I wrote a story in close third (When the Wood Is Dry), and mostly used the seamless method. But, at times, especially when thoughts drifted into prayer or self-talk, it seemed more natural and impactful to change to first person, present tense, which I put in italics. These moments are something between conversation and thought. When people observe things at a certain level, it works to just write it in third person, but when the character is talking to himself, it just doesn't seem natural, especially when praying. Because it seemed so unnatural to write inner thoughts in third person, I drafted them in first person then converted them to third. This trick helped me to really place myself in the place of each character, and get the narrative very close. When converting the inner thoughts, some just seemed not to work as well in third person. Consider this inner thought from me story: They think I'm a whore. If I put this in third person, past tense, it would be: They thought she was a whore. I felt first-person present in italics made this kind of line more impactful. It just seems so much more distant in third person, past tense. I took the risk that this flipping of tense and person would not be disorienting or jarring, though this particular line is meant to be a bit jarring. If you are interested in how this method works in context, the EBook for "When the Wood Is Dry" is free, so look it up and check it out. See what you think...

I just like the italics still. It makes the thought set aside and more personal. But I like different methods and grown to see distinctions in style as better than only one method, such as quotes or dashes or or italics or nothing to indicate speech.

I try to use the first method as much as possible.

The first method is known as 'free indirect style' and was pioneered in the 19th century. I only use the second tow methods when the character is 'saying' something in first person inside their head (and the narrative itself is not first person). The first method is more appropriate for literary fiction, whereas the second, and especially the third are more common in genre fiction, where the focus is on serving things up more blatantly to the reader/making their experience as straightforward and 'easy' as possible. Punctuation and formatting tricks help in this regard, whereas LitFic authors tend to disdain them, often to an extreme degree (*cough* Cormac McCarthy). The last method in particular would not fly with a LitFic editor/publisher. That said, my favourite book of all time (which would probably be considered upmarket women's fiction in modern terms) uses it, so I do too.

Thank you! I love to italized and worse method 3 sometimes, but my latest editor told me that my writing is strong, which is why I don't need to italized the internal monologue, now I understand why he recommended it. Thanks again

I used direct in my debut novel, but I'm using seamless for my new book. It's amazing how much smoother it reads! Thank you, as always, for another amazing video!

I like the use of italicized thoughts when the protagonist doesn't speak much. As a person with anxiety, internal thoughts are as important to me as speaking. And usually are more accurate to what I would like to say.

Interesting thoughts. I've got a story about an alcoholic, and I attempt to highlight his isolation by keeping a far psychic distance. The italics I use there, then, are probably appropriate. However, in other third-person POV stories, I attempt to get up close and personal with the protagonist. So, I probably should review my use of italics and occasional tags in those cases. Often, my characters have thoughts that don't align with what they are saying while conversing with another character. I'm concerned that it may become unclear and confusing if the POV character's thoughts are not specifically called out as such. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Vindication! I had been out of the writing loop for awhile. I joined a new writing group & suddenly half my story needed to be in italics because the main character was thinking. Which is something I rarely see in the traditionally published books by nytimes list authors. I'm thrilled to hear that I wasn't doing it wrong. :)

That's really helpful thank you. I've been experimenting recently and finding myself drawn to using seamless more and more.

I use the first method but add italic every so often judiciously to remind the reader of important internal thoughts, or what is primary info outside of ground narrative. Long internal dialogues can be broken up this way as well. Mostly, written well ,internal need not be tagged at all. Tolkien mixes things up. In the Hobbit, he does it as an omniscient narrator close to the MC of the scene, but he will head-hop thoughts occasionally (Very well done, I might add) when it matters to move forward or build interest. He delineates with paragraph changes. His method is seamless while breaking conventions and it reads like third person. Good job on this BTW

Shaelin - I appreciate the subtleties of nuance between these three types of thought expression. Very nice. Great instruction.

For a character that is slowly losing his/her mind I like to italicize the voice inside their head, but more like it’s the devil on their shoulder. Maybe it’s an artistic choice. 🤷‍♂️ However, for internal thoughts, I just write it like normal first person narration and never put “I think to myself.” That should already be a given since it’s first person narration yet I’ve seen it done numerous times.

