[00:13] Emily: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:19] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:21] Rachel: And today we want to talk about character thoughts. We use the term internal processing a lot, but we're going to talk about whether character thoughts are showing or telling. This is a common debate. I don't know if it's that dramatic. It is a common question. I think we see pushback. Pushback. We get pushback. Yeah, pushback. What's the deal? Is it telling or is it showing to put a character's thoughts onto the page? That's what we're going to talk about.
[00:53] Emily: That is what we're going to talk about. So before we jump in, this is our third show episode in a row, which is so funny. We've done 50 episodes and we have not talked about show until like this month, which is crazy to me. But if you can't tell, it's one of our favorite topics because we've been talking about it for weeks. Yes, and we're going to talking about it for several more weeks because we are teaching the show don't tell demystified workshop. It starts on February 25. It is three days over two weekends, 2 hours apiece. And it's going to be so juicy, you guys. We're going to talk about what showing actually is, what it really means, how to tell if you're doing it right. And we're just going to break through all the confusion about what this writing advice really means. So that you have actionable tools in your toolkit that you can bring to the page to just write more immersively so that your readers can see and feel and taste and experience your story with you.
[01:54] Rachel: Yes, you're going to hook them, as we have joked about in past episodes. Hook them and immerse them. But you're going to gain so many skills that you need to write, like really gripping prose. Just grab hold of those readers and don't let them go. So we have mixture of presentation, analysis, guided visualization, practicing of skills, and then professional feedback on an excerpt from your own work, which is pretty awesome.
[02:26] Emily: Yeah, super awesome.
[02:28] Rachel: Go ahead and enroll now to get it on your calendar. Wipe up. The link is in the show notes so you can learn more. Take a look at what's going on and all the different stuff we're going to be talking about. So again, the link is in the show notes. Go there right now and I hope to see you enroll.
[02:46] Emily: And just so that people are. It's going to be live. And it's going to be so fun to show up live because we're going to workshop together. But if you cannot attend one of the three days or whatever, it's totally fine. There's going to be recordings, so don't let that hold you up because it's going to be juicy. Whether you come to all three or you can't come to any of them, you're going to level up so hard, and you're still going to have the opportunity for professional feedback even if you can't come live. So definitely go check it out, even if that's one of your worries.
[03:14] Rachel: Awesome.
[03:15] Emily: All right, let's dive into the episode.
[03:17] Rachel: Let's dive in. So when we say internal processing or character thoughts, what are we talking about? I'll start and then you pop in. Sure. Okay, cool. Do it. Character thoughts is basically just putting on the page what your character is thinking as they are thinking it. So you literally will see a character has an internal question. They're thinking aloud, but it's not allowed. It's on the page. We have also seen the term interiority, which is basically the same thing. We just usually call it internal processing. So if you've seen that term around, same thing that we're talking about here, interiority, internal processing. Whatever is going through your character's head, it's putting that onto the page so the reader can also see what is going on inside your character's head.
[04:14] Emily: Yeah. Which is so important because as we've talked about in the last couple of weeks, and if you haven't listened to those, you definitely should. Showing is all about meaning. It's about showing the emotion behind the actions and the things that are happening on the page. And the emotions are tied to how your character feels about what's happening on the page. And if we don't have access to their thoughts, we don't really know with nuanced specificity why they're feeling the way that they're feeling. We might get, like, there's body sensations and reactions that people can have physically, but having their thoughts gives the meaning to those physical reactions.
[04:55] Rachel: Right.
[04:56] Emily: The meaning behind them.
[04:57] Rachel: Yes. So I want to call attention to an episode we've done previously, which is episode 35 on reaction progressions, which also talks about internal processing, like framing it as, how do we put a character's reaction on the page? Because one of the things that we mentioned in that episode is when you might intentionally choose not to put character thoughts on the page. But I want to be clear that most of the time. That's a choice that you're doing to serve a purpose, in my opinion, kind of the default. The standard prose approach is to include these thoughts on the page. So the reason I bring that up, I would highly recommend go listening to that episode because it could actually be a very effective choice on your part to convey a particular message or to show a particular reaction if you were to withhold character thoughts. But that's not our default. Our default is to use character thoughts, to use internal processing to show meaning, because that's what hooks us. That's what makes us empathize with characters, because we can see the thoughts that they're having. We can understand what they think is going on, what they feel about the world around them, how they're responding to stimuli. And that makes the reader feel the same way, or at least empathize and understand where a character is coming from. And that's how we buy into their story. Whether I'm not talking about agreeing with the character, lots of times we read a character's thoughts and we're like, you are so stupid. But you see where they're coming from and you buy in. You buy into their story because you have to see, are their thoughts going to change? What are they going to do?
