“It is useful to watch good writers make mistakes. Plenty of excellent ones stumble at free indirect style. Free indirect style solves much, but accentuates a problem of inherent in all fictional narration: Do the words these characters use seem like the words they might use, or do they sound more like the author’s?” (James Wood, How Fiction Works)
WRITING EXERCISE: Disappearing Act – Authority, Access, and Voice in Free Indirect Style
Writing Techniques to Practice:
Mastering free indirect style to blend narrative voice with character consciousness Modulating diction and syntax to reflect character worldview without breaking narrative coherence Avoiding authorial leakage—ensuring language remains rooted in the character’s plausible internal lexicon
500-Word Prompt:
Write a scene (approx. 500 words) in which a character receives an unexpected letter that forces them to confront something they’ve long avoided. Use free indirect style throughout. The letter itself may be summarized, paraphrased, or partly quoted, but the primary action must unfold in the character’s internal and external reactions to receiving it.
The character should not speak out loud for the first two-thirds of the piece. Their thoughts, assumptions, evasions, and justifications must be rendered in a style that reflects their inner life—education, temperament, emotional state—but without slipping into first-person or overwriting.
Their emotional response should shift at least once—e.g., from suspicion to guilt, from dread to longing, from anger to resignation—and that shift should be evident in the tonal and syntactic modulation of the narrative.
Evaluation Criteria:
The narration stays within the bounds of free indirect style: no sudden shifts to first-person or omniscient exposition The voice reflects the character’s cognitive and emotional register, not the author’s Syntax, idioms, and diction modulate subtly as the character’s mood or perception changes The reader can infer the character’s psychology and history through inference, not exposition The emotional stakes rise naturally from within the character, not through external plot devices
Examples of Strong vs. Weak Execution:
Strong:
She hadn’t seen his handwriting in years. That crooked ‘f’—still furious, still somehow ashamed of itself. Of course he wanted something. They always wanted something. She folded the envelope twice, then again. It wouldn’t tear. Not like last time.
Weak:
She got a letter from her ex-husband and remembered how terrible he had been. She felt a mix of emotions. It was hard to know what to do. The author was trying to show she was conflicted, but it didn’t really feel like her voice.
Strong:
A man opens a letter from the IRS. The narration becomes clipped, numerical, full of bureaucratic phrases subtly echoed in his inner thoughts. By the final paragraph, as he starts tearing up bills and muttering about “compliance thresholds,” the diction matches his unraveling grip.
Weak:
The author switches between the narrator’s thoughts and omniscient explanations. The character thinks in literary language he’d never use: “He pondered the irony of fate.” It sounds like a writer reflecting, not a man under financial duress.
Follow-Up Questions for Workshopping or Revision:
Where does the narrative voice feel truer to the author than to the character? What specific words or turns of phrase would this character never use? How does the language change as the character’s emotional state changes? Is the distance between narrator and character consistent, or does it fluctuate? Where could syntax or rhythm be adjusted to better reflect the character’s personality?
Recommended Reading:
Excerpt from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf—particularly Clarissa’s interior monologue preparing for her party. Woolf shifts seamlessly between narration and Clarissa’s consciousness, using syntax and tone that belong to Clarissa without resorting to quotation marks or exposition. Observe how mood and memory color the language without breaking the frame.
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