Gabrielle here!
One of the best parts of reading is getting into a character’s head. Learning how a character thinks is a great way to understand and get invested in them. But crafting immersive headspace can be difficult. It’s an element that will pervade most of your story, so getting all the right pieces in place can be intimidating. That’s why today I’m going to break down the different steps I take to develop a character’s headspace. And as always, I’m going to use Honey to help demonstrate these principles.
Point of View Differences
The kind of headspace your story has depends on the point of view your story uses. It’s the foundation that all the other tips will build upon. Since there are a variety of POVs, I’m going to describe the main different kinds and strengths of each.
1st Person Present Tense
I sigh and sit at my loom to continue with my project.
This POV uses 1st person pronouns (I, we, us, etc.) and present tense verbs (drinks, walks, tell, etc.). Of all the different POVS, this is the most accurate to how we experience life. Because of that, the language needs to be very accurate to the character’s age, maturity, education, etc. With this POV, the story is very immediate, very intimate, and there’s the persistent tension of the unknown. These things can be very beneficial for a character-focused story because of how saturated the narration is with the character’s thoughts and feelings. However, this is also one of the narrowest POVs, which makes it hard to contextualize events in the story. There can also be redundancies in the narration because people don’t edit their thoughts or how they process life.
1st Person Past Tense
I sighed and sat at my loom to continue with my project.
Like the previous POV, it uses 1st person pronouns but the verbs are past tense (drank, walked, told, etc.). Typically this means time has elapsed between the events of the story and the telling of the story. The story is still as psychically close as 1st person present tense, but it’s not temporarily close. This POV is common when the narrator is aware of an audience and is consciously telling the story. The reminiscing style allows for a flexible structure, since the narrator can choose to tell the story in any order and edit events as necessary. It also allows for reflection since some amount of time has passed, and the story isn’t being told in the moment. However, these things can lead to too much narrative summary or confusion around the timeline. Narrators in these kinds of stories can be highly unreliable—for better or worse—since the character is likely attempting to frame the events in some sort of way. But a character consciously telling a story to someone can be really thematically interesting.
2nd Person Present Tense
You sigh and sit at your loom to continue with your project.
This POV style relies on 2nd person pronouns (you, yourself, etc.) and present tense verbs. 2nd person isn’t a very common POV style because of how unconventional it is. This isn’t really how we tend to think, so it feels strange to read a story told this way. However, it can be very useful to demonstrate dissociation. It’s a POV that can signify a character is retelling a story to themselves or used to acknowledge pain and/or guilt. However, because it’s so unusual, it will draw a lot of attention to itself. The syntax will no longer be invisible if this style is used. It can also feel unnecessary or melodramatic, which increases its difficulty.
3rd Person Limited Present Tense
Honey sighs and sits at her loom to continue with her project.
This POV style uses 3rd person pronouns (he, she, they, etc.) and present tense verbs. It’s got a very unique sound. It gives the impression that a character’s story is being told in the moment, but it’s being told without their permission. It combines the intimacy and immediacy of present tense with the distance of third person, and can be good for stream of consciousness. However, it removes the element of retrospective and because it’s unique it can catch the reader’s attention more than another POV style would.
3rd Person Limited Past Tense
Honey sighed and sat at her loom to continue with her project.
This POV style uses 3rd person pronouns and past tense verbs. It’s the most unobtrusive POV style because of how common it is. It’s also the ideal POV for multiple points of view, since its unobtrusiveness makes. The 3rd person pronouns also give the authors more control over the psychic distance than an author's writing in 1st person would have. Also, 3rd person makes it easier to contextualize events and organize the story’s structure. Overall, it provides the most freedom, most scope, and least mess. However, it still has its challenges. Because there’s more freedom over the amount of psychic distance, it can be easy for there to be inconsistencies in the psychic distance. This POV style can also set the author up to tell about rather than show events.
3rd Person Omniscient
Honey sighed and sat at her loom to continue with her project. She didn’t understand why Hunter always looked for trouble like this. Hunter felt uneasy that he’d upset his sister, but he didn’t want to stick around either, so he walked outside.
