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78 Part II: Realising That Character Is Everything
You sometimes see thoughts written out within speech marks as conventional
dialogue, but with ‘he thought’ or ‘she felt’ instead of ‘he said’ or ‘she said’:
‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘I wonder what I’ll be having for dinner. I bet
Jack forgot to buy the chicken this morning, and I know there isn’t anything
in the freezer. I’m really starving! Maybe I’d better pick something
up on the way home.’
This approach isn’t always successful, because it seems contrived and unconvincing.
It gives the impression that people think in complete, well-formed
sentences, and so doesn’t reflect the way they really think. It also tends to give
the incorrect impression that the character is thinking aloud. The addition of
the words ‘to herself’ also jars, because readers probably can’t imagine who
else the character could possibly be thinking to apart from herself.
Another technique is to use italics to reflect thoughts, but if you have long
passages with a large number of thoughts this can look awkward on the page.
For example, the passage would appear as follows:
Well, she thought, I wonder what I’ll be having for dinner. I bet Jack forgot to
buy the chicken this morning, and I know there isn’t anything in the freezer.
I’m really starving! Maybe I’d better pick something up on the way home.
The italics can draw attention to the character’s thoughts in an unhelpful way.
You can express thoughts simply by dropping the speech marks and the italics
and just passing on the thoughts in ordinary prose:
Well, she thought, I wonder what I’ll be having for dinner. I bet Jack forgot
to buy the chicken this morning, and I know there isn’t anything in the
freezer. I’m really starving! Maybe I’d better pick something up on the
way home.
This technique draws less attention to itself, but make sure it doesn’t confuse
the reader.
Often writers convey thoughts in a way that’s more similar to reported
speech (see Chapter 6 for more information on reported speech):
She wondered what she would be having for dinner. She was sure that
Jack would have forgotten to buy the chicken that morning, and she knew
there wasn’t anything in the freezer. She was really starving. Maybe she’d
better pick something up on the way home.