I spent most of yesterday editing a 2700 word section of my Nano Novella to use as my 3rd OCA Assignment which is due in on the 20th of December.

I chose a section that contains narrative and dialogue but the other requirement is for the piece to contain internal monologue, which currently, it doesn’t 😦

Internal Monologue is a narrative technique that shows the thoughts passing through the protagonists mind. Sounds simple yeah? Lol…..well not really. You can’t say he/she thought, that wouldn’t be Internal Monologue. It has to be more direct. It’s like a stream of consciousness in which the author shows the thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside the characters head. The author shouldnt attempt to provide (or only minimally) any commentary or description to help the reader untangle the thoughts, nor should the author sort them into grammatically correct sentences. It’s like the reader overhearing the characters thoughts and the narrator disappears and the POV overlaps…… Now, does that make sense? Lol

Virginia Woolf uses the technique in Mrs Dalloway:

“It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows,
stepping out into some garden. But where? The clock was striking – one, two, three:
how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping; like Septimus himself.
She was falling asleep.”

I’ve been trying to get my head round this whole concept, and I think I’ve finally cracked it. It helps the reader connect more with the character and yes, when you add some to your 3rd person narrative it kinda makes the whole thing feel less detached…..the famous show don’t tell rule.

So today will be spent adding Internal Monologue……and sorting out my “tense” lol. I am officially a nightmare when it comes to chopping and changing tense. The weird thing is, when my husband had a look he said most of the tense errors were to do with one character in particular. Haven’t got a clue how I managed that! 😉