Living in My Head: Crafting Natural-Sounding Internal Thoughts

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

How to write tight, third-person internalization that feels natural to the character.

Getting inside a character's head is a key element to getting the reader to care about that character—love them, hate them, fear them, whatever the emotion you want to evoke. 
In first person this is easy, because you're already so close to their perspective the thoughts roll naturally into the story. With third person it can be more challenging, because there's an extra layer between the character and the reader. The narrative distance often determines how your internalization will sound.
A close narrative distance will make the internalization feel similar to first person (without the "I" of course). A more distant one will include tags such as he thought. Some will use italics, others will make it part of the narrative. The style is up to you.

((Here's more with Where Do You Want Me? Choosing Narrative Distance in Multiple Third Person).)
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com