How to Write in Free Indirect Style

Free indirect style is my favorite form of third person point of view. It is a narrative style that combines the benefits of first and third person. Here’s why I prefer to use it in my novels…

But first, if you want more information on Point of View in Stories, don’t miss my full article on the subject.

The advantage of the novel.

Free indirect style Storytelling can be accomplished through a wide variety of media, and technological advances make that more true with every passing year.

As digital media like television, movies, and streaming services captivate audiences today, you might wonder how and why the novel has survived. The reason is that every medium has its advantages over the others.

The novel uniquely allows writers to explore the internal conflicts of characters.

A television show or movie can’t deliver the thoughts of a character without voice over or clever graphics. Visual media has other advantages over the written word, but books are the best for bringing us close to the deepest levels of a fictional person.

That is why they remain such popular and powerful methods of storytelling.

First person point of view and internal conflict.

First person has many benefits (which I detail in my article on Point of View in Stories). Chief among them is the ability to maximize the advantage of the novel—that is, the closeness between the reader and the characters’ inner lives.

This point of view gives us a narrator who is a character intimately involved in the events of the story. We see those events, the other characters, and the fictional world through the perspective of that character.

And we become keenly familiar with their internal conflicts over the course of the book.

First person is therefore an ideal choice for its immediacy and its narrow field of focus on the psyche and emotional journey of the protagonist, which is the main advantage of the novel as a storytelling medium.

But it also has its limitations.

There are stories that call for more perspectives than that of just one character. First person restricts us to one narrator, because adding multiple first person narrators is clunky and confusing for the reader.

This begs the question, Is there a narrative style that can deliver the closeness of first person with the flexibility to switch viewpoint characters?

Free indirect style explained.

Third person is the most popular POV in fiction today. It allows the author to have more flexibility and to switch between viewpoints, usually with simple scene and chapter breaks.

However, third person’s limitation is that it creates more narrative distance between the reader and the characters.

Luckily, free indirect style was created to solve this problem. It is a combination of first and third person, with both the intimacy and immediacy of first, and also the flexibility of third.

There are two narrative entities in free indirect style: the third person narrator (the writer) and the character (or multiple characters, if you rotate between them with scene breaks).

The characters “speak” their thoughts directly to the reader in the narration. Instead of the author’s voice on the page, the reader hears the characters’ voices.

Functionally, free indirect style works exactly the same way that first person does. The reader enjoys direct contact with the characters, which creates that same deep interaction with the internal conflicts of the people in the story. However, the writer is still using third person, so they can switch between viewpoints at will.

Elmore Leonard, my favorite author, was the master of this technique. Read his classic crime novel, Get Shorty, for a clinic on how to use free indirect style.

How I use free indirect style.

Or check out my novels. Free indirect style forms the basis and foundation of my narrative prose. I love writing in my characters’ voices.

They are lowlife scumbags, who come up with ill-fated schemes to make illicit fortunes. Then there are the law enforcement professionals tasked with catching those crooks. My own narrative voice is NOT more interesting than theirs. How could it be?

So, I set every scene in the perspective of a character. The narration in that scene comes directly from that person, in their voice. The reader doesn’t hear me at all.

As a reader, I find free indirect style to be the most immersive POV, because it lets me forget that an author is involved in the book. I feel like I’m with the characters, without a writer in between us. They give me their thoughts in real time, as we encounter the story together.

An example.

Here’s a passage from my second novel, Mr. Moneybags. It is set in the viewpoint of a character named Reggie, a twenty-four-year-old car thief. Note that the narration is in his voice. It utilizes his rhythms of speech, his ideas of correct grammar, and his turns of phrase…not mine.

Reggie half listened to Tommy on the way to the airport in the dead of night. Half listened as they rolled their beat-up ’99 Chevy Lumina through rows of parked cars in the lot farthest from the terminals and with the least amount of security, Tommy saying this place wasn’t bad for finding cars. If you were careful. Like the time Butch’d had him steal a Mercedes S-Class, the big silver one on the showroom floor, by the windows. Reggie thought that was all well and good, but the lot didn’t have an M6 tonight, and then he saw the yellow LEDs of an airport cop pulling in for his shift. Meant they couldn’t linger without drawing suspicion. So, what good had Tommy’s story done them? 

They checked the South Park area next. Reggie half listened some more, as Tommy told him the SouthPark Mall was a decent spot during the day, but not now. Reggie wanted to ask, Then why were they there, if it was pointless at night? But didn’t, preferring to get himself ready, man, get hyped up for doing the job and proving himself, not just hearing Tommy go on and on about how great he was.

We get Reggie directly telling us his thoughts about the job, the present situation, and his rival on the auto-theft crew, Tommy. I’m not narrating this section…Reggie is.

That is the power of free indirect style.

Summary.

Let’s review:

The novel is the best storytelling medium for examining the internal life of a character.
First person point of view brings us closest to a character’s internal state, but limits us to one narrator.
Third person point of view gives us the flexibility to switch narrators, but distances the reader from the characters.
Free indirect style combines the advantages of first and third person, while also eliminating the disadvantages. The reader is close to the characters, but the author can switch viewpoints with a scene or chapter break.
Narration in free indirect style uses the viewpoint character’s voice, not the author’s.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it!