: Can you occasionally transition from the close third person to a first person thought? I'm writing a novel in the close third person POV. I want to shift occasionally into first person thought,
I'm writing a novel in the close third person POV. I want to shift occasionally into first person thought, as in the example below. Does it seem awkward?
He gave up his rent-controlled Los Angeles apartment, put his car in storage, liquidated his bonds and stocks (the corporate world was generous to valuable employees) and took off to explore the simple life. Remote places with unassuming populaces, unwired and nonjudgmental. Exotic food and exot—esoteric women. A few drugs, a lot of booze. Living on the cheap. Escape from the rat race USA into village languor. Ah, Amalia, how I miss you, but you chose sensibly, and Agostino was a better man.
“It wasn’t a snap decision.†Clark nibbled on his bottom lip.Â
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Seated throughout the café, ignoring their drinks, customers were glued to their laptops and phones, swiping and inputting. Even the people in groups were more engaged with their devices than each other. As if in reprimand, the café’s many speakers blared a song contrasting the carefree days of youth to the drab responsibilities of adulthood.
When he stroked his phantom beard, shaved off a week ago, he recalled Amalia’s fingers probing the growth. His Portuguese girlfriend had called it “boêmio,†unkempt, gray and lopsided, grown on foreign soil beneath freedom’s broad flag. Now back in America, with a job search underway, he had to clean up his act. Not without regret, he’d laid off the heavy drugs and even gotten his medical marijuana certificate. In LA after the new administration had reinstated the Fedlax Program, those green dispensaries had sprung up on every other block.
From his seat, Clark had a view of the entrance, parking lot and sidewalk, which suited his appetite for observation, the wellspring of his chosen but abandoned career. Outside the window, a man he had seen every day during his two-week job search at the café appeared Despite the balmy weather, the man wore a watch cap as usual, from which stringy gray hair hung to his shoulders and stuck to the red-flannel bandana about his neck. He shouldered two bursting garbage bags and walked head down as if into a hard wind.
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@Gonzalez219
Very close third person normally presents the thoughts of the point-of-view character as they appear to that character.
The only problem with that sentence may only be a factor of this bit appearing in isolation. It appears, as an excerpt, to a distant summary of what he did, not in close third at all. The bit of dialog at the end makes it seem that it is, in fact, his reflection on what he did. May need to be more clearly close in context.
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@Kristi637
This will work fine! What you actually do is showing the thought. You could put it between quotes and add 'he thought' but that would really disrupt the reading! A publisher usually will put the words in italic to signal that it's a thought.
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