Inner dialogue is a powerful tool in fiction writing, providing deep insight into a character’s thoughts, fears, and motivations. It can be formatted in three ways: using italics and thought dialogue tags, understanding your character, creating a distinctive voice, and embracing realism.
Inner monologue is a result of cerebral function that allows us to hear ourselves speak in our heads without physically speaking or making sounds. It can reveal a character’s personalities, motivations, and viewpoints on life, which can be seen in their responses to situations they encounter. To write an interior monologue that is not boring, it is essential to understand your character, create a distinctive voice, embrace realism, and always write it in italics.
Quotation marks should be reserved for written spoken dialogue, while some writers use italics to indicate internal voice. Italics add a layer of complexity and depth to the story. To create an interior monologue that is not boring, it is important to understand your character, create a distinct voice, embrace realism, and use italics to alert the reader.
To use inner monologue in writing, start a new line with a new line, avoid dialogue tags, and give voice to a character’s thoughts. Describe other characters or events from the story, and set it in italics. Industry standard punctuation for internal dialogue is to eliminate quotation marks since words are not spoken but to set it in italics.
Interior monologue is one of the most powerful tools in fiction writing, mixing it well with Action, Dialogue, and Interior Emotion. Sandwich necessary exposition between thick slices of action and ensure all explaining is done before getting to the tense moments.
📹 How to Write INTERNAL Dialogue (Character Thoughts)
Learn how to write the thoughts in your characters’ heads. Get Brandon’s horror/thriller novel BAD PARTS: amzn.to/3esTFYC …
How long is a 1 minute monologue?
One-minute monologues are a popular way for actors to make a quick impression to agents, casting directors, schools, colleges, and universities. They are easy to memorize, suitable for younger actors, and can be performed in festivals, competitions, or classes. These monologues can be dramatic, comedic, or suitable for all genders, teens, and children. There are 35 1-minute monologues available, including a candy-inspired one for kids, a mean girl one for teens, and hopeful or scorned love.
These monologues allow actors to explore complexities and deliver memorable performances in a short amount of time. The author has created a new page of 1-minute monologues to make it easier for actors to showcase their talents and evoke emotion from their audience.
How to write an inner monologue in a script?
An internal monologue is a unique form of storytelling that allows the character to express their emotions, reflections, and inner conflicts. It should be written in a distinctive style that reflects the character’s unfiltered consciousness, avoiding formal language and rigid structures. The narrative voice can be either a voiceover or part of the character’s dialogue, providing a unique cinematic experience. The monologue also allows the character to express their hopes, fears, and deeper desires, providing the audience with a deeper insight into their psychological makeup.
What is the interior monologue style?
Interior monologue is a narrative technique used in dramatic and nondramatic fiction to depict the thoughts and emotions of the protagonists. These monologues can be loosely related impressions or more structured sequences of thought and emotion. They can take various forms, such as dramatized inner conflicts, self-analysis, imagined dialogue, and rationalization. The term is often used interchangeably with stream of consciousness, but it can also reflect all half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character’s consciousness.
The interior monologue was first used extensively by Édouard Dujardin in Les Lauriers sont coupés and later became a characteristic device in 20th-century psychological novels. It is closely related to soliloquy and dramatic monologue.
How do you format a monologue?
The process of writing a monologue involves seven simple steps: defining the purpose, developing a character profile, identifying the audience, crafting a powerful beginning, writing the middle part, crafting a clear ending, and refining and tweaking. Monologues have evolved from being used in theatres to being used in various forms of media, including books, movies, novels, science fiction, and TV series.
A well-written monologue should be creative and systematic, as a poorly written one may bore readers, lose interest, or even skip the monologue altogether. A great writer should make readers read every word multiple times.
What are the 7 steps to write a monologue?
A monologue is a speech by an individual that expresses their thoughts, feelings, and perspective, allowing them to share their feelings and thoughts with the audience. It is a powerful way to convey emotions and feelings, and can provide insight into a character’s psyche. To write a successful monologue, it is essential to determine its goal, thoroughly explore the character, determine its audience, hook listeners with a powerful beginning, communicate using storytelling techniques, end on a strong note, and revise. A well-written monologue can not only provide insight into a character’s psyche but also entertain readers or listeners.
