In a new blog post, Janice Hardy offers advice for finding the right balance between interiority and action. “A strong action/thought combination is when the character’s actions flow smoothly with their thoughts and work in tandem to tell the story,” she explains.
This balance is important. If you rely too much on action, your reader may not feel like they know your protagonist. However, if you lean into interiority, your story may lack forward motion. Your characters need to act AND feel.
Hardy’s advice includes:
- Aim for balance between action and internal thought. “Don’t use the same type of sentence three times in a row,” she suggests. “If you have two action sentences, make the third an internal thought or line of dialogue. If you use two internal thought sentences, then break it up with a third action sentence. Variety keeps the pace moving and keeps the rhythm of the prose from being flat or list-like.” Yes, you can have three interior sentences in a row, but if your passages feel flat, see if mixing them up helps.
- Connect the action and the internal thoughts, but don’t duplicate them. Does your protagonist think about their next action and then take this exact action in the next sentence? Boring! “Try to offer new information with each line,” Hardy writes. “If your character thinks how much she wants to cry in one line, don’t have her fighting back tears in the next line. Find another way to show that sadness or give a reason why she’s crying.”
- Don’t forget the power of dialogue and description. Dialogue is action, Hardy says. You can convey your MC’s thoughts with dialogue, which creates forward movement and the potential for conflict, if someone responds to that dialogue. Even having your protagonist talk to herself can break up strings of interiority. Description can serve the same purpose, by giving your narrator something to focus on besides their thoughts. “A strong point of view also brings a character’s voice to it, so it can read like a mix of action and thought–seeing and describing what’s seen,” Hardy explains.