[06:45] Emily: Yeah, we call it processing for a very specific reason. Like, interiority is helpful. But I think the term internal processing is more specific in that what we're really getting at with a character's thoughts is their processing of what is happening around them.
[07:01] Rachel: Right.
[07:01] Emily: Because every individual person, based on your background or your memories or your current state of mind, is going to react differently and process what's happening in the external world differently. And so the only way to really reveal that to your reader is to show us what's going on in their head. And I think, personally, this is why I love reading so much. This is why I love fiction. Because you don't get this on the screen, right? You can't get this in a movie or in a tv show because we don't have access to their head most of the time. Unless you have one of those weird, like, I'm going to my thoughts over.
[07:38] Rachel: Like, a voiceover, which everybody. It always is awkward. It always feels weird. You're like, why? I just picked, like, bella Swan worst. There's not much going on in the head anyway.
[07:54] Emily: Well, there's a lot happening on the page of the toilet in the book say that. But this is why we love to read is because we love to see the internal experience of somebody else that's what it is. So is it tell?
[08:13] Rachel: I don't think so. No, me neither. We see this thought, and here's why I think it's a valid question, is because if you're thinking about thoughts as just, oh, I have to let my reader know what a character is thinking. But you're not framing it as like, this is how they're processing what is currently in front of them and how they think and feel. Like, the tell version is when a character is like, walking around a room and like, I'm thirsty, I need a sandwich. No, we don't really care about that. But if you have the thoughts of like, oh, my God, that is the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my entire life. But I also know that I hate them because they are publishing like, hark.
[09:00] Emily: Back to episode, whatever.
[09:01] Rachel: We're going to go back to the Emily Henry excerpt from book lovers. But the relevance is what makes it show when it is just, I need to have a thought on the page because I need to know what my character is thinking. And you're just kind of putting, like, a random thought there. That is not what we're talking about. We use the processing to show the relevance, to show the meaning, to show the character feeling and thinking through what they're going through. And I have seen the argument that doing that is telling the reader how to feel.
[09:42] Emily: But that's a point you want. You're showing them how to feel.
[09:45] Rachel: You're showing them how to feel. But I also think that that's what we need to, like I was saying earlier, to buy into a character's story. But your reader is also not, like an idiot, where they can't recognize when a character is, for lack of a better term, right or wrong. It doesn't remove a reader's agency to put a character's thoughts and emotions on the page. We want to make the reader feel and empathize, but we're not telling a reader, you should completely agree with this character. We're just trying to forge a connection between the two.
[10:25] Emily: Yeah. There's two other ways where I think that this can verge into tell, and that's why we get this pushback a lot. So one of the ways is when you're telling the reader what a character is thinking instead of showing it, right. So saying, like, oh, I feel so mad right now.
[10:41] Rachel: Yeah, right.
[10:42] Emily: Versus like, oh, my God, how dare he do that? I can't even believe that this is happening right now.
[10:48] Rachel: Right.
[10:48] Emily: So it's like, in how you write it can be like, is that really the thought, or are you telling us in his head? Sometimes I'll see people be like, oh, I thought about what I was going to do next that's on the page. Or he thought through what he was going to say. It's like, well, don't tell me that. Show me how is he thinking through what he's going to say? So I do think sometimes those habits can slip through. I also think it becomes tell when you're giving the reader information that the character would not normally be thinking or just wouldn't naturally be thinking about in the moment. And sometimes that's necessary. And that veers into exposition, which we're going to talk about, that there's a show tell Spectrum, right, where you can show using tell language and tell using show language. And we're going to break that down in the course or in the workshop that's coming up. But when you're having a character kind of who's in a deep moment, let's just say they're in an argument with someone and then they give you world building information, right? It's like, oh, well, this is how they're flying. The thing right now that becomes tell because it's thoughts that the character, especially if it's like first person, where they're like, well, I learned how to use this in flight school. And they start going down this rabbit hole. This is a dramatic explanation or example, but they wouldn't be thinking about how they're flying the plane while they're in an argument with someone, right?
[12:20] Rachel: They're going to be thinking about the.
[12:21] Emily: Argument, and the flying is going to be second nature. And so that's where it can become tell, too, is when you use what feels like internal thoughts to give the reader information that's not important in the moment, or that the character wouldn't be thinking about in the moment. That's not show either.