I will definitely use the seamless method.

thank you for the clarity. I've been writing a memoir and had little need for dialogue but i started writing a novel at the same time. My thinking is that if i get stuck on one, i can work on the other while i let my thoughts develop. Grammar has never been my forte and suddenly i'm faced with having to write tons of dialogue. When i read, dialogue often flows seamlessly and i've never taken note of how it is written because my focus has been on the story. This video has been of tremendous help. Thank you

Thanks, Shaelin, very well explained!

Thanks for this talk. I've been using the seamless method, with third person and close psychic distance. But as I wasn't sure if this was the correct method I used italics once or twice. Now I can remove the italics and just use seamless throughout.

I do a mix of the seamless and the italics. The seamless is for the characters POV I’m working on and then the italics will be negative, intrusive thoughts that the character(s) have on top of their own.

After over fifteen years of studying interior monologue (or whatever you call it) and doing my own novel writing, I was surprised to find that I agreed with everything you said. I read a wide variety of authors of multiple genres--past and present--and I've found seamless preferable. Common interior monologue markers in limited third-person perspective narration are questions, and short incomplete sentences which are often only one or two words long. A question, or a one or two word long sentence, ought not be interpreted as the hidden narrator at work, but seen as the thoughts of the single POV character. --

Heck yeah, I've been hoping for this one! (Now to go do A LOT of editing)

Thank you for this! After watching this video, I realized that I am already writing in a seamless format. I questioned it because I have seen the filtered format used and recently the direct format used. I am not a fan of the direct format with the use of italics. I will say the italics of internalized monologue can be confusing. I am already having to clear the confusion for my students in a novel we are currently reading. Meanwhile the direct format is just redundant!

I needed this so much. Thanks!

I write in 1st and in 3rd person, and I use mostly the first method. Sporadically the second, and then less for clarity and more for aesthetic reasons (the melody or the look of the sentence or paragraph). As for using italics for thoughts, I think it tends to make the narrative too self-conscious and heavy.

Excellent analysis.

Great advice!

Thanks This is really helpful, just gotta decide which is better for my novel

Stories can be both character-driven and plot-driven, and some moments are more one than the other. Using method one seems to help sometimes when we want the passage to be more plot-driven because it focuses less on the character and more on the plot, and using method two seems to help sometimes when we want to passage to be more character-driven, because it draws attention to the character and away from the plot. Method three is also known as free indirect style. It seems to me the only time this really is useful is when a character is essentially interacting with another character, and they have a thought that they don't want to express out loud that the reader still would benefit from knowing. Especially if the thought is emotional. A great example of this is Clarice Starling's reactions to the prison warden in The Silence of the Lambs. She's courteous to the warden, but underneath we can see that she's seething and thinks she's being treated badly. When used like this, this method seems to work. It also works for emotional thoughts in internal monologue. It also can make third person work a little bit more like first person, because we can clearly see the character having thoughts rather than being told they are having thoughts by the narrator. So the three methods can all be used in the same story. But it's best to pick your spots. In other words, I wouldn't recommend randomly switching from one method to another for no particular reason. But you can have reasons that make sense that allow you to switch between the three methods, such as those reasons stated above.

When I wrote in first-person present tense, and got to narrative pieces that went very quickly (i.e. action pieces), it seemed that internal thoughts could sometimes jumble with descriptions of what was being perceived to the point of it being confusing. When these jumblings happened, I preferred to use italics for internal thoughts, unless I wanted to leave the distinction between thought and perception vague on purpose. Also, because body language and action go hand-in-hand with dialogue and these are almost never italicized, I sometimes preferred to italicize the narrator's thoughts when they jump in during/between pieces of dialogue, as some of those times the thoughts felt jarring when left written normally. Just my two cents.

This was helpful thank you. I've been struggling with first person internal dialogue. I often lean towards italics but i have seen stories without that as well.

What good timing you have, Shaelin! I will also beapplying the seamless method in my WIP, even though I instinctively tended to use italics

Well done.

Thank You.

Great upload

I use italics for direct when the narrator wants to "stress" something they're thinking or talking about.

Great video - very informative. There is another reason to use Italics though. A writer can break all the rules in Italics. Use the forbidden filter words, etc. Not supposed to do that if at all possible without them...