How to format an internal monologue?
It is recommended that dialogue tags be used without quotation marks in order to present the interior monologue of the main character in a straightforward manner.
How do you create an inner monologue?
Regular exercise and reinforcement are essential for strengthening our inner monologue, similar to a muscle. Daily practices like journaling positive affirmations, setting intentions, and visualizing success can help build a resilient and empowering inner monologue. Mastering this inner monologue allows us to navigate challenges, embrace opportunities, and shape our reality in alignment with our true potential. The Be The Lead Planner can help build this strength daily, allowing us to become the lead character in our lives.
What is an example of an internal monologue?
Internal monologues can be used to convey emotions and thoughts in various situations. For instance, in a shop, one might decide to avoid a hardback book with gold foil edges, but it would look great on their coffee table and impress guests. This can be a reflection of a person’s tendency to dither and be easily enticed into making impulsive purchases. In writing, it is important to share the protagonist’s inner thoughts and feelings to evoke empathy from readers.
What are the 3 types of monologue?
A monologue in drama can be classified in a number of ways, including as a soloquy, dramatic monologue, operational monologue, comic monologue, or monologuing.
What are the 4 types of monologue?
A monologue in drama can be classified in a number of ways, including as a soloquy, dramatic monologue, operational monologue, comic monologue, or monologuing.
📹 How to Format Internal Narrative and Thoughts
… questions we’ve gotten is this specific and sometimes tricky bit of formatting: how do you write and format internal thoughts?
Hi Brandon, thanks for posting this informative, concise article. When writing direct thoughts in a fictional novel: do you think they should always start with a capital letter? I agree that they should be written in italics, but I’m also interested in the punctuation rules directly before the thought is written. Is it just the same conventional rules e.g. a comma, period or semicolon? Specifically, can a thought be written with no punctuation before it?
What a fab article, succinct and informative! While I see the appeal of using italics for inner voice, I’ve always felt that using it restricts you from being able to add emphasis to certain non-speech words by italicising them, as then you risk the reader thinking that random words are actually thoughts.
I had an idea that my character would be cursed and cant speak out loud or it causes him pain until he finds a way to fix it. That would leave me using a lot of direct thoughts talking to himself in a way. Would lots of italics be annoying or should I use tags like he thought at the end instead of italics.
You’ve found a terrific niche, Brandon. Short, insightful, and immediately actionable. There’s a role for the longer theory pieces out there, but you stuff is extremely helpful. I don’t know anything about YouTube, but if there were a way for you to catalogue or index these to be searchable by subject, that would be even more helpful.
Hi Brandon would you ever consider doing test readings for your viewers? I’m just talking about like the first two chapters of my book. I’m talking about on the the side not for articles. Your input would be fantastic to know if my writing is actually good or if I need to improve. I’m not looking for like an editor or anything just a basic is it good or not. It’s very hard to get real readers that provide valuable feedback, but you would be able to give realistic writing advice when it comes to that.
Could this also apply to a character talking to themselves? How could you make a self talkative character without it seeming cheesy, brash, inhuman or unnecessary? And would this be a good way to explain their inner thoughts in a 3rd-person type way? I genuinely love your content and your teaching style, extremely helpful
Is the following crap? The over protective daughter has just gotten home from mom’s company party where her attractive mother has met a too attractive guy… “When we got home from the party, my Lil’ Sis was in such a sweet and happy mood that I hated to ruin it. Besides, I was pretty sleepy myself and, if I was going to argue with her, I needed to be thinking straight. As it was, I really had no idea what to do. My usual insulting, tough-guy act had failed to scare the enemy away. It was also obvious that Sarah really liked this dufuss. I needed a plan..”
Hello. What about a main character that is an overthinker? I think internal dialogue can be used to do exposition. I think about explanations all the time. I think than whereas “As you and I know, Bob…” is not bealivable, explaining something to oneself, even if one already knowns it, happens all the time.
