3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction

Are you using free indirect speech in your writing? This article provides an overview of what it is and how it can spice up crime fiction.

​This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #94

What is free indirect speech?
In a nutshell, free indirect speech offers the essence of first-person dialogue or thought but through a third-person viewpoint.

The character’s voice takes the lead, but without the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, italic, or other devices to indicate who’s thinking or saying what.

It’s a useful tool to have in your sentence-level toolbox because:

1. It’s flexible and can add interest
2. It can make for a leaner narrative
3. It can deepen our understanding of a character

The table below shows three contrasting third-person narrative styles in action so you can see how free indirect speech works:

​Indirect/reported	​Rathbone thought Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was excellent and decided it was time to hang up his deerstalker.
Direct/quoted	‘Time I hung up my deerstalker,’ said Rathbone. ‘That Cumberbatch chap’s doing a sterling job with Holmes.’
​Free indirect speech	​Time to hang up his deerstalker – that Cumberbatch chap was doing a sterling job with Holmes.

It’s also referred to as free indirect style and free indirect discourse.
 
1. Flexibility and interest
Free indirect speech (FIS) is flexible because it can be blended seamlessly with other third-person narrative styles.
 
Let’s say you want to convey information about a character’s physical description, their experiences, and their thoughts – what they think and delivered in the way they’d say it.
 
You could use third-person objective for the description, third-person limited for the experience, and free indirect speech for some of the thought processes.
 
In other words, you have a single narrative viewpoint but styled in different ways. You’re not changing the viewpoint, but rather shifting the distance between the reader and the character. And that can make your prose more interesting.
 
Here’s an example from Val McDermid’s Insidious Intent (p. 14). She begins with a more distant third-person narrator who reports what had been on Elinor Blessing’s mind, and when. Then she shifts to free indirect speech (the bold text). This gives us temporary access to Blessing’s innermost thoughts – her irritation – and her lightly sweary tone, but still in the third-person:

It had been on her mind for days. The last thing on her mind as she let the oblivion of sleep overtake her, the first thought on waking.
     Earlier that morning, she’d groaned at the invasive ringtone from her partner’s iPhone. Bloody cathedral bells. How could such a small slab of silicone produce so much noise? At this rate, she was going to end up as the Quasimodo of the A&E department. ‘Paula,’ she grumbled sleepily. ‘It’s my day off.’

Philip Prowse employs a similar shift in Hellyer’s Trip (p. 194):

Then the interrogation ceased. He knew he should have been scratching lines on the cell walls to mark the passing of time. But what was the point? He wasn’t the Count of effing Monte Cristo.

​2. A leaner narrative
FIS is a useful tool when you want to declutter.
 
Direct speech and thoughts are often tagged so that the reader knows who’s speaking/thinking:
​

• ‘Blah blah,’ she said.
• Blah blah, she wondered.

 
With regard to thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with a reader being told that a character thought this or wondered that, but tagging can be interruptive and render your prose overworked and laboured if that’s the only device you use.
 
Imagine your viewpoint character’s in a tight spot – a fight scene with an arch enemy. The pace of the action is lightning quick and you want that to be reflected in how your viewpoint character experiences the scene. FIS enables you to ditch the tags, focus on what’s going on in the character’s head, and maintain a cracking pace.
 
The opening chapter of Stephen Lloyd Jones’s The Silenced contains numerous examples of free indirect speech dotted about. Mallory is being hunted by the bad guys. She’s already disarmed one in a violent confrontation and fears more are on the way. Jones keeps the tension high by splintering descriptions of step-by-step action with free-indirect-styled insights into his protagonist’s deepest thought processes as, ridden with terror, she tries to find a way out of her predicament:

She tensed in the doorway, holding herself erect, terrified that by moving she would give away her position and feel the wet kiss of a blade, or bone-shattering impact of a hammer.
     Another press of air lifted fronds of her hair from her face. Abruptly, she recalled the window she had found at the back of the house, open to the night.
     Of course. That was the source of the breeze.
[...]
     Was there anything she had forgotten? The Nissan’s keys were in her right-hand pocket. She had the two books from the study.
     That was it.
     Reaching for the deadbolt, she carefully drew it back.
     Breathe in. Breathe out.

