I love you guys' feedback. In my novel, I feel like it would really help the story if I use internal monologue and allow the readers to hear the characters thoughts and see into their mind. This is my first novel ive written so i have questions. 1) Even though there is one clear MC, is it alright (or preferred even) to be able to see into the minds of the other characters as well? Both the good guys and the bad guys? 2) I suppose you would use the tags "She thought, he thought, etc" every single time? and so that would mean that thoughts are put in quotations just like regular dialogue?
You're talking about some pretty basic stuff here in question one. That's all about point of view - whether you use first person or any of the variants of third person. (Some people experiment with second person, but to me it just seems too much like a stunt rather than a serious choice. Others here may differ.) We have many threads here already that discuss point of view in exhaustive detail. Just search the forum for "point of view", "POV", "first person", "third person", etc. You'll turn up more material than you're probably prepared to deal with! As for your second question, there's a huge thread here on "italics for thoughts." I haven't read through it all, but it's likely that all your questions about formatting thoughts on the page will be discussed there. As for overuse of internal monologue, that's a matter of opinion. A lot of people, I suppose, think James Joyce overused it in Ulysses, but that's just one of the challenges of that very challenging book.