4:01 I love that there’s a example given but I must say repeating “why is there blood on my floor” when we’ve just established there’s blood on the floor we should be able to CUT it to “Sara entered the kitchen and found bloodstains on the floor. I must be seeing things(use a font)” Edit: let my dumb ass be a education in typing before you see the rest of the vid 😂5:13
Having finally decided to write my first novel, I have found Brandon’s articles to be excellent. His use of examples are terrific and his enthusiasm for writing and his encouragement for all writers is most evident. Desperate in his research for tips on how to write a good story, Bob stumbled across McNulty’s articles in a random web search. (The following direct thoughts should be in italics…) This stuff is gold! Now I am SURE to become a bestselling author!
Direct and indirect thoughts. Now I know terms to search for to read on the subject. My challenge is I cannot use italics. In my first-person memoirs, I struggle going to direct thoughts and back smoothly. I can’t understand why sometimes it works, and other times it fails. Thanks for an informative article.
I write in first person and I use direct thoughts very often. I do not italicize them though. I do however make very conscious use of spacing and the thoughts are often used to convey an opposing message to the narration to give readers at least two different interpretations of what could be happening.
I was wondering how to do inner dialogue/monologue in the context of film and TV. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the anime Death Note, for example, is probably around 50% inner monologues going through the characters’ thought processes. This is because the characters are involved in a cerebral game of cat-and-mouse, so it’s crucial the audience knows what each characters’ plans are to drive the tension. I’m just not sure how well something like that would translate over to a voice over and close up of the character’s eyes, for instance, in live action lol. I haven’t been able to find too many examples of it being done, outside of old film noir here and there. Is this something you could shed some light on, or is film a bit out of your wheelhouse? Thanks for reading in advance, if you did.
This is great. I have a place where I’m going to use some internal dialogue and you’re pointing out the difference between direct and indirect internal dialogue will be very useful for the scene. In the late 19th century, My 18 year old main character is meeting with a 40 year old male authority figure in his office with no one else present. She offers to make tea for the both of them, as he has the means for her to do so there in his office. She serves him his tea and the two of them sit and she bluntly confronts him about his morally reprehensible behavior and indicates how she is going to see to it that he’s prevented from behaving that way ever again. She takes a sip of tea as he stands, loudly verbally attacks her and pick up an item from his desk and throws it against the wall. My protagonist will then express indirect dialogue to the reader indicating she had anticipated such a reaction, and she will take another sip of tea as the heavy item slams against the wall of his office. This will be much better than her simply expressing a direct internal dialogue to the reader.
Before perusal this article, I watched one on the same subject where the guy never used italics to distinguish direct internal monologue and recommended putting internal dialogue in every chapter which I think is over doing it. Your article is much better. It makes sense to use italics to distinguish thought from external dialogue and of course not using italics for indirect thoughts. So, a thumbs up for this article.
Great tips. To me writing direct thoughts (especially fiction) allows us that intimacy with our characters we can never get with real people. For example I can never tell what a family member is thinking, I can only go by the spoken dialogue and I can’t get inside his or her head. However, with a character, that rule no longer applies and I can know his or her thoughts, feelings and opinions on different topics.
I wrote a story in close third (When the Wood Is Dry), and mostly used the seamless method. But, at times, especially when thoughts drifted into prayer or self-talk, it seemed more natural and impactful to change to first person, present tense, which I put in italics. These moments are something between conversation and thought. When people observe things at a certain level, it works to just write it in third person, but when the character is talking to himself, it just doesn’t seem natural, especially when praying. Because it seemed so unnatural to write inner thoughts in third person, I drafted them in first person then converted them to third. This trick helped me to really place myself in the place of each character, and get the narrative very close. When converting the inner thoughts, some just seemed not to work as well in third person. Consider this inner thought from me story: They think I’m a whore. If I put this in third person, past tense, it would be: They thought she was a whore. I felt first-person present in italics made this kind of line more impactful. It just seems so much more distant in third person, past tense. I took the risk that this flipping of tense and person would not be disorienting or jarring, though this particular line is meant to be a bit jarring. If you are interested in how this method works in context, the EBook for “When the Wood Is Dry” is free, so look it up and check it out. See what you think…
The first method is known as ‘free indirect style’ and was pioneered in the 19th century. I only use the second tow methods when the character is ‘saying’ something in first person inside their head (and the narrative itself is not first person). The first method is more appropriate for literary fiction, whereas the second, and especially the third are more common in genre fiction, where the focus is on serving things up more blatantly to the reader/making their experience as straightforward and ‘easy’ as possible. Punctuation and formatting tricks help in this regard, whereas LitFic authors tend to disdain them, often to an extreme degree (*cough* Cormac McCarthy). The last method in particular would not fly with a LitFic editor/publisher. That said, my favourite book of all time (which would probably be considered upmarket women’s fiction in modern terms) uses it, so I do too.