This POV uses the same pronouns and verb tense as the previous POV; the difference lies in the psychic distance. In this style, the narrator isn’t attached to one or a few characters. Instead, the narrator has access to all the information in the story. The story can still follow around one character, but the narrator isn’t limited to what that character knows. The unlimited scope of the story can be freeing for the author, but because there’s so much distance between narrator and character, the audience could feel distant from the characters. However, this can be beneficial if the story prioritizes exploring border themes or exploring individual characters.
Psychic Distance
I’ve used the term “psychic distance” a couple times already, so now I want to take the time to explain what it is and how to use it effectively. Psychic distance is how close or far the story’s narration is from the character’s thoughts. For example, stories with a 1st person POV have an inherently very close psychic distance. That’s why it’s more noticeable in these stories when the author tells a character’s emotions instead of showing them; the audience is so deep in the character’s head it feels unnatural. But a 3rd person story might have an entirely separate narrator and main character whose thoughts don’t interact at all.
I like to break this down into four rough stages. These are by no means the only ways to break this down, this is just the simplest way for me to think about the different ways I can push into our pull away from the character’s thoughts. First, the farthest kind of psychic distance is when the information is remote and objective. This is where there’s clearly some kind of narrator. The audience isn’t privy to the characters thoughts or interpretation of events.
A young woman walked down the street of a small, but bustling, village.
Then the next level is when more particulars are brought in. This is when the character’s opinions and voice begin to color the narration, but the character's thoughts are still absent.
Honey Heimsol wove through the busy streets of Ilverseed. Late mornings were always shockingly busy for a town of this size.
Next, you start getting into specific vocabulary and opinions from the POV character. Their thoughts will also start to trickle into the text, even if they aren’t direct.
Honey wished she’d left an hour earlier. Or later. Anything to avoid the atrocious foot traffic she was currently fighting through.
And the final stage is when there’s no separate narrator. There’s going to be a lot of sensory detail, direct thoughts and emotions, the way the text is formatted will mirror the characters thoughts more, and overall the text is incredibly expressive.
Why was everyone trying to walk down main street at once? Honey huffed as she squeezed between two people blocking half the sidewalk with their conversation and a storefront. Sweat threatened to drip from her blanket of curls onto her forehead.
Figuring out how much psychic distance you want in the story is important. It really depends on the story you want to tell. If the storytelling is very psychological and character-focused, a close psychic distance will be helpful to show your character’s thought processes—even in third person. But if the story is focused more about themes and the characters are more like pieces in a grand mosaic, more psychic distance will help the audience focus on the bigger picture. As a general rule, the closer the psychic distance the more involved the audience will be with the POV character’s thoughts. If that will aid your story, increase the psychic distance, but if it will harm or provide no benefit, decrease the psychic distance.
Consistency
Now, with all of these terms defined, I want to talk about one of the most important principles of good character headspace: consistency. If any elements of the headspace randomly change, the audience will get distracted. These kinds of issues can especially stand out because it’s not just an error in information, it’s an error in the way information is conveyed, which will make the audience struggle to follow the story. So here are a couple of tips for maintaining consistent headspace.
POV and Psychic Distance
Maintaining appropriate POV is probably the easiest one because the POV we write in is a very conscious choice. In fact, most of the time I see a POV error, it’s a typo. As long as you use the correct pronouns and correct verb tense, you should be in good shape. So if you’re using a POV you’re not used to, make sure you double check while editing that you haven’t accidentally strayed into more familiar pronouns and verb tenses.
However, maintaining appropriate psychic distance can be a little more difficult. It’s less concrete than the structures of grammar. To start with the basics, if you’re writing with a close psychic distance, be careful not to include information that your character wouldn’t know. This includes what other characters are thinking or feeling, knowledge about events they weren’t a part of, and other information they wouldn’t feasibly have access to. This is where those stages could come in handy. Pay attention to the kind of details you're adding and see if they fit with the stage of psychic distance that you’ve chosen. Weaving in and out between levels can leave your audience feeling jarred. For example, something like this feels off:
What was Hunter doing here? Honey’s stomach dropped. He was supposed to be at home helping their mom, not goofing off with his friends at the pond. The golden-haired young woman quickly collected her things and hurried towards her brother.
