#indirect discourse

[bettsfic]

Hi betts! I was wondering if you had any advice for writing Feelings. I feel like my fic writing is often a lot of this happened then this happened and then this event happened. I want to make sure it feels like things are being told by my character and not just a robotic narrator reporting the events. I've been going through your writing advice tag but haven't found a super relevant post to this so thought I'd ask if you have any thoughts on injecting more Feelings into writing.

this is a great question! unfortunately it has a very Big answer.

i think it's important first to consider the greater historical context of prose. prose is a relatively new invention in the history of humanity. prior to prose, there was poetry, oral storytelling, playwriting, and what we would consider now to be nonfiction. the concept of written fiction is kind of miraculous. it allows us to perceive the nature of being another person, within the quiet of our own minds. in other words, prose allows us access to a consciousness outside of our own. a fictional story is thus one in which a given consciousness, translated into language, experiences events in a cause and effect sequence, which is called a narrative.

what you're talking about, injecting Feeling into fiction, is a concept that tends to invoke debate based on separate schools of aesthetic thought. i know writers who would read your ask and go, "uh, good? reporting events is what you're *supposed* to do." and i know writers who believe that the entire purpose of the form is simply to convey conscious thought, external events be damned. personally, although i respect the opinions of these writers, i think it's all kind of silly to think one kind of writing is better than another. it is, as all things are, a creative choice of the author. i, the reader, am only meant to bear witness to those choices.

visualize, if you will, a spectrum between these two schools of thought: the reporting of actions and external events, which we'll call exteriority, and the reporting of inner thoughts and feelings, which we'll call interiority. all fictional prose falls somewhere on this spectrum. on the exteriority side we have writers like william faulkner, cormac mccarthy, chuck palahniuk. on the interiority side, we have virginia woolf, henry james, garth greenwell, donna tartt.

this spectrum is one of narratorial access. how much access do we the reader have to the experiences of the narrator(s), and how accurate are those depictions? how much detail are we given? how are those details chosen and why?

the most exterior writing is what some call "cinematic." many people are in the exterior school of thought because they believe "show don't tell" to be literal. "show don't tell" is ridiculous for many reasons, the most obvious of which is that (when taken at face value) if i wanted to be shown something, i'd watch a movie. the real meaning of "show don't tell" is the idea you shouldn't tell the reader the conclusion they're supposed to be drawing from the events of the story. again, personally, i think it's baffling why anyone has an opinion on this, when the truth is that showing and telling is yet another spectrum and every story falls somewhere on it. to have opinions on these things would stifle my enjoyment as a reader and closes me off to discovering new things.

when the reader has the least possible access to the narrator, the events of the story can follow any character at any time, and detail only what can be seen from the outside. my favorite novel that does this is Plainsong by Kent Haruf. i once tried to write in this style and found it tedious and difficult, but i'm a very interior writer. nevertheless it was a good exercise for me, if for no other reason than it sharpened my understanding of my own style.

if you move the down the spectrum just a skosh toward interiority, you invite inner observations. these are largely sensory: what a character sees, hears, smells, etc. here's an example:

an exterior action would be, "the door slammed." an interior observation would be, "she heard the door slam."

i have heard many arguments as to why the latter is "weaker" writing. i've heard them called "filter phrases," and have even read an essay on why you should avoid them. which, again, ridiculous. it's far more important to know when and why you might deploy a "filter phrase" than to deny yourself use of a potentially necessary tool.

inner observations force the reader into the perception of the narrator. "the door slammed" is a fact. it can't be contested. the author is telling me this event occurred and i cannot dispute it or interpret it. "she heard the door slam" can be questioned. all we know is that she heard it; we have no evidence it really happened, only our trust in the narrator to convey events with accuracy, which is how we get the idea of an unreliable narrator.

let's move one notch closer to interiority. now we have inner reactions and opinions. exterior: "the door slammed. the woman stood up and locked it." now we have the opposite scenario to the one above. with an exterior action, we're given doubt. why did she lock it? we have to use context clues to determine motivation and emotion. interior: "she heard the door slam. in a rage, she stood up and locked it." the second sentence confirms for us that the door very likely did slam, and also tells us outright that she's mad at the person who slammed it.

