choice that I couldn't find much about online:- between artificially giving the character thoughts that help the reader out, and leaving their thoughts natural. I don't have, like, psychology-based stream-of-consciousness stuff with fragments of the character's suppressed memories popping in all over the place, but the thoughts depend on the preceding thought and not the external storyworld unless it interrupts the daydream. It seems to be important to get the pace to feel as close to real-time as possible - e.g. if the character is walking downstairs, their thoughts take about as long to read as it takes to walk downstairs. I took the knife and, with one swift motion, sliced through all three, delicious layers of the gateau. < 1st person Cripes that's sharp. Might of cut me finger. Silly sod hasn't defrosted this has he? God I love chocolate! < monologue (artificial) Sunn-y day! La la la la la la.... Sunny day! La la la da di do... < monologue (natural) But my problem is:- The closer the train-of-thought is to being natural, the harder action scenes seem to be to describe in real time, like:- The clown jumped out from nowhere and gave me both barrels of a custard pie < 1st-P (dilated) Aiee! I'm blind! What? < monologue (natural) (real-time) With action, the character's thoughts are often going to be shorter than the reader's. But they can unpack the experience afterward. The next line might be:- Would you look at that? So by the time I've got the sweet yellow pie off my face he's rushed off, and it's that Joe Grimaldi wannabe from earlier. But the longer an action scene goes on, the longer the reader has to wait before the character gets their mental space back to reflect on what's happened. So far in the WIP I've been able to get round this by setting up action scenes that are convenient to do this way: one is being attacked by a dog on a chain, so that there can be the shock and fear reaction but it can break off again immediately once the MC moves back out of its reach. I guess I could plant enough seeds for the reader to be able to navigate through a long, disjointed stream-of-consciousness whilst retaining a rough idea of what's hurting and scaring the character. But I wonder are there any other setups? And what authors would spring to mind for this? I've found Woolf as an example for the approach to the timing, but it's in 3rd-person and I think it plays on the understatement that comes about naturally from the timing. Proust - 'In Search of Lost Time' I looked at too and I felt he's an example for the way my characters think, but he slows it down for the action scenes (at least the ones I could find). thanks for reading and very grateful for any tips!
Wow, that was a lot I have never thought of before. I have used internal thoughts in my stories if I think the reader can benefit from them. I don't use them often, the characters don't have running dialogues for every event happening to them. As for action scenes, are the internal monologues necessary? I get what you mean about them being quick, but if an action scene is quick, is there time for internal dialogue? I write in 3rd person limited and for internal dialogue I switch to 1st person. However, you have raised some very good questions. I am now going to do some research.
@evild4ve Point of View in 2021: Guide to 1st Person, 2nd Person, 3rd Person POV (thewritepractice.com) What a brilliant question, and am sure you know miles more than me so cannot offer advice, but just my experience. This was exactly a problem I’d seen… The closer the train-of-thought is to being natural, the harder action scenes seem to be to describe in real time War & History - A Prologue opener (400 words) | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Someone did an interesting piece a while ago that looks at a similar issue. The idea was to show a scene between Napoleon and Talleyrand, his number one trusted advisor and mentor. Knowing this area of history, I was interested and could guess what the author was trying to get at. It was to be an action meeting told from both sides at the same time. Also, it would show rather than tell parts of the world building and plot. It needed to show Napoleon selling the idea to Talleyrand. This was not a cut and dried thing, he needed to convince him… Talleyrand, for his part needed to contain his pupal slash Emperor long enough to get a handle on the idea without discouraging the student… The piece in just 1,700 words breaks every single rule of POV writing. From third person limited to omniscient to first person to head hopping. And it nearly works. The POV rule breaks are needed to keep the scene moving forward as an argument to convince another character to agree. If told from either one of the characters you miss out on that individual’s flaws. Told in either third person it still would need head hopping, but be more confusing to the reader. The history dump is too much, and probably was needing more dialogue between the two. To your OP… To break POV using chapters can kill scene speed and impact. Head Hopping for a skim reader will lose them. Jack Carr has an annoying habit of HH during action sequences that are too confusing. That doesn’t seem to be your point, its more the one MCs pov’s changing. However, the example above shows a highly skilled POV change scene can keep the reader interested without losing pace. (that example above wasn't) I’d take a serious look at The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. This does what you talk about, but its dark. Lucky enough to own a First Edition of this one. Also, maybe The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. The Dice Man - Wikipedia This is a really hard subject and intrigued to see what you discover. Please keep sharing… MartinM.
