Avoiding Awkward (or Unnecessary) Internal Questions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 
Too many internal questions can come across like the author telling the reader what they ought to be wondering about.

Internalization is a powerful tool for showing who a character is, how they feel, and what's motivating them to act. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in both the character arc and the plot, because readers get to see the internal debates that lead to the choices they make in the story.

But it's easy to go too far with internalized questions.  Internal questions shouldn't read like instructions on how a reader should interpret the scene.
When overdone (or done poorly), they can feel like you're whacking readers in the head with what they ought to be thinking or wondering about, instead of dropping clues that make them wonder about it. For example:

She crumpled the note in her hands. "Sorry?" she whispered. He walked out on her and all he could write was sorry? Was it another woman? Did he meet some hussy in the law school she paid for? Slaved for? Had he been using her all these years? That jerk. She'd never been anything but a cash cow to him. She flung the note across the room. How could he do this to her?

While these are all questions someone in this situation would reasonably think, there leaves little here for readers to wonder about on their own. It also feels like the character's assumptions are indeed the case and there's no other possible reason for the situation. The questions lead the reader too much to one conclusion, and ultimately feels too on the nose. Even worse, it gives the story nowhere to go, as the character isn't doing anything to move the story forward, she's just spouting questions as if explaining why she was just dumped. Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com