Introduction

How you style your character’s thoughts can drastically change the way your readers experience the story. Thoughts are how your reader will access the deepest recesses of the story. You can use thoughts to control your story in many ways. For example, you can have your character lie to other characters while letting the reader in on the truth. You can lie to the reader. You can even have your characters lie to themselves. Lying to the reader can be quite fun and delicious, as when creating an unreliable narrator. For this article, I’m going to focus on how to write thoughts in present or past tense when using different points of view.

Indirect versus direct thought

This is the first thing you need to know before you start making other choices about using italics or thought tags, because this will affect all other choices that come after.

Indirect thought

Indirect thoughts are not necessarily in the character’s original words. They could be, but they could also be paraphrasing or summarizing the character’s thoughts. When using indirect thoughts, the verb tenses will match the surrounding narrative. So if the scene is written in past tense, the thoughts are also written in past tense.

Example:
Griffin would need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley did and then ring the bell in order to win. This wasn’t going to be easy, he thought.

Direct thought

A direct thought is what your character is thinking verbatim. Like dialogue, you’re sharing the character’s words in their original form. Like dialogue, direct thoughts do not need to match the same verb tense as the surrounding narrative.

Example:
Griffin would need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley did and then ring the bell in order to win. This isn’t going to be easy, he thought.

In both of the examples, the story is written in past tense. The only change is that with the direct thought, I used the present tense verb “isn’t” instead of the past tense “wasn’t.”

Italics versus tags

You might have noticed that in the above example, I didn’t put the thoughts into italics. Instead, I used the thought tag “he thought.”

You can also style direct thoughts using italics, like this:
Griffin would need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley did and then ring the bell in order to win. This isn’t going to be easy.

Tip #1: Either italics or tags. Not both.

What you want to do is avoid is using italics and thought tags at the same time. Pick one and be consistent. Italics will cue the reader so they’ll know which sentences are thoughts and which are narrative. It will tell the reader which thoughts are direct and which are indirect.

Tip#2: Don’t overuse the italics

Italics in moderation are great, but they can grow difficult to read (some fonts more than others) so if you are going to have long paragraphs written as thoughts, readers might struggle to focus on these passages and you risk readers skimming or skipping these sections. Even if they read them, they might feel uncomfortable as their eyes work to digest the italic font, and that will reduce reader experience.
You can get around this by placing flashbacks, dreams, or long introspective thoughts in roman font and creating a strong transition or scene break to cue the reader without creating eye strain or frustration.

Tip#3 Don’t overuse tags

Just like with dialogue tags, you’ll want to watch how many tags you use, so you don’t clutter the scenes with tags.

I personally like using thought tags, but I try to do so in moderation. I try not to overuse the fancy ones that will stand out too much. I try not to use a word that will create a distraction for the reader. If done well, the tags should blend in with the narrative and add necessary information to the scene as needed.

Tip#5: Use sentence variety

As with dialogue tags you can move the thought tags around to avoid sentence patterns, adjust the rhythm and flow of a paragraph, and keep the scene from growing stagnant.

Example:
I’ll need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley does, he thought. Then I can just ring the bell in order to win. This isn’t going to be easy.

Styling thoughts for first-person point of view

Now that you have a good idea of how to style thought for third person, let’s talk a bit about first person. In genre fiction, there is a lot of debate about first person POV. First person POV, like third person limited reduces psychic and emotional distance, by placing the reader directly inside the narrating character’s mind. When writing in first person, you’ll most often see first person past tense, but there are also a lot of books written in first person present tense, which places the reader even more directly into the thick of things while reading.

So how will this affect the way you style thoughts?
My favorite thing about first person POV is that the narrator and the main character are one and the same. With third person (even third limited) point of view, there will always be a wall between the main character and the narrator. No matter how far into the character’s thoughts you dive as a writer, third person will still have some separation. But with first person, you can eliminate that last barrier. What this means for thoughts, if that you can scrap the thought tags and the italics altogether. The reader is already inside the main character’s mind, so you don’t need to that extra visual cue to help the reader keep track.

What will get tricky, though, is making sure the thoughts work properly with the chosen verb tense.
For the most part, the thoughts can stay in the same tense as the surrounding narrative. Past for past tense and present for present tense.

Past tense story

Example:

I needed to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley and then ring the bell in order to win. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Present tense story

Example:
I need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley does and then ring the bell in order to win. This isn’t going to be easy.

There are exceptions, of course, such as if the narrating character is telling about events that happen before the main timeline in the story. Then you’ll need to make sure to switch in and out of past and present tense (or even future tense, if need be) as clearly and smoothly as possible to help guide your reader through the story without giving them whiplash or creating confusion.

Present tense story with mixed verb tenses

Example:
I’m going to need to get to the top of the rock wall before Ryley does and then ring the bell in order to win. I lost out to on the prize last year because I was too busy showing off, but that won’t happen this year. This isn’t going to be easy. But today, I brought my A game. I’m ready.

So how about if the story slips back and forth between past, present, and future? The main timeline is still set in present tense, but just as in real life, the person is thinking about past or future events.

Controlling emotional distance

Which point of view you chose, plus whether the story is in present or past tense will determine how much distance there is between the character and the reader. The POV with the least distance will be first person, followed by third person limited, and then finally omniscient POV which will have the most distance.
When it comes to present or past tense, present tense will have less distance than past tense, because with present tense the reader is engaging in the actions as they occur. The character hasn’t had time to process events as they happen. They’re just reacting to their environment and maybe even trying to survive until the end of the novel.
With past tense, the action has already occurred and the narrator can reflect on events, discuss them, have opinions, etc. That’s not to say they you, as the author, can’t create a sense of immediacy in past tense. It’s quite possible to write a story in past tense, but set it up so that the story is occurring only a few seconds into the past. This way, you can still use past tense verbs, while simultaneously keeping the suspense alive. You main character can potentially still die at the end of the story if you pull this off with a lot of skill. On the other end of the spectrum, you can write a story about events that happened along ago and give the tone of the story a nostalgic feel.

Which one should I use?

Which POV and verb tense will depend on the tone and feel of your story, but once you have that aspect figured out you can make a solid decision about how you want to style the thoughts in the story. While tags or italics could add some distance from the character, you have the benefit of easy to follow visual cues for the reader, so you can concentrate on the other literary elements of the story. Using italics can also help you out when you have a novel with multiple POV characters. It all depends on your overall goals for your story, genre conventions, POV choice, and what is easier for you, the author to use.

Happy writing.
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Styling thoughts in fiction

Introduction