Interesting thoughts. I’ve got a story about an alcoholic, and I attempt to highlight his isolation by keeping a far psychic distance. The italics I use there, then, are probably appropriate. However, in other third-person POV stories, I attempt to get up close and personal with the protagonist. So, I probably should review my use of italics and occasional tags in those cases. Often, my characters have thoughts that don’t align with what they are saying while conversing with another character. I’m concerned that it may become unclear and confusing if the POV character’s thoughts are not specifically called out as such. I’ll give it a try and see what happens.
For a character that is slowly losing his/her mind I like to italicize the voice inside their head, but more like it’s the devil on their shoulder. Maybe it’s an artistic choice. 🤷♂️ However, for internal thoughts, I just write it like normal first person narration and never put “I think to myself.” That should already be a given since it’s first person narration yet I’ve seen it done numerous times.
Hi Shaelin, could you run an idiots guide to using the Reedsy editing app step by step. I don’t know that much about editing, I’ve watched your vlogs on editing and the different types of editing there is but I would like to know how to actually use these tools. Many thanks – yours in scribble Terry.
I use the first method but add italic every so often judiciously to remind the reader of important internal thoughts, or what is primary info outside of ground narrative. Long internal dialogues can be broken up this way as well. Mostly, written well,internal need not be tagged at all. Tolkien mixes things up. In the Hobbit, he does it as an omniscient narrator close to the MC of the scene, but he will head-hop thoughts occasionally (Very well done, I might add) when it matters to move forward or build interest. He delineates with paragraph changes. His method is seamless while breaking conventions and it reads like third person. Good job on this BTW
When I wrote in first-person present tense, and got to narrative pieces that went very quickly (i.e. action pieces), it seemed that internal thoughts could sometimes jumble with descriptions of what was being perceived to the point of it being confusing. When these jumblings happened, I preferred to use italics for internal thoughts, unless I wanted to leave the distinction between thought and perception vague on purpose. Also, because body language and action go hand-in-hand with dialogue and these are almost never italicized, I sometimes preferred to italicize the narrator’s thoughts when they jump in during/between pieces of dialogue, as some of those times the thoughts felt jarring when left written normally. Just my two cents.
Stories can be both character-driven and plot-driven, and some moments are more one than the other. Using method one seems to help sometimes when we want the passage to be more plot-driven because it focuses less on the character and more on the plot, and using method two seems to help sometimes when we want to passage to be more character-driven, because it draws attention to the character and away from the plot. Method three is also known as free indirect style. It seems to me the only time this really is useful is when a character is essentially interacting with another character, and they have a thought that they don’t want to express out loud that the reader still would benefit from knowing. Especially if the thought is emotional. A great example of this is Clarice Starling’s reactions to the prison warden in The Silence of the Lambs. She’s courteous to the warden, but underneath we can see that she’s seething and thinks she’s being treated badly. When used like this, this method seems to work. It also works for emotional thoughts in internal monologue. It also can make third person work a little bit more like first person, because we can clearly see the character having thoughts rather than being told they are having thoughts by the narrator. So the three methods can all be used in the same story. But it’s best to pick your spots. In other words, I wouldn’t recommend randomly switching from one method to another for no particular reason. But you can have reasons that make sense that allow you to switch between the three methods, such as those reasons stated above.
I write in 1st and in 3rd person, and I use mostly the first method. Sporadically the second, and then less for clarity and more for aesthetic reasons (the melody or the look of the sentence or paragraph). As for using italics for thoughts, I think it tends to make the narrative too self-conscious and heavy.
