Everyone's Guide to Wattpad

Thinking Your Character's Thoughts

The third element is your character's thoughts, emotions, and reactions. This is the element which makes your character your character.

As I've said, elements weave with each other. This will weave with character development the most, but that doesn't mean it won't affect the others too. Where should we start?

What Are These Thoughts?

These thoughts, emotions, and reactions should be screaming at you! What is triggering your character to smile? Why is your character depressed? Without these things, your character will be a heartless robot, and unless your story is about a robot falling in love, you need some kind of character in them. What am I saying?

This gives your character some CHARACTER. It tells us who the character is.

Let's start with the thoughts.

Thoughts

Your character should be thinking. If it isn't thinking, then it might as well be dead. You need to give it some thought. How is it looking at the world? What is its opinion on the situation?

Make sure their thoughts match up with their true personality, not an ego or facade. Would an evil villian steal candy from a baby, then say in their mind, "What a cute little baby?" No, they wouldn't, so be sure their thoughts are reasonable and believable. This will give the reader a taste of the world, too. Thoughts can tell most of the story as well, so make sure they are carefully planned and applied.

I also want to highlight the fact that the character's thoughts are often conveyed through the narrator's POV. I see a lot of stories write explicit thoughts in italics just like this, which is completely fine, but I think the most successful writers incorporate explicit thoughts into the words that the narrator is speaking to the reader implicitly. 

Emotions

Emotions are just as important. They make your character real. Real is good; they bring your readers into loving (or hating) your characters.

To apply emotions, you must have experienced them for yourself then put yourself in your character's shoes. You know your character better than anyone else.

Experience is the first step. What do you feel when you are angry? Anger? Duh, but what does that feel like? When explaining emotions, you have to show the reader signs of that emotion. Don't pull a cliche phrase either. Use your own examples, not examples from a story you just read.

Before we move on, I will explain how to get experience. Easiest way? Having a life.

Don't live on your laptop or phone trying to write 24/7. You need to go out and live a life. That's where good writers get their experiences, then apply them to their stories. Life. It's the step before writing. Let's move onto the second step, shall we?

Emotions tell us what is going on inside the character's head. Sometimes we can visually see them and sometimes we don't. But emotions need to have a purpose. A sad character being sad just for the sake of being sad is a sad excuse for being sad. Emotions need to further the plotline or invoke a reaction which does the same. 

After you have experienced these emotions, you should apply them to your story. Put yourself in your character's shoes, then apply them accordingly.Think of how your character would REACT to an event, which brings us to our final point, reaction.

Reaction

The step after emotion is reaction. Sometimes reaction doesn't come and sometimes emotion doesn't show. Nonetheless, emotion and reaction go hand-in-hand.

First off, you must create an event. This event has to affect the character. Create the emotion, then the reaction.

This is a lot easier than it sounds. Just put yourself in your character's shoes then think how would I react if I were him or her. That's the fun part of writing. You get to be every character. You can see every character.

That's the end of this lesson, and I sincerely hope this will help you out in your writing progression. -OrangeGuy