​Here’s an excerpt from Lee Child’s The Hard Way (p. 64). Child doesn’t use FIS to close the narrative distance. Instead, he opts to shift into first-person thoughts. Reacher is wondering if he’s been made, and whether it matters:

Reacher asked himself: did they see me? He answered himself: of course they did. Close to certainty. The mugger saw me. That was for damn sure. And these other guys are smarter than any mugger. [...] Then he asked himself: but were they worried? Answered himself: no, they weren’t. The mugger saw a professional opportunity. That was all.

Some might argue that this is a little clunkier than going down the FIS route, but perhaps he wanted to retain a sense of Reacher’s clinical, military-style dissection of the problem in hand.
 
If Child had elected to use FIS, it might have looked like this:
 
Had they seen him? Of course they had. Close to certainty. The mugger saw him – that’s for damn sure. And those other guys were smarter than any mugger. [...] But had they been worried? No, they’d seen a professional opportunity. That’s all.
 
It’s a good reminder that choice of narrative style isn’t about right or wrong but about intention – what works for your writing and your character in a particular situation.

3. Deeper insight into characters
A third-person narrator is the bridge between the character and the reader. As such, it has its own voice. If there’s more than one viewpoint character in your novel, we can learn what we need to know via a narrator but the voice will not be the same as when the characters are speaking in the first person.
 
FIS allows the reader to stay in third-person but access a character’s intimate world view and their voice. It closes the distance between the reader and the character because the bridging narrator is pushed to the side, but only temporarily.
 
That temporary pushing-aside means the writer isn’t bound to the character’s voice, state of mind and internal processing. When the narrator takes up its role once more, the reader takes a step back.
 
Furthermore, there might be times when we need to hear that character’s voice but the spoken word would seem unnatural:

• Perhaps they don’t have time to verbalize (a high-octane escape scene).
• Maybe they’re on their own and talking to themselves isn’t a known trait.
• Speaking out loud would give them away.
• Dialogue would seem forced because a character wouldn’t give voice to the words in real life.

 
FIS therefore allows a character to speak without speech – a silent voice, if you like.
 
Think about transgressor narratives in particular. If you want to give your readers intimate insights into a perpetrator’s pathology and motivations, but are writing in the third-person, FIS could be just the ticket.
 
Here’s an example from Harlan Coben’s Stay Close (chapter 25). Ken and his partner Barbie are a murderous couple bound together by sadism and psychopathy. Ken is preparing for the capture and torture of a police officer whom he believes is a threat:

The cop, Broome, entered the house. Ken wanted to curse, but he never cursed. Instead, he used his favorite word for such moments – setback. That was all this was. The measure of a man isn’t how many times he gets knocked down; it’s how many times he gets back up again. He texted Barbie to stay put. He tried to listen in but it was too risky. [...]
     What more could any man want? He knew, of course, that it wouldn’t be that simple. He had compulsions, but even those he could share with his beloved. What was he waiting for? He turned back toward the house.

This excerpt is from an audiobook. While listening, I could hear how the voice artist, Nick Landrum, used pitch to shift narrative distance.
 
The book’s entire narrative is in the third-person, but Landrum used a higher pitch when presenting the narrator voice. Ken’s dialogue, however, is in a lower pitch, and so is the free indirect speech of this character – we get to hear the essence of Ken even when he’s not speaking out loud.
 
If you’re considering turning your novel into an audiobook, FIS could enrich the emotionality of the telling, and the connection with your listener.
 
A closer look at narrative distance
To decide whether to play with free indirect speech, consider narrative distance and the impact it can have on a scene.
 
Look at these short paragraphs, all of which convey the same information. All are grammatically correct but the reader’s experience is different because of the way in which the information is given, and by whom.

