Time to talk about your character’s inner dialogue. Have you ever read a book where you never know what the hero is thinking? She never plans, she only does. Nothing ever affects him. Not the death of his best friend. Or his dog. Or even his whole family. Then there’s the other side of the coin. The hero agonizes over every decision. Not a page goes by that he doesn’t lament his unfortunate circumstances. She thinks about that car accident ten years ago in two out of every ten paragraphs. And that’s only the paragraphs she’s not talking about it.
This leads us to the question – How much inner dialogue do you need in a story?
Straight off, I’m going to say none is probably not the best answer. Not unless you want your hero to remain a complete mystery to your reader and you don’t care if the reader identifies or sympathizes with this fictional character you’ve worked so hard to create. Readers want to know how your characters feel, what they considered when making a decision, and how they react internally to a physical or emotional trauma. But ten pages of interior dialogue for everything that happens in your book? Probably not that either. You don’t want your reader to grow sick and tired of your whiny, indecisive hero. Or worse, think of you as repetitive. “Didn’t I just read this?”
The goal is to strike a balance. Give the reader enough to identify with your character but not so much it creates boredom or irritation.
When do you give the reader inner dialogue? I can state pretty confidently – “when appropriate, but not during an action scene”. Stopping the action in a scene to tell the reader what’s going on in the character’s head slows the action to a crawl if not a standstill. Every move can’t be analyzed. A character can’t be remembering all the wonderful times she had with Sam in the fraction of a second it takes the bullet he shot at her to reach her. Sam pulls trigger. Two pages of memories. Bullet hits hero. Does the reader really want to wait three pages to find out what happened? The two actions should be almost simultaneous in the story. However, while Sam is waving the gun around threatening to shoot, the author could let the hero worry about being shot. Wonder if Sam is capable of such a thing. Be afraid of leaving her children without a mother. A sprinkling of these would add tension to the story. But once the fight scene or car chase or bomb defusing starts, get on with the action. There’ll be plenty of time later to think about it.
So visit your character’s head throughout your story. Just don’t park there so long you deserve a ticket.