(Dedicated to Kayla, wherever you are!)

Warning: Don’t let your characters think too much. Try to keep them in motion in their dynamic physical world. If you or your characters start thinking too much, and by that, I mean contemplating, ruminating, remembering at length, the story will slip away, if not from you, then certainly from some future reader. Somebody once said, it doesn’t matter what a character thinks or feels until they act on it.

That doesn’t mean characters can’t think at all, and you will have your turn when you get to discerning and deciding, later in the process. You may even need to have characters think for a few pages while you figure something out, but those words on those pages probably won’t belong in the text of the novel.  I say probably.  Err on the side of not.

In the case of the 1^st person narrator, one could say that is one long continuous thought, particularly in the case of a stream of consciousness narrator.  But that narrator is more focused on what he or she is witnessing and reporting to the reader than on elaborating on plans and feelings and philosophies. The emotions are evoked in the reader, not spread out on the page like butter on toast.

READ: For an excellent example of a 1^st person, stream of consciousness narrator, read Michael Parker’s short novel If You Want Me to Stay.  It may take you a few pages to get your sea legs for the narrator’s voice, particularly if you’re not from the South, but don’t give up.  Let the voice wash over you. Remember back to those great R&B songs and hear the music in the back ground, the grinding reality of them. If you are the least bit intelligent, the ending will slay you. DON’T READ AHEAD! THAT’S A SIN! I KNOW. I WAS RAISED CATHOLIC!

Exercise: List three characters who know each other well, and one who is new to the group. Write from the point of view of one of the first two characters. Have him or her talk about the other two, what they said and did. Convey how the narrating character feels about what they did by how she talks about them. Don’t go into her judgments or feelings.  See how much you can convey by attitude and tone.