# Telling characters’ thoughts VS Characters telling their OWN thoughts?



## quillman (Mar 4, 2019)

Just saw a YouTube discussing this and other 10 things you should either do or not do in writing.

Telling what characters are thinking = boring; 

Characters telling their own thoughts = interesting.

The youtuber’s point is that the reader is more engaged if s/he hears the characters talk about what they feel as opposed to the narrator saying, “Bob felt sad when his dog died.”

Not all chapters are dialgue-heavy to facilitate Bob talking about how he feels, but...maybe they should be??

And, how does this actually come about? Do we need to contrive a scene so that Bob has somebody to talk to about his dead dog? What if Bob is a zillion miles from home, not a soul in sight? Does he then talk to his invisible friend?

Any insight? Thank you!


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## Rojack79 (Mar 4, 2019)

Just have him talk to himself or just have him lement the loss of his dog.


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## Pete_C (Mar 4, 2019)

Learn about filter words, and then purge them from your writing. The earlier you do that, the more proficient you'll become in not doing it.


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## SueC (Mar 4, 2019)

Hi Quillman. I know this is tricky and I can see your point. I would ask if your story is in first person. It becomes a little more tricky if you are using third person, where an unknown entity is observing everyone. It wouldn't work to say _Becky had this thought . . . _but you could say something like, _As Becky walked home, she thought she might trip or . . .  _First person lends itself more, I think, to opportunities to thinking both out loud and internally. You can always use words like _I thought _to indicate that this person is sharing his thoughts with the reader, too.

Here's something I'm working on that is in first person:



> I had toyed with the idea of speaking myself. Everyone in my family knew what a kind and warm person Manny was, and I had thought I would take the opportunity to tell his family that he had been well-respected and loved in the time he was away from them. But I was glad I had decided not to go through with that charade. How, they would ask, was it possible that a man they all cared so much for, had children who despised him? Well, clearly, it was because he wasn’t that man. My Manny was not their Manny, no matter what the police said.
> 
> I certainly couldn’t get into the pulpit and say that!



Let us know how it works out.


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## Terry D (Mar 4, 2019)

Use a mix of techniques. Thoughts, dialogue, even narration. Have your character's behavior demonstrate her thoughts. 

*Marci closed her eyes and, for a few seconds, thought she heard the familiar tick-tick-tick of Patches' toenails against the tile floor, but then the silence overwhelmed the memory. She turned on the radio to fill the void, flipped open her phone, and punched April's number.

April picked up after the second ring. "Hey, girl!" she said. 

It's true, Marci thought, you really can hear a smile in someone's voice. "Hi, April." I wonder if you can hear a frown too?

"How you doin', Marci?"

"I'm okay."

"No you're not, sweetie, but you will be." April could always see right through Marci's BS. "One day at a time... one day at a time."

Marci leaned back against the kitchen counter-top and looked at the ratty old blanket wadded up in the corner beside the fridge. Patches had always curled up on it while Marci drank her coffee in the morning. Usually with his chin resting on his paws, watching her, waiting for the last bite of bagel. It suddenly became difficult to swallow.

"Marci? You still there?"

"Yeah." The tears were very close, but she fought them.

"You're looking at his toys aren't you? Or maybe the nasty old bed of his in the kitchen?"

Marci didn't answer. She couldn't.

"Girl, you have to get rid of those things. They aren't doing you any good."

"I know."

"But you aren't going to do it, are you?"

"I will," Marci said, her voice faint even to her own ears. "I will..." And then the tears won.
*
Kind of cheesy, I know, but you get the point. I never once used the word, sad, but tried to show Marci's grief through her own words, thoughts, and actions.


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## luckyscars (Mar 5, 2019)

quillman said:


> Just saw a YouTube discussing this and other 10 things you should either do or not do in writing.
> 
> Telling what characters are thinking = boring;
> 
> ...



What Terry said is right on. 

It's important not to think of any approach as a binary of good/bad and be suspicious of any writing advice that tries to do that.

It's only boring if you make it boring. 

But that doesn't mean you should (or even feasibly can) write every single thought into the script. Contriving scenes to provide a single piece of information will lead to your work being overly drawn out. That is boring too. There is such a thing as too much detail. Actually I'd say I've read more stories where people yammer on about irrelevant crap than vice versa.

If the death of Bob's dog is fundamental to the story it should obviously receive more than a passing mention and you may well want to build a scene around it. If it isn't, it shouldn't. Basically there are far too many variables here to answer the question. 

What I would do is write it how you think it should be written, then read it back to yourself. If you feel even a small sense of the scene dragging, assume that it does not work. 

General rule of thumb: If you feel sluggish reading your own work, chances are a reader is going to be bored to tears.


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## Newman (Mar 11, 2019)

quillman said:


> Just saw a YouTube discussing this and other 10 things you should either do or not do in writing.
> 
> Telling what characters are thinking = boring;
> 
> ...



You can tell it or show it, whatever executes well.

But there is a reason the character will reveal thoughts, however it is done. And the reason, I suggest, is to do with change.


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## Ralph Rotten (Mar 11, 2019)

quillman said:


> Just saw a YouTube discussing this and other 10 things you should either do or not do in writing.
> 
> Telling what characters are thinking = boring;
> 
> ...





I'd check that source. Both methods are perfectly viable.
Telling is only boring if you do it wrong.


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## JessicaT (Apr 7, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> I'd check that source. Both methods are perfectly viable.
> Telling is only boring if you do it wrong.



This +1.

I think what your YouTuber is bringing up is simply the debate on _first person narrative vs. third person narrative _(and maybe even third person "limited") and voicing his personal preference.


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