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Introspection, the fiction-writing mode used to convey a character's thoughts, may appear to be simple in published fiction, but the issues facing an author during the writing process are numerous:

* Punctuation

* Attribution Tags

* Tense

* Person

* Direct vs. Indirect Introspection

* Verbs of Thought

* Narrative Distance

* Paragraph Treatment

* Consistency

PUNCTUATION. Over the years, various forms of punctuation have been used to delineate introspection. From time to time, writers use quotation marks to identify a character's thoughts. This practice causes confusion, especially since quotation marks are the accepted means of identifying dialogue. As stated by Renni Browne and Dave King, in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, "Never, ever use quotes with your interior monologue. It is not merely poor style; it is, by today's standards, ungrammatical. Thoughts are thought, not spoken."

More commonly, introspection is denoted with italics. But this practice is losing ground to presenting thought in plain type. According to Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, "Don't use italics or quotation marks for thoughts. However, if a character is recalling dialogue, put the recalled dialogue in italics."

ATTRIBUTION TAGS. Just as dialogue is tagged, where necessary, to identify the speaker, introspection may be tagged with a clause to make clear who is doing the thinking. For example:

Introspection with a tag: Maybe Bart will listen to reason before someone gets hurt, thought Cisco.

Introspection without a tag: Maybe Bart will listen to reason before someone gets hurt.

But as stated by Browne and King, "Whenever you're writing from a single point of view - as you will be ninety percent of the time - you can simply jettison thinker attributions. Your readers will know who's doing the thinking."

Then again, there are times when a passage just doesn't flow right without a tag to provide rhythm and pace.

Also regarding tags, Nancy Kress in Dynamic Characters writes, "And, of course, I don't have to tell you not to write, He thought to himself.' Except for telepaths, there is no other possibility."

TENSE. A character's thoughts may be narrated in either present tense or past tense. Combined with the choices of first-, second-, or third-person narration, they offer a mind-boggling array of choices, with advantages and disadvantages to each. As a practical matter, though, most stories are written in past tense using either first person or third. However, even when a story is narrated

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