Think, Say, Do

 A Guide to Effectively Interweaving Thought, Action, and Dialogue in Narrative Fiction

Just write what the person is thinking. Or saying. Or doing. Easy, right? Wrong. Interweaving dialogue, internal thought, and narrative action is one of the trickier and more essential challenges of prose writing. 

The challenge is to create a situation for the reader which is at once: exciting and interesting, authentic and diverse. A paragraph made up entirely of interior thought might begin to drag and make the reader feel out of touch with the actual events going on. Too much dialogue and the reader won’t feel immersed in the conversation. Don’t just write two talking heads in a vacuum. Give them motion. Action. Let the reader know what they are thinking as opposed to what they are saying. Sometimes the best way to create tension, provide exposition, or establish a character is to juxtapose what they think versus what they say. What don’t they want the other character(s) to know? Why? Suddenly your reader is interested in the situation and the character. A good paragraph should flow back and forth between narration, thought, and dialogue. This is not as simple as it sounds.

The key to interweaving these three types of prose together effectively is to make the transitions seamless. The reader should hardly notice the change. It should all flow together. Think about the way you experience the world; do you see everything you’re going to see, then think everything you’re going to think, then do everything you’re going to do? Most likely not. Real life is messier than that. It all sort of happens together. As a writer it is your job to recreate that interplay between thought, action, and speech. 

Take these example paragraphs:

“Masen stared out over the ice. His breath hard and slow. Against his ribs he felt his heart beat quicken. Revving up. Preparing. He exhaled and his breath turned to fog. The sight of it moving against the moon was oddly familiar. It was comforting in a way. At least some things - the simple, fundamental things - hadn’t changed. Even now. His shoulders tensed and relaxed and tensed again. He felt anxiety pulsing all over his body. Rising and ebbing away. Impatient.   

The sky was black. Completely starless. Jagged, skeletal trees surrounded the frozen lake. Claws encroaching. He wondered what this place might have looked like before. The trees full of life. Green everywhere. The water violent blue and full of motion. But nothing moved now. The air itself seemed still. A held breath. Waiting.   

Looking back Mason could see his footprints through the deep snow. The long walk to the lake. He could run. Turn around and head back the way he’d come. He could disappear. No one would know. His leg twitched. Begging him to turn around. He was reminded of getting out of bed in the morning. His whole body aching to stay. His mind racing. Scrambling for a way out of what had to be done. And then pulling the covers off without his conscious will. As if he had been possessed by the unshakable necessity of his situation. He closed his eyes and turned back to look over the lake. Steady. When he opened his eyes again he was no longer alone.”

The first sentence puts us behind Masen’s eyes. Next we feel what he is feeling. This subtly transitions us from what he is seeing to how he is feeling. Then we move back to what he is seeing. And then we immediately hear what he is thinking about what he is seeing. This is all tied together with the single action of taking a breath. In a few sentences we have some vague idea of where Masen is. We also have some idea of the situation he is in. He is nervous. He feels his world has drastically changed. 

The next paragraph opens with more visualization. Then transfers into thought as Masen reflects on what the lake may have looked like before. This reinforces the idea that a great deal has changed in the recent past. Notice how ideas about background can be subtly introduced without the use of overly direct exposition. There is no need for a character or even a narrator to dump an awkward speech about what’s going on. We learn about the backstory as we learn about the character. More importantly we learn about it through whichever character we are getting to know. This forges a bond between character and reader. How the reader feels about the character will color how they interpret information coming from that character. If they learn something from the point of view of a character they see as unreliable, they are less likely to believe it wholeheartedly. This creates a very real interaction between the character and the reader. This is why it is so important to have fully fleshed out characters. They are the lens through which you reveal your story, setting, and fellow characters. 

Also notice how the thoughts of the character are written directly into the narration. There are no quotation marks and no italics. No need for any of that. People’s thoughts are not as neat, crisp, and logical as their words. Thoughts do not need to be separated out. Thoughts are messy and often include visuals as well as words. The best way to handle them is to leave them in the narrative voice which has more freedom than a single, confining line of: 

“I wonder why my thoughts always come out in one or two easily transcribed lines," Joe thought to himself. 

Remember not to call up thoughts and memories too randomly. A certain amount of randomness is OK, good even. After all, we think pretty randomly. But try to avoid sticking memories where they don’t really belong like: 

“Racing away from his pursuers, Jack thought of a flower he had seen earlier.”

Or worse still

“Racing away from his pursuers, Jack thought of all the events which had lead him here in a conveniently linear way. And it went something like this…”

Avoid cutting away to thoughts too often. This will leave your action suspended and the audience losing interest. Soon, any tension you have built up in the current scene will dissipate. Obviously if you are building a frame story an extended flashback is all but unavoidable. Flashbacks are not bad, they should just be used with caution. If you are creating an extended flashback it should cut away from a situation that the audience is sufficiently curious about. How the character got here should be at least as interesting as what might happen next. That way the reader’s interest is fueled by the present situation rather than distracted by it. If you are creating a scene with one or more smaller flashbacks, then it is important to keep the audience engaged in the current moment. Keep the flashbacks small and piecemeal. Continually update the reader about what is happening. Unless your character stops what they are doing and just thinks about the past, something will be going on as they think (the same goes for dialogue). As characters are talking or thinking, describe how the situation is unfolding. Even if nothing monumental is happening. People will be playing with the buttons on their shirt, pouring a drink, shifting from foot to foot. These tiny details are the lifeblood of convincing and captivating scenes. Luckily, people think much faster than they act so a single action can cover a paragraph or two.

Avoiding the over use of thought and dialogue is important. But it is just as important to avoid using too much action. Prose can and should have longer stretches of narration than thought or dialogue but unless you are writing the novelization of a Michael Bay movie, your reader is going to want to get to know your characters. Let what they are thinking show. Remember, no book is ever about something that happened. Books about who things happened to. At the end of the day all stories are essentially about people. The book you are writing is not about an invasion by lobster-shaped aliens. That is just the setting. The story is actually about Joe Charming who single-handedly fights off the aliens and gets the girl. This is another reason why well written characters are an absolute MUST in good writing. If you don’t have the characters, you don’t have anything. And if the characters only exist in your mind and you never introduce your reader to them, then you still don’t have anything.  

Remember to string events, thoughts, and words together in a semi-logical way. 1. Joe looks at his shoes (Action). 2. Joe thinks about tripping during the last race he ran (Thought). 3. Joe reties his laces for the fifth time (Action). 4. “Nervous?” Joe’s friend asks. “No.” he lies (Words). 

Writing this way requires hard work, time, and practice. But so does anything else worth doing. Not taking the time to interlace action, thought, and word effectively is lazy writing. Remember that as writers we have a sacred duty. We are the scribes, the transcribers of all that it means to be human. It is our job to capture how people live, how they think, how they dream, what they do and who they are. And in that job there is no room for laziness. So write and write well. And as always remember, be brave, be sincere, and have fun!

Read all Padraic's work on Floodmark.