Our characters always seem so lively in our heads, don’t they? As writers, we’re privy to their every thought, every reaction, every heartbeat. The problem is, how can we bring that level of intimacy to a reader so that our characters are just as real to them as they are to us? One of the many ways of going about this is choosing a point of view to write in: first, second, or third-person, all with their own pro’s and con’s. Now, of course, the most popular choices are first and third-person, and it can sometimes be hard to choose between the two because they offer their own unique and beneficial perspectives. But there is another technique that can actually give a writer the best of both worlds: Free Indirect Discourse. This is the writing technique that we are going to unpack in today’s Tips post.
Free Indirect Discourse, sometimes called Free Indirect Style, is essentially a blending of the first and third-person perspectives, where a narrator stops describing a character’s point of view and instead inhabits it. To put it technically, in this style, the third-person narration ceases and the first-person begins to blend in, or ‘interrupt’ the other, thus displaying a character’s thoughts internally in the midst of a larger narrative. It’s a technique often seen in the works of many beloved authors: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and even contemporary works, such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, demonstrate that this is an incredibly useful and engaging form of writing.
In this style, a third person narrator may seem to know intimate details about an experience or person, not just because they are the narrator, but because the narrative uses the actual words of the character in its prose. One way to identify the use of Free Indirect Discourse is quite simple: through the use of question marks and exclamation points. They can be a good way, grammatically and tonally, to indicate the switch in narratives. In third-person, a sentence describing a character’s thoughts and reactions may look like this:
‘What a dirty, rotten scoundrel,’ she thought.
In first-person, it could be this:
I thought that he was a dirty, rotten scoundrel.
But in Free Indirect speech, there is no need to specify that this was a character’s thought; all you need to do is show it:
She put down the letter. What a dirty, rotten scoundrel!
Here, the technique takes away the third-person narrator (‘she thought’) and keeps only the words of the first-person character (‘What a dirty, rotten scoundrel!’). Naturally, this makes it very useful for ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ writing (which you can read about in our previous blog post). It can also be used to varying degrees, as the switch from perspectives doesn’t have to be as blatantly obvious as the above examples. However, it’s worth noting that a style like this is best used consistently, so I would highly encourage a read of one of the author’s listed above to get a better sense of how it can be used productively throughout a project.
The big question now is: how do you know when Free Indirect Discourse is the right style for your own piece? The honest answer is: it depends on how personal you want the narration to feel. This style can create genuine intimacy between a reader and your characters, without needing the first-person perspective to form it. It can also be useful when there’s more than one character to narrate the story of, because it can give personality to each one whilst still maintaining the third-person (see Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility). I would also encourage you to read this post by Emma Darwin on the style; she breaks it down with plenty of detail and examples, which will give you a good idea of what it looks like in practice.
There are even more layers to Free Indirect Discourse than has been outlined here; for example, though it’s related to third-person, it can be used very successfully in first-person perspective too, as long as the person narrating their experience also views themselves as a character. And, though it may seem like a confusing technique when it’s being described, it’s actually quite simple, and exciting, to put into practice. Your characters will feel that much more alive, not just to your readers, but to you too, because it can help you get all those intimate voices out of your head and onto the page. After all, that’s what writing is about: bringing to life the world in our heads for other people to fully enjoy and experience. So, happy writing, and remember to savour the process of experimenting with new techniques!
Tatianna Kalb, Drama Editor
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