the reader has to perform an equal amount of work for both of these scenarios. in the exterior example, they have to puzzle out the emotions and motivation of the character. in the interior example, they have to puzzle out the accuracy of events and reasonability of emotional response. both create different kinds of tension.

generally speaking, the closer we move toward interiority the less exteriority we have, because the external events of the story matter less than what the character thinks or feels about them. using our example above, an even more interior approach would be, "when she heard the door slam, she knew it was over. how had it come to this? he was no different than the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that. as she went to lock it, she vowed: never again."

since i don't have a full story drafted out, pretend "the one before that" are all examples of times this situation happened before, and so two actions, the door slamming and the woman getting up to lock it, might take ten thousand words to tell, to give us context as to why she's in a rage about it.

here's an example of nearly pure interiority from a novel i'm working on right now:

And the only logic that came to me was that everything was made up of the souls of the dead and the yet-living. It felt blasphemous—in Kinraden, the afterlife is unity in a place beyond limited human understanding. But I believed the opposite. I believed we all came from things and would return to things, and that everything, at its fabric, was the same as everything else. I was a toy truck rolling across a hardwood floor, and a sunflower opening up in the light, and a can of Campbell’s soup heated on the stove, and a pig headed to slaughter, and my father giving a sermon to an audience of people looking for answers in the wrong place, and everything has a soul and so everything suffers. And that suffering crushed me, not because it exists, but because it is eternal. Suffering is the base of everyone and everything. 

(i apologize for using my own writing as an example, but i tabbed over and this was the first paragraph i saw, and it was surprisingly relevant, even though i am 100% going to end up cutting it.)

i know there is no exteriority here because i can't tell you where his body even is while he's thinking these things. i also don't know when exactly this is happening. the physical existence of the scene and his body within it is irrelevant to the information being conveyed, which is a major life philosophy and how it differs from his father's. within one paragraph, he's building a kind of polemic that will hopefully allow the reader to understand exactly how he managed to defy his father's indoctrination.

even though there's no exteriority, though, there are still images present. toy truck, sunflower, can of soup, etc. and they create visuals to hang onto so that it still feels, in a way, exterior. those physical objects, however, are not actually physical, but metaphorical.

what's also important is that this is a super fucked up line of thought and builds the state of his emotional unreliability as a narrator. he's conveying the events of the story with relative accuracy but his logical and emotional responses to them are in constant conflict. (he needs lots of help, which he will get.)

there is kind of a default in fanfiction, particularly fanfiction based in visual mediums, to convey all information within a physical scene, i suspect to stay as close to the canon portrayal as possible, because film/tv are also sequences of scenes. when in scene (direct discourse), characters are always physically embodied in spaces, moving and doing and saying things, at a specific point in time. but, circling back to my initial point, prose does not have to be embodied. it's not film. you can be fully in the mind of a character and have no idea when or where they are existing, and merely recount the events from an unstated time, if any happen to be relevant (indirect discourse).

(side note: specifically direct and indirect discourse refer to dialogue but i'm using the terms more broadly. direct discourse: "i just want that sandwich, man," tommy said. indirect discourse: tommy said he really wanted a sandwich.)

even though i've talked at length about narratorial access as relevant to consciousness, i want to touch base again to the idea of Feelings. it's hard to convey feeling in fiction, because your only tools are brain and body. either your narrator expresses their feelings in thoughts, or they express them in the description of physical experiences. it's kind of a constant battle which path you choose, but i hope some of the above can help you decide.

so now that you know the broader theory around (Thoughts &) Feelings writing, here are some exercises you can try:

begin a story in direct discourse, present tense, the events of which can only be understood through prior context. (for example, two characters are having a heated argument with no explanation as to why.) then, through the POV character's narration, move into indirect discourse, past tense, to explain the events that led up to the argument.

