Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Yesterday, I asked the ladies to post pieces of interior monologue from one of their male characters so we could give a little friendly advice on whether their guys are thinking like real guys.

Holly wrote:

Hunting for a monologue proved harder than I thought - most of what I found was blatant telling of emotion, and that’s got to go! Now I’m on a manuscript hunt to find and kill all descriptions of the emotion I’ve already showed (or haven’t showed yet).

What, by the way, constitutes a true monologue? Is it the POV character’s description of events, or action, or his feelings/thoughts? And when does monologue cease to be monologe and become telling, or vice versa? What is a good size for said monologue - can a monologue be only a couple sencences long or is that just a beat?

Randy sez: We’ve discussed interior monologue here on the blog a few months ago. It’s the thoughts that go through a character’s mind that the reader gets to peek in on. It can be shallow (summarizing what he’s thinking) or medium (telling what he’s thinking, but not exactly in his words) or deep (telling it EXACTLY the way he’s thinking it).

Yes, interior monologue is best done in short snippets. One or two sentences is fine. When you start going paragraphs at a time in interior monologue, you start losing readers unless you’re brilliant at it.

Camille posted this example:

A week later, Ian still had no idea what he was going to do about his trip and his obstinate grannie. He sat in the cottage kitchen again, staring at the telephone, hammering his brain for a solution. But all he could think of was their new minister running down the drive as fast as his bony legs would carry him, with Maggie on his heels, glinting blade in hand.

God, tell me again why I’m here?

He kept staring at the telephone as though the Almighty would ring with an answer. Maybe pounding his head against the wall would silence the nagging doubts—doubts about moving back here and trying to help a mule-headed old woman who battled him every step of the way.

But deep down, he already knew why. This was where God wanted him.

Randy sez: This is fine. I don’t get the idea that Ian’s a woman in man’s clothing here.

Donna posted this example from her historical novel:

I’ve known Christophe since we were young and he has been and remains my closest friend, the only one I told about the Houghtons. Even now I don’t think he fully understands my desire to find my heritage. He says that my heritage is the homestead and that if the Houghtons had had family anywhere in England that my birth mother would have insisted I be taken to them after her death instead of giving me to the Blays to raise as their own as well as giving them the farm. That point has confused me too but I can’t help the burning desire to find where they came from and whatever details I can gleen about them.

I can’t even answer as to why I kept travelling north, only that it was like some force calling me there. I can’t explain it except to say that it must have to do with Erandin. Whether or not that is where either had come from I still do not know. What I do know is that as soon as I arrived in Erandin, I felt as though I had been there before, even though I haven’t been. It was like stepping into one of the dreams I had as a child.

Randy sez: What I see here are a lot of longish sentences. These days, that’s more characteristic of women than men. I’m not sure if that’s true in the time period Donna’s writing for. Since the readers are going to be moderns, it might make sense to break these up some.

The other thing I noted was the word “desire.” That strikes me as a word that women are more likely to use than men. If someone says, “I desire that,” I’d bet odds of 3 to 1 that the speaker is a woman. It’s a minor point, but I think it shades the passage a bit “pink.” A modern guy would say, “I want that.”

The final point I’d like to make is this: “Use action verbs!” Men, on average, tend to be more proactive and forceful. Sure, there are lots who aren’t, but the manly guy goes out to kick butt. In the passage above, I’d say the guy wants to “dig up info,” not “glean details.”

Lynn posted this snippet:

Raktavio’s mind wandered over the past weeks, from the time he met Gratia, to the command to marry her, and then it lingered over the time in the dungeon of Selvz’ Temple at Ekentav. In the darkness of that dungeon, he discovered his loyalty to her was more than duty. Oh, she could gall him. The corner of his mouth lifted at the memory. Somehow, though, she had captured his heart.

Agh! He pounded his knees. He had done his duty to the King. Why had not the Mountain Lion protected them last night? Shaking his head, he stood up. This is not how a King’s Knight should act, let alone one titled Prince.

Randy sez: I see a couple verbs that could be stronger: “wandered” and “lingered.” These are not what I sometimes jokingly call “manly verbs.” Manly guys don’t wander and linger. They know where they’re going and they don’t mess around when they get there.

Pounding the knees is a good “manly” action. Overall, this passage is reasonably manly, but I think you can punch up a couple of verbs there.

Here was Lynda’s snippet:

He caught her wrist as she stood. “I’ve seen that guy—Ir—hanging around. Is he the problem?”

“Jae, I really need to go.”

He released her and watched her limp up the path. It was true. He placed his head in his hands. His heart ached. Bad.

Randy sez: I think that “caught” could be made a little more “manly.” Can he “grab” it? Or “snatch” it? And “placed” is a little weak too. Can he “clutch” his head?