1	Dave glanced at the guy’s hand and spotted the absence of the signature tattoo. It forced him to consider the integrity of the intel he’d been given. Again. And it bothered him. Third-person: A narrator reports the situation and what the character’s thinking. Most distant. There’s shallower emotional connection between the reader and the viewpoint character. The narrator’s voice is more clinical and dominates.
2	Dave glanced at the guy’s hand and spotted the absence of the signature tattoo. ‘Christ,’ he muttered under his breath, not for the first time questioning the integrity of the intel he’d been given. Third-person: A narrator reports the situation and most of what the character’s thinking. First-person: A character reports a little of what he’s thinking. Less distant. The dialogue burst gives voice to the character, which introduces tension.
3	Dave glanced at the guy’s hand and spotted the absence of the signature tattoo. Christ, he thought. Maybe my intel’s been compromised yet again. Third-person: A narrator reports the situation. First-person: A character reports what he’s thinking. Closer. Readers might find italic thoughts and tags disruptive, or believe that such well-structured thoughts aren’t authentic.
4	Dave glanced at the guy’s hand and spotted the absence of the signature tattoo. ‘Christ, maybe my intel’s been compromised again,’ he muttered. Third-person: A narrator reports the situation. First-person: A character shares his concerns out loud. As close as (3) above. Dialogue might seem forced, unnatural, spoken purely to help the reader understand what the problem is.
5	Dave glanced at the guy’s hand. No signature tattoo. Christ, had his intel been compromised again? Third-person: A narrator reports the situation, and a character reports what he’s thinking via free indirect style. We’re right inside the character’s head but there’s no cluttering italic, speech marks or tagging. The free indirect style feels natural precisely because it’s rendered in the third-person and yet it holds the intimacy of a first-person experience offered in (3) and (4).
6	I glanced at the guy’s hand. There was no signature tattoo. Christ, had my intel been compromised again? First-person: A viewpoint character reports the situation and what he’s thinking. Closest. We’re right inside the character’s head, there’s no clutter, and the narrative feels completely natural. However, this only works if you’ve chosen a first-person narrative for this viewpoint character throughout the book, which you might find limiting.

Your choice will depend on your intention. Think about your character, their personality, the situation they’re in, which emotions they’re experiencing, and the degree to which you want your reader to intimately connect with them.
 
Consider the following examples in relation to the table above:

• Is the scene fast-paced and do you want to keep your sentences lean and keen to reflect that pace? The viewpoint character might not have the mental space to articulate fully rounded thoughts or speech because they’re in a fight or trying to escape. In that case, the free indirect style of 5 might suit you. So might 6 if you’re writing in the first person.
• Is the viewpoint character hiding, observing something going on but invisible to those around them? If they feel in command but are taking care to remain unnoticed, 2 might offer you the required tension while enabling you to retain tight control over the narrative via a narrator.
• If your character has the space to think but is panicking, you might prefer 3 or 4. Anxiety can lead people to articulate complex thoughts, even voice them out loud, in the search for clarity.
• If your viewpoint character’s personality is cooler, more detached, you might prefer the emotional disconnectedness of 1.
• And if you’re writing in the third-person, but want the reader to feel intimately connected with the viewpoint character, you might swing back to the free indirect style of 5.

 
Wrapping up
FIS is used across genres, but I think it’s a particularly effective tool in crime writing because of its ability to simultaneously embrace brevity and communicate intimacy.
 
Jon Gingerich sums up as follows: ‘Free Indirect Discourse takes advantage of the biggest asset a first-person P.O.V. has (access) and combines it with the single best benefit of a third-person narrative (reliability). It allows the narrator to dig deep into a character’s thoughts and emotions without being permanently tied to that person’s P.O.V. Done correctly, it can offer the best of both worlds.’
 
If you haven’t yet played with it, give it a go, especially if you’re looking for ways to trim the fat.
 
Further reading

• ‘A beginner’s guide to narrative point of view in crime fiction.’ Louise Harnby, 2018
• ‘The Benefits of Free Indirect Discourse.’ LitReactor, 2012
• Hellyer’s Trip by Philip Prowse. Kernel Books, 2018
• Insidious Intent by Val McDermid. Little, Brown, 2017
• Stay Close by Harlan Coben. Whole Story Audiobooks, 2012
• The Hard Way by Lee Child. Bantam Press, 2006
• The Silenced by Stephen Lloyd Jones. Headline, 2018

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Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.