find a story you've written in third person and rewrite all or part of it in first person. the trick here is to become as disembodied as possible. in fact, your approach can be that you're simply writing a monologue from the character's perspective, in their voice, with all their potential misunderstandings intact.

try swinging the opposite way: write a fully exterior story (the shorter the better). then go back and thread in internal observations. and then go through and add thoughts and opinions to the events that have occurred. and lastly, go through and add greater context and cognition to deepen our understanding of the external events.

whew. this was a lot. but i hope you found it helpful!

and because i am trying to be better about self promo, i'd like to mention here that i'm a freelance editor and writing coach, and also i have a newsletter with more thoughts on craft.

[cjjasp]

Transition scenes – direct dialogue vs. indirect speech #amwriting

Sometimes, writing is more about inspiration than anything else; other times, it is all about perspiration. We must work at it even when we are inspired, and our work is flowing. We all know the best stories have an arc of rising action flowing smoothly from scene to scene. Those changes are called transitions and are little connecting scenes. Conversations and indirect speech (thoughts,…

[etoilesbienne]

can i ask for the world people are living in where bbh doesn't face any consequences because purgatory was beatdown after beatdown where people made him suffer constantly sure he fought back a few times what do you expect but he definitely didn't "face no consequences" lol. qbbh is consistently characterized as a paranoid, worried man, who's priorities lie in saving the eggs.

tell me. do you think being constantly so paranoid after being hunted continuously for two weeks is no consequences! that cubito has severe anxiety if not outright ocd and that event was him constantly double checking everything and spiralling about every worst possible scenario. fuck man etoiles and roier murdered him repeatedly (& they were right to) what more consequences do you want? like what do you want here? like do you want him with no friends no one to talk to do you think thats good content to watch? what are we asking for him to pay with? he already lost all of his memories??

[letteredlettered]

idk why it bugs me so much but I'm getting really tired of the specific syntax/construction of a narrator using a conditional to say that the viewpoint character definitely did something but the viewpoint character doesn't want to dwell on it. Eg, things like: "And if Character A sometimes woke up calling Character B's name, there was no one to know but him," or "If Characters A and B have to occasionally soothe each other's nightmares, that's no one's business but their own."

You could say the problem is that it shouldn't be a conditional, because the viewpoint character is definitely doing that, but this is free indirect discourse. The whole point is that Character A is definitely calling B's name but doesn't want to have to face that head-on, so they are phrasing it to themselves, as the narrator, in this kind of cheeky way. They don't have to, as the narrator, admit that this is happening, they can just say if it was happening, this is how it would go.

But so often it's used when it actually should not be something the character should really have trouble admitting? And/or, so often the "then" part of the if/then is inconsequential; the writer wanted to use the "if" construction to suggest this is difficult for the viewpoint character to admit, but doesn't really have a good "then" consequence?

But mostly, I just find this construction overused and ineffective. I like free indirect discourse. Even more importantly, I love unreliable narrators who just cannot say for real what's happening. But this construction always feels like some cheap imitation of both of these concepts that rarely, if ever hits the mark.

And if I'm upset about it, well, that's my own problem.

[nuttysaladtree]

WWX's third-person limited this, MDZS narrator's third-person omniscient that, I don't even go to this school—where's my free indirect speech at?

[saewin]

The amount of people who say they don't do discourse then do discourse gets me every time.

I, on the other hand, know I'm a magpie for messes and therefore make no such promises.

[dudeshusband]

Title: Aw, C'mon

Ship: Mike x Bill Baker

Words: 970

Description: Mike is trying, and failing, to write an essay. Bill interrupts.

Mike spun their pen between their fingers. The ideas for this essay simply weren’t coming. Across a sheet of lined paper they’d scribbled vague concept after vague concept but none stuck. What about? No, that’s overdone. Then, there could be– that’s a stretch. On page 70…would that make a long enough essay? 

A knock at the door. 

“Come in,” Mike said, not looking up from their paper. 

The door opened. 