We had a minor kitchen accident yesterday that tied me up for the evening. So my e-zine is now overdue and I’ve been trying all day to get caught up and I’m still behind. I finally decided I’ll just blog tonight and finish the durned e-zine tomorrow.

We’ve been talking about creating characters for the last week or so, and it’s about time to wrap up. I’d like to respond to a few of the comments that have been posted here that I haven’t yet answered yet:

Diane wrote:

I guess if I had a question about characters, it would be regarding the difference between internal voice and dialogue voice for any given character. If you have a character that was raised on the streets or in a slum and speaks with a lot of slang and bad grammar and the like, I’m assuming you don’t want to write the narrative that way when you’re in the character’s pov. I’ve also heard not to overdo slang and such, even in dialogue because it’s hard for the reader to pick through. Yet, how do you give such a character a voice if you can’t write the words the way he/she would think/say them? How do you differentiate between the country boy, the kid from the slums and the scholar?

Randy sez: Oh, you should definitely write the words the way your character says them. Just be sure you spell them correctly.

Jim Bob sez: Out here in the country, we writes ‘em the way we says ‘em, and that’s just a fact. But we still spells the varmints correct, because it ain’t right to make us look like a bunch of tom-fool hicks who can’t spell nothin’ right.

Yoda sez: Right it is to the words write right. Wrong it is to the words wrong spell. Twisted let your syntax be, but your spelling never.

Throckmorton B. Sniffleheimer XXIII sez: We of the Harvard school agree ontologically, epistemically, and nonadversarially with these uncouth, non-Harvard persons. It is of utmost importance that word choices and syntactic structuralist principles should play the principal role in enabling the predicated reader to deconstruct the regional proclivities of the characters, even those with unfortunate non-Harvard existential modalities.

Charlotte wrote:

One question: how do men deal with guilt, as a rule? Can it haunt them until it will not stay neatly in its compartment and spills out at inconvenient times?

Randy sez: As a rule, men don’t behave uniformly, any more than women do. You’ll find that, on average, men tend to be a bit less introspective than women, but there are plenty of guys who carry a heavy load of guilt, just as there are plenty of women who don’t give a flip about guilt. So write the character the way you want him to be, but keep him consistent.

D.E. Hale wrote:

Ok, my MC is also a male, but what I want to know is how do men think? It’s not often in the story that he actually sits still long enough to think about much of anything, but there is one part where he’s been imprisoned and therefore has a while to contemplate all that’s happened. Would a man think about all the bad things that have happened, or would he just ignore his feelings and concentrate on getting out of there? Sorry guys, but I KNOW you have feelings in there somewhere whether you show it or not. But how much thinking do you actually do about things bothering you?

Randy sez: Similar comments apply here. By the way, on average, men tend to do more “thinking” and less “feeling”. But that is an average tendency, and there are plenty of men who “feel” and women who “think”.

A useful tool to use in developing your characters is the Myers-Briggs profile. There are four axes:
Introvert vs Extravert
Intuitive vs Sensor
Thinker vs Feeler
Perceiver vs Judger

This leads to 16 different personality profiles. Men and women tend to be similar on three of these axes. About 2/3 of men are Thinkers and 1/3 are Feelers. About 2/3 of women are Feelers and 1/3 are Thinkers.

Camille wrote:

Maybe Randy would let a couple of us girls post a snippet of our male internal monologue and tell us what’s right & wrong about it. Subtle hint.

Randy sez: Good thing that was subtle or I’d have missed it. Yeah, sure, go ahead ladies! If you want to post a sample of male interior monologue, do so. But you should also tell us a little about your character, because there are all different kinds of men, and they don’t all think exactly alike.

I’m back in one piece from San Diego! Spent the weekend there going to a wedding and hanging out with relatives and reading some books.

While I was gone, I see that several of you kept talking about issues in character creation, and we still have a backlog of questions to deal with.

Lynn wrote:

If a person is dead, can you write about them in a fictional manner? I have a character in a WIP that I knew as a child but he is now dead - he is a minor character.

In another WIP that is mostly in my head right now, the historical characters are well known, related to my family through marriage, and my mother keeps telling me they were not well liked (although I don’t intend to portray them as unlikeable because I personally think they were heros with flaws). Do I need to ask their family permission to write about them? They lived 150 years ago.

Randy sez: Remember my standard caveat that I’m not a lawyer, so nothing I say should be construed as legal advice, yada, yada. My understanding is that you can’t libel a dead person, since the libel laws only apply to living people. However, if you put a dead person into your novel and it reflects badly on a family that still has live people in it, they might still go after you for invasion of privacy.