Hi Shaelin, could you run an idiots guide to using the Reedsy editing app step by step. I don't know that much about editing, I've watched your vlogs on editing and the different types of editing there is but I would like to know how to actually use these tools. Many thanks - yours in scribble Terry.

I prefer to use italics but with occasional filtering.

So what do you think about this situation: my narrator is quite close to the pov character and so most of the thoughts are seamlessly incorporated. However sometimes I have an internal voice that directly addresses the pov character: You this or that. Now I'm wondering 1) whether that is at odds with 3rd person narration and 2) if that's confusing to have most thoughts seamless but then these occasional direct internal voices

Please comment on writing internal arguments with self ie. Two voices.

In a critique website I’m on a couple people have said to put the internal thoughts on a separate paragraph. Is that true?

So, do you think it would be alright to jump back and forth between seamless and filtered? I think I have a habit of doing that.

I like the first method, but I ran into a case where the narrator wonders what the character must do. So the line is “what must she do now?” I can’t figure out a way to put it in past tense, and I hate adding the “she thought” tag. I hate the italic too because I lose the format when I copy from one app to the other, which I tend to do when asking for feedback from beta readers. So I’m stuck.

I'm hoping someone can help me with an internal thought issue that has me stymied. I'm writing my first novel, and am unsure if an author is expected to say a character thought (or equivalent) when the character's thoughts go on for multiple sentences. If a whole paragraph is nothing but their thoughts, would thought need to be used only once? I do plan on using italics for the actual thoughts themselves. Making this up, but a for instance: Version 1 Ms. Dagorshire is going to be furious at me for losing her cat while she was away thought Constance. Maybe I can skip town or take on a new identity; nah, if I know Ms. Dagorshire, there is nowhere I can hide if something happened to her precious snowflake because of me. Or would it be necessary to use thought or another similar word for the second sentence, since thought was used in the first sentence? Version 2 Ms. Dagorshire is going to be furious at me for losing her cat while she was away thought Constance. Maybe I can skip town or take on a new identity; nah, if I know Ms. Dagorshire, there is nowhere I can hide if something happened to her precious snowflake because of me mused Constance.

How much inner thought in first person, italics is too much in third person POV? How many lines per page? Is a paragraph too much?

Great educational video! Much thanks. I have a question however. I've written a novel in third-person limited, with each chapter being told from a different character's POV. Would you recommend the first method (seamless), or the second method (filtered)? It's currently written in the second, and some of my beta readers have noted that technically, books need have a distinction between narration (even if it's third-person limited), and inner thoughts. Is this true? Everyone says the novel reads smoothly and is understandable; they are just giving me English writing technical notes. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Happy to give examples if need be.

I am writing my book ( a fantasy) where the author of a book is magically summoned into her book by her protagonist. She shares the body with her but no one on the outside can hear her main character but her. Ive been struggling to know how to format this tbh. I think i may try and use italics for the books protagonist and the filtered for the my protagonist whilst they are talking and just have my protagonists thought in the text as seamless when they arent talking as the books protagonist is not aloway present. Is this good? Is it OTT?

I try to use the first one as much as possible, but I came to this video because, in the story that I'm working on right now, I want to make the reader feel as if they were right next to the character, like they are following them but they are not "them". Is it okay if I keep going with the seamless method?

Does the first type, the seemless method, has a specific term in the creative writing field?

Where do the thoughts come from? How does a writer figure out what the character is thinking about? Everyone talks about formatting. No one talks about figuring them out in the first place.

Wouldn't thoughts always be in the present tense, (even in a past tense narrative) as the character can only think in the now? Past tense comments would be looking back on events that have happened previously and therefore be narration.

How to differentiate external dialog from internal dialog with a spiritual entity that no one else can hear. And then, what if you have several of those spiritual entities?

it's not that bad of an idea to add a tag to the first italicized thought just so the reader knows that it indicates a thought, then not use the tag again

I use speech marks around thoughts. It is speech, only internal. Martha turned onto her street but the street light was out. "Was there a power outage" she thought, "Maybe the light has been broken somehow?" Please correct me if this is wrong. :)

Loved your information. Hated your imitation booger.

Too much chatter. To few clear examples. Remember, in teaching, as in fiction, show don't tell. Alos, very jarring editing.