I just realized the first three links in the OP go to entries in my blog! When I first saw this I didn't click through on the links, so I didn't realize that. The 4th one goes to a page on NovelWritingHelp, which is a site I found extremely helpful but is now down, apparently permanently. I suspect the author is writing a book or a course (maybe already has, and I just haven't found it?) And now that I've taken another look at the OP I can start to wrap my head around the problem, which is one I've experienced myself as well. A couple of sentences in there were just so confusing I don't think I made it through them before. But now I get the problem—action scenes just don't allow enough time for expanded internal monologue. All those blog entries I made stem originally from a few problems with my workshop thread, and some helpful advice I got on it to open up the interior monologue in order to get a deeper POV, one that allows the readers to see and experience more of what he's thinking. I tried it in revisions, but kept running smack into the problem you mentioned @evild4ve —scenes with action don't seem to allow for that unpacking or expansion of inner monologue. It seems to become a doubling of the scene, it gets shown through action and then you see the inner thoughts and reactions of the character. And yes, it makes the scene drag on interminably. Action scenes must be quick and punchy or they lose their impact. My immediate solution was to not use that expanded inner monologue in action scenes, to use it only in places where it's all narration so there's room for more thought. To me this seems to fit the timing of actual life. We have a lot more time to think things through when we're in the shower or sitting somewhwere comfortable with nothing much to do, but when action is happening, not so much. We do the thinking—the re-action to what's happened—after the fact, once we get somewhere we can settle down. Let's say for instance it was a quick scuffle or a fight. You register only immediate impressions, and those are very brief (of necessity). A punch to the cheekbone—pain explodes. That's about it. It seems you can't write more thought than action, or the action slows way down. But the saving grace is that in real life we don't have the luxury for that much thought in such a situation either. Meaning we'll be dwelling on what happened, on our choices and the results of them, afterwards. If only I had thought to say this! Hah! That would have shown the bastard! Yeah, and then I should have done this! He wouldn't have been so smug then, would he? This is what I've seen referred to as scene and reflection I think (not sure reflection is the right word). Or action and reaction. An event occurs, you don't have time to propeprly process it in the moment, but afterwards you can work it all out at your leisure. So far this is the only solution I've found. If you try to compact a lot of inner monologue in during an action scene it's like you're trying to dilate time, unfortunatly we just can't do much thinking at such a time. The thinking has to come afterwards. So you give the character some time to reflect on what's happened and think through it then. That's how we do it in real life, and I think it's the only way to handle it in writing as well, at least as far as I know.
This is helpful, that you provided an example. And if you would include the next line as interior monologue at the same time, it would expand the action to longer than the event itself lasted. But realistically we don't have time for all that thought in the moment itself, it comes afterwards. Like this: Not during the scene, but immediately after it, as the MC licks his finger, tasting gateau (is that a type of hat??!) and checking for blood. You could just have the second line come immediately after the first, since the action itself is already over. The reaction would be immediate, without slowing down the moment since it's really the following moment. But in a longer action scene you'd need to wait till the event itself is over to provide the interior monologue. I think—I need to do some experimenting with it myself to be more sure. What I found is that I can switch to interior monologue at the beginning or the end of an action sequence, but not during the action. And of course reaction to the scene needs to come afterwards. Possibly in the next scene, maybe at the end of this one if it isn't too much thought for the scene to support. I'm not sure there's anyplace for the more natural monologue: Unless you're trying to do a James Joyce Ulysses kind of endless stream-of-consciousness and don't mind losing most of the readers.
@Xoic Wow really enjoyed that. Now understand @evild4ve question a little bit more. The links very interesting. May I ask a dumb question? The @evild4ve example of a knife slicing through gateau, your example of the monologue running longer than the action scene... Is it not more emotion that starts the action, “Cripes” .... The action promotes an emotional response that then is followed up with a moment of reflection and logic? This is brilliant fyi
The terms action and scene refer specifically to physical activity. It's 'showing', which must refer to only things that could be seen by a camera. Or I like to think of it as an invisible drone floating nearby, that has a microphone as well as a camera. In other words things that could be gotten across in a movie (without voiceover, which is telling). Emotion falls under telling, unless it's shown through facial expression or body language. A wince of pain would be a way to show emotion (or pain, which isn't really an emotion), but not an inner thought done in words. In a movie that would only be possible through voiceover, unless it's said out loud, in which case it's part of the action. But you can't have a character giving moment-by-moment running commentary out loud on everything that's happening, unelss it's an MMA fight with ringside announcers. Or a schoolyard fight with a ring of spectators yelling things.
