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tension, and widen the scope of the story." In each of the five elements of a story (character, plot, setting, theme, style), a character's thinking can make major contributions.

CHARACTERIZATION . Nancy Kress has obviously put a lot of thought into this subject. In Dynamic Characters, she observes that "What your character thinks about helps to create his personality for the reader. So does how he thinks: in what words, with what sentence structure, with what level of grammatical correctness." Kress also notes that "You can even extend this technique to include reproducing regional or ethnic dialect in a character's thoughts, not just in her dialogue." And "Your character thinks about certain things, in a certain way, because of who he is." This includes attitudes and beliefs.

According to Kress, in Writer's Digest, August 2003, "To deepen your characters, ask yourself what your character is likely to think about whatever he is doing or whatever is going on around him. Then include those thoughts whenever you want to sharpen your reader's awareness of what this person is really like."

Repetition throughout the story of what the character thinks and how he thinks and solves problems confirms the character and provides consistency of characterization. Observes Kress in Writer's Digest (March 2005), "Throughout your story, you need to keep in mind how your character sees the world and translate that point of view consistently . . . ."

Introspection may also be used to validate a character change that occurs within the story. According to Kress, "One good way to convey this is to have your character talk to himself differently after his change than he did before it."

PLOT. Introspection may occur anywhere in a story, from action scenes to quiet reflection. A scene may include lots of physical fireworks, but it may also include much more. First of all, for a scene to be believable, the character must be properly motivated. And what better means of understanding a character's motivation than through his own thoughts?

The smallest structural component of plot is stimulus and effect. Action leads to reaction. But as Jack M. Bickham explains in Scene & Structure, "If you stop to think about it, even the most obvious stimulus-response transaction requires some internal messaging in the mind and body of the receiver of the stimulus." Except in the most knee-jerk reactions, stimulus is followed by an act of mental processing, or internalization. Often a character's reaction

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