[12:37] Rachel: Yeah, I'm thinking of, like, just coming up with something on the fly. If you were to write, I worried what this would do for our relationship. You can switch that and just have this character think the question, what would this do to our relationship? What am I going to do about this? How is this going to affect us? You can just change the wording. Instead of being like, I worried. Instead have the character literally think a question, what on earth is going to happen if our relationship falls apart? Where's it going to leave me? And have them go through that processing that thinking pattern rather than just stating like you said, or have thinking, oh.
[13:26] Emily: Gosh, if this happens, what's going to happen to our relationship? Well, if this happens, if he does this, then this is going to happen, and then that will happen, and then I'll be dead.
[13:35] Rachel: I don't know, but you can show us.
[13:37] Emily: Instead of being like, my thoughts spiraled. Give us the spiral. I want to live it.
[13:41] Rachel: Yeah, let us live it. So to summarize, there's a tell way to do this which can feel very stagnant, which can feel very disorienting or unengaging. And then there's the show, which includes the relevance and the meaning and the on the page thinking going through, like, what am I experiencing? What do I think about it? And a should we do our example?
[14:12] Emily: Yeah, I'll read the example, and then we'll give you guys some questions to consider as you're writing to guide you through this. So this example is from the way of kings by Brandon Sanderson. It is a wonderful epic fantasy. I love it. But this is, our main character's name is Kaladin, and he's in a cart with a bunch of slaves. He's been imprisoned and he's being taken somewhere, and so it's a very inactive scene in the sense that he's in a cart and there's not a lot of external stuff going on, but there's a lot of internal stuff going on. So I'm going to read it without the internal processing first, and then I'll read it with the internal processing so you can see the difference. Okay. So why don't you fight? The spren asked. Oh yeah, context.
[15:01] Rachel: There's like a little fairy.
[15:04] Emily: For lack.
[15:05] Rachel: Of a better word.
[15:06] Emily: She's like a tinkerbell fairy. That's what called a spring. And she is like flying around him, bothering him while he's sitting in the slave cart.
[15:14] Rachel: He just wants to be alone. And she's like, I love her. Leave me alone.
[15:20] Emily: Okay, so why don't you fight? The spren asked, flitting down to rest on his legs, looking up at his face. She had no weight that he could feel. I can't fight, he said softly. You did before. He closed his eyes and rested his head forward against the bars. I'm so tired. You've been tired before. I've failed spirit, he replied, squeezing his eyes shut. Must you torment me so? Some of the slaves nearby muttered. Okay, so I feel like we can picture this. I mean, I gave him context that he's in the slave, but we can kind of picture she's flying around him, he's resting his head against the bars. We can see the scene, but it doesn't have any meaning.
[15:58] Rachel: Like he's tired.
[15:59] Emily: So what, right?
[16:01] Rachel: She's bothering him.
[16:02] Emily: So what?
[16:03] Rachel: Yeah, and he's failed. So what? What does that mean? What have you failed at? Why is this a torment for her to be like you should be fighting, and he's like, man, I'm too.
[16:16] Emily: So okay, so here's the same excerpt with the internal processing woven in. So why don't you fight? The spren asked, flitting down to rest on his legs, looking up at his face. She had no weight that he could feel. I can't fight, he said softly. You did before. He closed his eyes and rested his head forward against the bars. I'm so tired. He didn't mean the physical fatigue, though. Eight months eating leftovers had stolen much of the lean strength he'd cultivated while at war. He felt tired even when he got enough sleep, even on those rare days when he wasn't cold, hungry, cold, or stiff from a beating. So tired. You've been tired before. I've failed spirit, he replied, squeezing his eyes shut. Must you torment me so? They were all dead, sen and Dalit, and before that, tukes and the takers. Before that tien, before that, blood on his hands and the corpse of a young girl with pale skin. Some of the slaves nearby muttered, likely thinking he was mad for talking to a sprin. Was he mad? Perhaps he should wish for that madness was an escape from the pain. Instead, it terrified him.
[17:22] Rachel: So good, right?
[17:24] Emily: So there is so much more emotion on the page, just those lines of interiority. Like he is depressed. He's depressed and he can't fully express it. And that's why I love this example. It's like he doesn't say, oh, I feel depressed, right?
[17:38] Rachel: Exactly.
[17:39] Emily: He doesn't even know that he's depressed. His thoughts show us and make us feel that depression with him, through his guilt for people's deaths, through his extreme tiredness and his inability to move forward and his desire to be mad because it would feel like freedom. It's so good.
[17:59] Rachel: So just.
[18:00] Emily: That's an example. Go look at your favorite books. Look at the lines of interiority that you'll see on the page, and you'll see they bring so much meaning to what's happening in what I there's two.