What was that term? Their professor said it at least twice…maybe it was in their notes. Where had they put their notebook? They spun their pen again. 

A scrambled bit of speech hit their ears. Oh, that’s right, someone had come in. What did they want? 

“You study too hard,” Mike heard finally. They looked up and found their boyfriend Bill, peering over their shoulder. How long had he been like that? 

“Mm, no, I never do enough.” 

They turned back to their scribbles. Now that their head had cleared, they realized it was an incomprehensible mess. They crumbled the paper and threw it in the trash can. They pulled out another piece. 

Bill tapped their shoulder. “What’s goin’ on in that pretty head? Hm?” 

“Nothing,” Mike complained. “Not a damn thing.” 

“I doubt that,” he said, with a chuckle. “You do more thinking than anybody.”

That was hardly true. Or, if it was, most of their thoughts were more useless. 

“Not any useful thinking.” 

Bill’s breath warmed their neck, causing a shiver down their spine. Why did he have to get so close? How could they do any thinking now? 

“You’re the smartest person on campus,” Bill said, without a hint of exaggeration or comedy. 

“You have to say that,” Mike said. “You’d be a terrible boyfriend if you didn’t.” 

“Doesn’t make it a lie.” 

No, but…

“It makes it biased.” 

“You know I’m not the only one who thinks that.” 

“Junior too?” Mike joked. 

“Sure. Your professors, too. If they don’t, they’re wrong.” 

Mike scoffed. “Are you trying to give me a pep talk or an inflated ego?” 

He wrapped his arms around their middle. They could smell his cologne…warm, a bit like amber…a knockoff of something… The fabric of his sweater warmed them, even through their blouse. He was soothingly, addictingly, warm. Mike’s skin, prone to chill, craved him. 

Essay. Due. Next week. Five pages. Handwritten. Still no topic. 

This boy was not about to tank their grade. 

They stared down at their new blank page. They closed their eyes, trying to imagine their finished essay. 

Lips ghosted their neck. Their eyes snapped open. What was he trying to do? Why was he here? 

“Bill,” Mike asked gently. “What do you want?” 

“You,” he said simply. 

That much was clear. 

“What do you want with me?” they pressed. 

He pressed his lips to their neck, as if to answer their question. 

“Take a break?” he asked, almost insisting. 

“Don’t you have homework?” Mike asked. 

“I’d rather study you.” 

Smooth. Real smooth. 

They rolled their eyes, fondly. “You don’t study hard enough.” 

“You, I do. Quiz me.” 

His lips brushed their ear. Mike waved their hand, like swatting a fly. 

“Unless you have an idea for my essay, the door is over there.” 

“Maybe a break’ll give you inspiration.” 

He moved away from their neck and sat on their desk. Boy, he looked pretty today. The smile playing at his lips, the dark green of his sweater. He was such an enticing distraction. 

Essay due…next week…

“Baby,” Mike pleaded, “Please go, I gotta write five pages.” 

Bill glanced at their blank page and pointed out, “Looks like you aren’t getting any done.” 

That was true. They hadn’t gotten a single useful word in the last hour. They had to, though. They had to write this paper. 

But Bill, oh, look at him. He leaned in, and their eyes got caught on his lips. They looked soft, plush. Did he want a kiss? He sure looked like he was begging for a kiss. 

“Aw, c’mon,” he teased. 

No, not that tone. Not the one that would annoy them if it was anyone else. It was adorable when he did it, somewhere between coaxing and pestering. 

“Kiss me,” he repeated, in that same tone. 

Oh, they wanted to. How often did guys look at them with such gentle eyes, pleading to be kissed? They knew now why everyone told them to stick to books and keep from boys. 

“C’mon.” 

They put down their pen, and he leaned in closer. What was the point in resisting? Their essay could be written later, Bill was right here, right now. 

They pulled him into a kiss by his shirt collar. When their lips touched, they knew it was the right choice. They’d needed that kiss. 

Right after, came another kiss, much gentler. And another, and another. 