It’s also my understanding that public figures don’t have the same rights to privacy as ordinary people. For example, it’s probably a lot safer to put Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton in your novel than it is to put your next door neighbor or your mother or your cat.

Actually, amend that last statement. Your cat has no rights to privacy and can’t sue you for libel. So put the malicious little feline in and don’t worry. I put my cat Zephyr in my last novel, and he still likes me, as long as I feed him every 12 minutes.

Donna wrote:

I have a question that’s not exactly just character related. My WIP is an historical fiction and so I’ve been doing a lot of research on the places in that period, how people lived, what they wore, etc, and I’m wondering how to keep from getting burnt out on it all before I get to really writing the first draft. Being a freshman I sometimes wonder if I didn’t bite off more than I can chew with this story but it won’t leave my head.

For certain genres, such as fantasy, SF, and historical novels, your StoryWorld is essentially a character in your story, because it plays such an important role. In such genres, your StoryWorld has a backstory that you simply can’t expect your reader to know, so you have to supply it. Likewise, your StoryWorld has a personality composed of its politics, geography, religion, climate, and 1000 other things.

If you are writing historical novels, you are almost certainly a research puppy and will stop at nothing to learn every tiny detail. Do so. My rule of thumb is to learn 100 times as much as you need in order to write your novel. Then do your readers a favor and only tell them 1% of what you know. This leaves you room to write another 100 novels using the same research, so you get tremendous bang for your buck.

Koinseb wrote:

I used to do a bit of ventriloquism, and one my main methods of creating the character of my “partner” was to really “talk” with the puppet.

I would for example put the puppet on the passenger seat of my car while driving (don’t forget to buckle up!).
We could discuss all kinds of issues, for example how to deliver the punchline of a joke during our upcoming gig.
After the gig we might make fun of the annoying guy in the audience or just ordinary stuff like what we should have for dinner.

During those “conversations” the puppet often revealed new and sometimes unexpected characteristics.

Finally:
Make sure that nobody sees you talking to a puppet, they might just think you’re a lunatic….

Randy sez: This is a new idea to me, and it sounds great. Just be sure to capture it on tape. This is a lot like the practice many writers follow in writing up journal entries or interviews of their characters.

By the way, don’t worry about people thinking you’re crazy talking to a puppet. Just wear a cell phone headset and they’ll assume you’re on the phone. Of course, if you’re driving, other people might get mad at you for talking on the phone while you drive, which is a hazardous thing to do.

Lynda wrote:

I’m having problems coming up with different voices for my characters. The setting is planet Olim in a time far past. If I give them accents or colloquialisms, it sounds phony. Have I painted myself into a box? Help!

Randy sez: Avoid accents, always. This is true when writing regional dialects also. Many of us have suffered through reading thick dialect, such as in UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. It’s very hard to read. You can achieve the effect you want much more easily by word choices and syntactic constructs that are peculiar to the dialect. But spell the words correctly and save your reader from going crazy.

Diane wrote:

I guess if I had a question about characters, it would be regarding the difference between internal voice and dialogue voice for any given character. If you have a character that was raised on the streets or in a slum and speaks with a lot of slang and bad grammar and the like, I’m assuming you don’t want to write the narrative that way when you’re in the character’s pov. I’ve also heard not to overdo slang and such, even in dialogue because it’s hard for the reader to pick through. Yet, how do you give such a character a voice if you can’t write the words the way he/she would think/say them? How do you differentiate between the country boy, the kid from the slums and the scholar?

Randy sez: Right, you want to narrate events in normal English, but it’s OK to use word choices typical of your character. When it comes to interior monologue and dialogue, take the advice I gave above.

Here’s an example from my friend Athol Dickson’s book RIVER RISING, set in the deep south in 1927. The dialogue is between Jean Tibbits, (a white Cajun), and a “colored man” who’s just come up the river in his boat:

“Hey!” shouted Tibbits. “You can pull up yonder, you.”

The colored man called softly, “Thank you, sir,” and pushed toward the muddy bar Tibbits had indicated near the wharf.

“What kinda work you lookin’ to do?” hollered Tibbits across the little cove.

“Whatever needs doing.” The pirogue nosed up to the bar.

“Try de infirmary. They always lookin’ for a hand, they is.”

“Yes sir. Thank you kindly.” He was out of the boat now and tying it to a nearby mangrove branch. “Will my pirogue be all right here?”

“It a nickel a week.”

“I don’t have a nickel.”

“What you got?”

Athol has only a very few words misspelled here, but he captures the Cajun’s dialect with the small grammatical anomalies. The dialogue of the “colored man” uses no misspellings at all, nor even wrong grammar. Instead, Athol captures him with the repeated use of “sir” and “thank you kindly.” The reader’s mind fills in the rest and hears him as an African-American, circa 1927.