[18:12] Rachel: Things that I specifically love about this one with Kaladin and what I love about the juxtaposition of with and without internal processing. It's because when you first read it and we heard I'm so tired. And he's resting his hat against the bars. The first reaction that I got was physical tired. Like he's exhausted. He's in a cart. Knowing that context, he's tired. But then you hear the interiority, you hear the internal processing, and he calls out, it's not just physical. He is mentally exhausted. He is tired of fighting. Like his entire existence is just ready to give up. That's the vibes it gets. It's not just the physicalness of being tired, it's the mentality of being ready to give up. And then the second part is when he says, must you torment me? And then he goes into, they were all dead. And we get these names of people that we don't yet know who they are or what it is, but you still get the pain. You get the pain of that. And it's not just like, must you torment me? In the sense of she's annoying and bothering him. It's must you physically mentally torment me? Because he's a reminder. Yeah. So much more meaning, so much more, as you said, emotion. But without it, you get a different take. I think that's what I love so much about this excerpt is because if you didn't have the internal processing on here, a reader could misunderstand what he's thinking and feeling and why this matters deeply. That's why we need it so that we feel him. We feel as he feels. Even if we can't fully understand the context, we still are getting. Like, this is a guy at the brink.
[20:06] Emily: He's heavy with depression. Yeah, absolutely. And guilt and shame. Yeah, it's all right there in like 200 words.
[20:16] Rachel: Yeah.
[20:16] Emily: And I think that's so important if we don't have this on the page, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where people say, well, I don't want to tell the reader how to feel.
[20:25] Rachel: Right.
[20:25] Emily: Well, if we don't tell the reader how to feel in this moment, they're going to misinterpret it like you just said, and just think, oh, he's physically tired because he's a slave and this sprint is bothering him.
[20:33] Rachel: Right.
[20:34] Emily: And they miss the real meaning of why he's saying what he's saying and doing what he's doing and how he's processing his situation. So it is not hell, it is show.
[20:48] Rachel: This is why we care about like, it's because we're getting this stuff. This is why we care about his journey and why even from this little glimpse you can see, his story is probably about learning how to fight again, I think you get so much about who he is by having just this one excerpt and just those few thoughts, and it sets up like, what can we expect from Kaladin?
[21:15] Emily: Yeah, it's so good.
[21:17] Rachel: Yeah. Cool things to think about as you're trying to weave this into. Read them to us. Tell me. So the first thing I want you to think about is as your character is experiencing something. And remember, you can circle back to episode 35 as well. But as your character is experiencing something, what does the character believe or assume about what's happening around them? So when you ask yourself this question, this can help you guide their actual processing. What do they think is happening? How are they going through that? And we all do this. We all process as we experience things. So what do they believe or assume? Because that sets you up for how they are going to process this stimuli that they are experiencing. Second question is, what do they want to believe and assume about what's happening? Are they being honest with themselves? This is a fun thing to play with because a lot of the times we expect things to happen that don't really happen that way, and sometimes we are not honest with ourselves about the way things are happening. So this puts us deeply inside that character's head as they experience something. And this is what becomes super fun when you have multiple povs, because different characters may believe or assume or want completely different things from one another. So even if they're standing in the same room, they may be processing a stimuli like completely differently. That's really fun to put on the page. So what do they want to believe, assume about what's happening? Are they being honest with themselves? And then the last couple of questions to think about is, why is your character doing what they're doing? Get like, as specific as possible with this. Exactly. Why are they doing what they're doing? And does that reason differ from maybe what other characters are going to assume? Are they being honest with themselves about why this is getting deep into maybe their goals, their fears, what they care about? Because that gives you their specific lens, that gives you exactly what matters to them and the meaning that they draw from it. Why are they thinking the things that they're thinking? What are they expecting to happen? What's going through their head as the character in front of them says a piece of dialogue, or reveals a plot device, or tells them, I love you, what's going through? And are they being honest with themselves about why they're doing what they're doing?
[24:12] Emily: Awesome.
[24:13] Rachel: Cool.
[24:14] Emily: So summary internal thoughts are not tell.
[24:19] Rachel: They are show they are one of.
[24:20] Emily: The most powerful tools that you can use to show. It's not the only tool you can use to show. And we are going to break down like eight other tools in our workshop as well as show you how to tell effectively because there are moments when you want to tell. And we're going to break down the three different levels of showing and how to use the tools in all of those levels. So it's going to be juicy.
[24:43] Rachel: Come hang out with us starts on.
[24:44] Emily: February 25 and you can find all the information about the workshop in the show notes.
[24:51] Rachel: Awesome show. Don't tell demystified. We're going to see you there, so swipe up right now and learn more.
[24:59] Emily: Bye it sweet. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[25:07] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character works. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[25:16] Emily: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