“You’re bad news for my grades,” Mike said, after they pulled apart. 

He smiled his world-ending smile, the one with teeth showing and eyes glittering. They could care later, when he wasn’t smiling at them like that. 

He slid off the desk, and came behind them again, engulfing them in a hug. They had no frame of reference, but they were sure that Bill’s hugs were their favorite. 

He took a deep breath. 

“How about we hug for a while?” he suggested. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a hug.” 

It amazed them that he could, so genuinely, want and need to be close to them. He genuinely seemed to desire their affections. 

“Okay,” Mike conceded. “Just a little while.” 

Mike stood, and he pulled them into his chest. They rubbed their face into his sweater, relishing in its softness. When they looked up at him, he’d closed his eyes. He hummed in contentment. Their heart swelled, and they squished themselves against him. Comfy, cozy, just right. 

[dykeseinfeld]

literally every essay i’ve ever written the prof is like “i have literally never seen anyone think about this like that but. okay”

[leotanaka]

certain showrunners are like "[redacted] isn't a romance and wasn't intended to be read as a romance but we respect people's interpretation and they are free to read this however they want".

while shippers are stomping their feet on the ground because their ship isn't being validated in the way they want them to be because the showrunners keep reiterating this isn't a romance and wasn't intended to be read as one every time they are asked about them.

[chicago-geniza]

When the fanfiction's got that 🌟Free Indirect Discourse🌟

[astronicht]

The PROBLEM IS I’m a giant snob. And the prose styles popularly used in historical nonfiction right now… hate them… I’m trying to read more of it! By rights I should love it! No,,, so many little things get to me.

Like every time an author relies on italicised internal dialogue to show you what people REALLY thought under the stuffy formality. Drives me up the wall. Every once in a while is ofc chill but. Caravaggio regularly called random men he didn’t like a “fucked-over cuckold” to their faces you don’t have to do your Renaissance RPF characterisation like this.

[pjthewitch]

i think we do need to be gentle to people who are likely experiencing spiritual psychosis. i experience psychosis myself, and someone coming at me aggressively will always drive me further into it. it’s always worth calling out harmful ideas and practices being perpetuated on the internet, but i think sometimes people could be a little more kind and considerate of who they engage with directly.

and i shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s the internet so i do: this post is NOT about people who have gone so far off the deep end that they are causing genuine harm, or for people who are sound of mind and just perpetuating harmful ideas/practices because that’s what they truly believe.

[doodlebloo]

the exact! image!

Okay TO be fair it's one of the first Google images if you search up Wall-E and Eve BUT STILL.!!! The exact image is crazyyy 😭 Thiscannot be how I get my second indirect CC notice

[fandomsoda]

Anon, I do not owe you a response. It’s common sense that if you’re in someone’s DNI, you block and move on. You will not convince me to become a more hateful person. It’s just not happening. Framing this whole mess as “us vs them” is so disgusting I can’t even fathom. This type of discourse only harms and distracts the queer community. The lesbian label is going to evolve and change, just like every other queer label is. And if you can’t accept that, that’s a you problem.

You have not sent me “proof that mspec lesbians are harmful”, you sent me carrd and status links. That’s not proof. Nebulous claims of problematicism and “notions the label pushes” which are all just imagined “implications” you decided these labels have are not proof. Mspec lesbians do not push that “lesbians can be fixed”, or anything like that, they simply exist as a different kind of lesbian. That is such a leap in logic. I’m sure there’s been at least one asshole to say that while using mspec lesbians as reference, but that is not some sort of tenant of these labels, I highly doubt most if any actual mspec lesbians would agree with that statement.

Something else frustrating is that one of your “sources” claimed that “there’s not a million different ways to be a lesbian” when- YES there is??!? There’s a million different ways to be any queer identity. Who are you or anyone for that matter to dictate how people can be a lesbian? HELLO???