Vindication! I had been out of the writing loop for awhile. I joined a new writing group & suddenly half my story needed to be in italics because the main character was thinking. Which is something I rarely see in the traditionally published books by nytimes list authors. I’m thrilled to hear that I wasn’t doing it wrong. 🙂
Great educational article! Much thanks. I have a question however. I’ve written a novel in third-person limited, with each chapter being told from a different character’s POV. Would you recommend the first method (seamless), or the second method (filtered)? It’s currently written in the second, and some of my beta readers have noted that technically, books need have a distinction between narration (even if it’s third-person limited), and inner thoughts. Is this true? Everyone says the novel reads smoothly and is understandable; they are just giving me English writing technical notes. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Happy to give examples if need be.
I’m hoping someone can help me with an internal thought issue that has me stymied. I’m writing my first novel, and am unsure if an author is expected to say a character thought (or equivalent) when the character’s thoughts go on for multiple sentences. If a whole paragraph is nothing but their thoughts, would thought need to be used only once? I do plan on using italics for the actual thoughts themselves. Making this up, but a for instance: Version 1 Ms. Dagorshire is going to be furious at me for losing her cat while she was away thought Constance. Maybe I can skip town or take on a new identity; nah, if I know Ms. Dagorshire, there is nowhere I can hide if something happened to her precious snowflake because of me. Or would it be necessary to use thought or another similar word for the second sentence, since thought was used in the first sentence? Version 2 Ms. Dagorshire is going to be furious at me for losing her cat while she was away thought Constance. Maybe I can skip town or take on a new identity; nah, if I know Ms. Dagorshire, there is nowhere I can hide if something happened to her precious snowflake because of me mused Constance.
After over fifteen years of studying interior monologue (or whatever you call it) and doing my own novel writing, I was surprised to find that I agreed with everything you said. I read a wide variety of authors of multiple genres–past and present–and I’ve found seamless preferable. Common interior monologue markers in limited third-person perspective narration are questions, and short incomplete sentences which are often only one or two words long. A question, or a one or two word long sentence, ought not be interpreted as the hidden narrator at work, but seen as the thoughts of the single POV character. —
Thank you for this! After perusal this article, I realized that I am already writing in a seamless format. I questioned it because I have seen the filtered format used and recently the direct format used. I am not a fan of the direct format with the use of italics. I will say the italics of internalized monologue can be confusing. I am already having to clear the confusion for my students in a novel we are currently reading. Meanwhile the direct format is just redundant!
So what do you think about this situation: my narrator is quite close to the pov character and so most of the thoughts are seamlessly incorporated. However sometimes I have an internal voice that directly addresses the pov character: You this or that. Now I’m wondering 1) whether that is at odds with 3rd person narration and 2) if that’s confusing to have most thoughts seamless but then these occasional direct internal voices
I am writing my book ( a fantasy) where the author of a book is magically summoned into her book by her protagonist. She shares the body with her but no one on the outside can hear her main character but her. Ive been struggling to know how to format this tbh. I think i may try and use italics for the books protagonist and the filtered for the my protagonist whilst they are talking and just have my protagonists thought in the text as seamless when they arent talking as the books protagonist is not aloway present. Is this good? Is it OTT?
I like the first method, but I ran into a case where the narrator wonders what the character must do. So the line is “what must she do now?” I can’t figure out a way to put it in past tense, and I hate adding the “she thought” tag. I hate the italic too because I lose the format when I copy from one app to the other, which I tend to do when asking for feedback from beta readers. So I’m stuck.
I try to use the first one as much as possible, but I came to this article because, in the story that I’m working on right now, I want to make the reader feel as if they were right next to the character, like they are following them but they are not “them”. Is it okay if I keep going with the seamless method?
thank you for the clarity. I’ve been writing a memoir and had little need for dialogue but i started writing a novel at the same time. My thinking is that if i get stuck on one, i can work on the other while i let my thoughts develop. Grammar has never been my forte and suddenly i’m faced with having to write tons of dialogue. When i read, dialogue often flows seamlessly and i’ve never taken note of how it is written because my focus has been on the story. This article has been of tremendous help. Thank you