Sharing a Character's Thoughts

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JustDee

JustDee

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Wow, my first actual writing-related question. I'm all tingly. ;)

I'm wondering if anyone can point me to some quick examples and/or recommend authors or books that do a good job of dealing with a character's thoughts as a main conversational point.

I don't want the character's thoughts to be part of the running description of the story - but particularly want to highlight the character's thoughts, almost as if they were conversing out loud to themselves (but they're not actually... Hope that makes sense.)

Any ideas/examples for how different people deal with letting readers see into the thoughts of a character in a way that stands out from the setting/backdrop of the story would be greatly appreciated.

(Hope this is the right category for this post - seemed rather "basic" stuff to me *shrug*)
 
JustDee

JustDee

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Thanks! I really do read these forums, its just there's such a large volume of material to peruse through... (Already been politely scolded in a PM to 'look before I leap') I also have a dreadful "search avoidance" tick on forums - residuals from a forum I used to frequent that suffered from large bursts of traffic and little money for hardware upgrades - so hence, we were all screeched at over and over again to search as infrequently as possible. (Bad habits are so hard to break).

I took your advice and searched (meep!) and found loads of info on the topic. Thanks so much.
 

Danthia

There are lots of ways to show it.

Bob took off for his house, trying to keep ahead of the zombie horde. "I hope the door isn't locked," he thought.

Bob took off for his house, trying to keep ahead of the zombie horde. I hope the door isn't locked.

Bob took off for his house, trying to keep ahead of the zombie horde. Hopefully the door wasn't locked.

Bob took off for his house, trying to keep ahead of the zombie horde. He hoped the door wasn't locked.

Any of these work. It's a matter of choosing which style works for you. Some are very tight to the POV, others are more distant. It all depends of what you want your narrative distance to be. (That's how far apart you want your reader and your narrator to feel. For example, first person is very close, while third omniscient is very far.)
 
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