Not only is inconsistency distracting, but it makes it difficult to stay attached to the character’s headspace. If the audience is invested in following the character’s thoughts in a closer psychic distance, suddenly pulling back will break that engagement. And if there’s a farther distance, suddenly shooting into the character’s head will shatter the illusion of a separate narrator.
Voice
Another thing to consider when thinking about consistency is character voice. Character voices are like accents; everyone’s got one even if you don’t think so. Emily talked a lot about this in last week’s post, so head over there for more tips specifically about character voice. But in this post, I’m going to focus on a tool I mentioned briefly in a recent Instagram post: patterning. Basically, it’s taking the knowledge a character would have and pulling from it when those characters make observations, comparisons, or use figurative language. So for Honey, as a tapestry maker, she would be able to pick out different fabric and thread types when observing something and her comparisons and figurative language would primarily pull from tapestry imagery and jargon. It wouldn’t make sense for her to suddenly use a bunch of nautical metaphors since that’s not within her knowledge.
Honey did her best not to roll her eyes. There was no way Juniper actually got her new skirt from the capital. That fabric was the same cotton her parents bought from the neighboring village.
Honey watched her mother’s brow knit together as her brother wove through the crowd.
She leaned back as the worm-like creature raised its head out of the dirt. It was about the length of a shed stick, and almost as flat as one. Although, unlike other worms or snakes or other crawly creatures she’d seen, it looked like it had been dunked in a tub of marigold dye.
Patterning is also important to consider when writing speculative fiction, especially high fantasy. Be careful not to use specific idioms or reference things the character wouldn’t be aware of. This can take the audience out of the story. For example, this sounds kind of off:
The bell rang through the town’s square, shrill as the beeping of a microwave in the middle of the night.
Whereas this gets the same idea across while fitting in with the world more.
The bell rang through the town’s square, shrill as the rapping of a woodpecker at dawn.
Thought Processes
One of the most useful parts of headspace is showing the character’s thought process. This is basically a character thinking about events. While this is most obvious in 1st person, it can also be pretty easily accomplished in 3rd person. Although, like I mentioned earlier, showing a character’s direct thought process in 3rd person is only possible with a close psychic distance.
Honey squinted across the pond. What was Hunter doing? She watched him look across the ground for a few moments before picking up a large stick. Then he walked towards the back gate, his friends at his side, and jammed the edge of the stick into the door. Was he trying to force the gate open? Why? Their parents told them not to leave Ilverseed without permission, and especially not to leave through the back gate.
But what exactly should you be showing with a character’s thought processes? Obviously you don’t want or need to show everything that goes through a character’s mind because that gets cluttered and slows the pace way down. Here’s an example with Honey:
Honey opened the cabinet to look for the mixing bowl. The bread pan, cake pan, and soup pot were all on the shelves, but no mixing bowl. That was strange; it was usually here. Where was the last time she’d seen the mixing bowl? Well, her mother had made a fresh batch of bread two days ago, but she’d seen her put it back after washing it. Was it just somewhere else in the kitchen? She looked across the kitchen. It wasn’t on the table, or in the sink, so where could it be? Did her father take it for something? She remembered last month that he had used the bowl to store thread after he ran out of containers. So that seemed like the next best place to look. She walked over to his office and opened the door.
There’s way too much information here. And honestly, it’s pretty boring. The reader doesn’t need to know the details of the Heimsol’s kitchen or when the last time it was used since the important piece of information is that the bowl is missing. Instead, I think about the action I want my character to take. If it wouldn’t take the audience a leap to understand that action—like a character wanting a glass of water after being outside in the sun for hours—I don’t explain the character’s thought process around it. Honey checking another room for a household item isn’t too much of a stretch, so it shouldn’t need a paragraph to describe how she came to that decision. But if it’s something that might be a difficult decision for the character, I show that thought process. If the “what” is more important for the audience to understand than the “why” I recommend pulling away from describing direct thoughts and focus on describing character actions.
