I’ve started my first round of edits/rewrites and it’s a hell of a lot harder than the first draft. No longer can I dump words willy-nilly. They must be hammered into a shape that balances action, thought, and dialogue scene by scene while still being part of a seamless whole.
Much of the first 3 chapters involves Edward setting up his con: lots of lying and making stuff up. By necessity there’s a lot of internal dialogue because it’s the best (only?) way to show the contradictions. The trick is keeping the story moving forward, but not so quickly that the reader wonders why he’s doing these contradictory things.
Internal Dialogue: A Busy’ Writer’s Guide has been a godsend for getting the balance right.
Very broadly:
- event
- physical reaction
- internal dialogue
- spoken dialogue/action
And man, just using this formula is helping the pacing a thousandfold! No more infinite rereads trying to figure out if I’m wasting time in my characters’ heads. It’s almost musical!
This is just the first edit, which my writing friends assure me will take around 2(!) years. I’m sure it would take longer if I tried to figure out everything myself. Lesson learned: Don’t go it alone – benefit from others’ experience.
For some reason I’m visualizing you with a tank trailer full of coffee parked in your driveway with an IV hose (and I do mean hose rather than tube) running from it to you. ;p
The internal dialogue formula is interesting as the majority of my favourite fiction is heavy on internal dialogue (presumably due to the non-visualizing brain; I get far more out of characters’ perceptions, especially emotions and the senses of taste, smell, and touch, than I do from descriptions of locations, persons, or physical movements)
Man, I wish I could still drink coffee like that! Alas, I’ll vibrate out of my chair if I try 😛
I enjoy character-driven stories internal dialogue is essential to know motivations, fears, misperceptions, etc. I never really thought of it in terms of ratios of action:dialogue:thought, but it makes sense. Writing is a craft and I enjoy peeks “under the hood” that shows how it all works.
You’d love the Overbook Hotel, a specialist writers’ hotel in “Bleak Expectations”. All the bathroom sinks have three taps: hot, cold, and coffee.
I enjoy internal dialogue for all the reasons you listed too. But ever since I figured out the non-visual thing I’ve paid more attention to how my preferences relate to/are affected by it and a high ratio of internal/low of descriptive has become pretty obvious. Illustrated books and graphics skew the ratio, of course, because the visuals are provided for me.