Holy Christ man, queer labels are descriptive. Not prescriptive. They are tools we combine to describe our experiences, not boxes we are put into and gatekeep. If someone uses both an mspec label and a mono label to convey how they experience their sexuality, that should not be a fucking issue. They are using words to convey their experiences in a way that feels right, that does not affect you and that is none of your business.

And the fact that you use language like that I “claim to” be a lesbian- I’m gonna be generous and assume that this wasn’t what you meant to convey, as I have made a similar error in the past, but given the context it really comes off like you’re questioning the validity of my identity which is gross as hell if that is what you’re doing. You phrase this mess as if mspec lesbians are somehow actively attacking lesbians and trying to destroy the label and that I’m somehow a traitor for realizing that’s not true. And that’s just. So fucking stupid. And gross.

This is the queer community, we should be accepting and uplifting each other even if we don’t fully understand each other’s labels. And the fact that you’re so pissed that someone would DARE to combine labels to express themselves, that you now view these random ass people minding their own business as part of a culture war of some kind? Do you not see how ridiculous that is? You are the only one fighting this war man, mspec lesbians are not out to get you.

Listen, I understand that a label or space that you’ve held for a long time changing can be scary. That’s a natural thing to feel and I’m not gonna tell you that you can’t feel that way, your feelings are valid. But that doesn’t mean you get to spread hate, that doesn’t mean you get to be an ass. This whole mess is just so wildly out of touch that I am earnestly asking you to go outside. Please go outside. This is not a sarcastic “touch grass”, I genuinely think you need sunshine.

And just to close this off, because I know that you’ll say “you’re just listening to your echo chamber!” or “you’re not even thinking about what I say!”. Maybe I’m not in an echo chamber, maybe I just have earnest beliefs that I am convicted in. I actually don’t engage with or get exposed to this discourse very often, it’s just that normal fucking people don’t get in a tizzy about someone else’s harmless identity like this.

I’m not brainwashed, I’m not in an echo chamber, I’m not ignoring you just because I “can’t argue” with anything you have to say, it’s because I’ve heard all of this a million times before and I genuinely just disagree and think that you are wrong. I am not some robot that cannot think for themselves, I am a whole ass human person who holds my own beliefs, morals, and values. And the fact you’re willing to say such things about me for simply refusing to become more hateful for you is both astounding and disgusting.

That’s all for now, I apologize to everyone who had to have this on their dashboard, I just had to say this shit for the record.

[grandhotelabyss]

Did Austen’s free indirect discourse influence the non-English(-language) novel? I mean I’ve read stuff in translation that uses it, but did it come via her (and if so, who picked it up?), or did someone else invent it independently in French, and in Russian, and in Italian, and so forth?

I believe Goethe also used the technique in his novels, such as Elective Affinities, and he was read throughout Europe from the first, as Austen was not. I assume he would have been the conveyance of the technique to French, Russian, Italian, etc. writers, since I'm not sure Austen had that kind of global reach.

(Novelists before Austen and Goethe used it too. It's an obviously latent possibility of third-person omniscient narration, so you can find hints of it in 18th-century novels like the early Gothics and others. You can't really say, therefore, that X writer "invented" it. The question is who first used it consciously and consistently as an aesthetic technique with deliberate thematic implication.)

[doriansear]

Honestly the rest didn’t deserve to get dirtied on like that w their lame shitty ass arguments, I’m glad kez doesn’t even care about her haters and just continue on like nothing happened lmao. A goddess fr. Also one of them admitted using empty blogs, that explains why there’s only two people defending them...shucks man. Kez deserved better

Kez quite literally doesn’t care about anything less than a petty argument. It was me who brought the attention to two blogs and sparked fire to it but kez refused to interfere since..well, she’s a big blog and her followers quickly caught up to the post. I’ll tell you why I did it; how many months has it been since we felt peace again before people started ranting in the tags again and make indirect call out posts?

It’s tiring and it makes the fandom look toxic as hell. You’re allowed to post anything since it’s your blog, but everyone should expect a comment or two that disagrees with them without feeling upset over it.

I also encourage those attacking the blogs to stop, kez doesn’t care about it like at all lmao