Honey opened the cabinet to look for the mixing bowl. That was strange; it was usually here. She looked across the kitchen and didn’t spot it. Maybe her father took it for something. She remembered in the past he’d taken it to store thread when he ran out of other containers. So she walked towards his office and opened the door.
See how that example cut out all the unnecessary details? They may have been realistic, but they weren’t helping the story so they had to go. But now let’s talk about when you should be going into detail about a character’s direct thoughts. Showing a character’s thought process is really helpful if you want to show how a character is wrestling with something. And if the action is something the character wouldn’t normally do, showing the way your character got there can help the audience view the action as believable. Compare these two examples:
Honey watched her brother and his friends sneak out of Ilverseed. After a few moments of pondering, she decided to follow them.
Honey watched her brother and his friends sneak out of Ilverseed. Her stomach knotted. What should she do? She knew she couldn’t just let him run off—there were bound to be wolves and bandits in the surrounding woods. Should she go get her parents? They were all the way across town, and by the time she got them her brother might be too far gone. If she ran after him now, she might be able to get him back before he got too far. But the idea of leaving the village made the knots pull tighter. She didn’t want to leave and risk running into whatever lay out there. But Hunter was her responsibility. If something bad happened to him…she shook herself. She needed to be brave for him. So she hurried towards the gate to find her brother.
Notice how the second example demonstrates specifically what motivates Honey to do something out of her comfort zone? With the first example, the audience may be confused why she didn’t go get her parents since they know she’s hesitant to leave home. But showing her consider that option helps the audience understand the “why” rather than just the “what.” Showing how a character thinks is really helpful for the audience to understand their actions, but that’s not the only way you can communicate information in a character’s headspace.
Emotional Responses
Headspace is also really helpful to show a character’s emotions.The dichotomy between showing and telling has been long debated, but headspace can be a really good way to show emotions. For example, showing how a character’s emotions physically impacts them is a visceral way to demonstrate what a character is feeling with very little information.
The howling of a wolf broke through the trees. Honey’s heart slammed against her chest.
All I needed to show that Honey was scared is describing a physical response to the events in the previous sentence. But make sure not to overuse this tool. It’s important to consider how emotional your character is. For example, if you have a cold, calculating character, there may be very few emotional moments. If this is the case, don’t overuse strong emotional language so the important moments have weight. But regardless of how emotional your character is, keep in mind what qualifies as a big deal for them and don’t use up strong language too early. If you go too big too soon or have a lot of moments of high emotion in the character’s headsapce, you’ll risk desensitizing your audience. Consider the strength of the verbs you use. There’s a difference between whimper, yelp, and exclaim versus sob, scream, and roar. Don’t use up your strong verbs during less-intense scenes or your audience won’t be able to tell when the serious moments are.
Try using grammatical structures to reflect a character’s thoughts in emotional moments. This is a great way to get your reader’s attention by not just showing a character's emotions through the information, but by the way information is presented.
No.
No, no, no. This wasn’t happening.
He couldn’t be lost. Her little brother couldn’t be lost.
How could she have let this happen?
Notice how the short sentences and paragraph mirror the choppiness of anxious thoughts? How the pacing speeds up to match the speed of a racing mind? This can take the pressure off of finding strong language all the time and help add variety to how you write about emotions. Your audience should get invested in your character's emotions. And a great way to do that is through their headspace.
Conclusion
Even though maintaining consistent headspace can seem intimidating, it really helps make your characters feel alive. It may be something that flies under the radar, but strong headspace is what sets good characters apart and gets audiences invested in the character’s struggles. Hopefully these tips can help you break down the different parts of character headspace to guide your drafting and editing process. Stop by next time as we go into the last episode of our character creation series, and we’re bringing it to a close by talking about character arcs. In the meantime, bee brilliant!
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