Keep your opinions to yourself! Interiority and how to use it better 🌸

Had to share these little gems as I ‘see’ them glaring at me from the page this morning.

I feel my writing has sometimes verged on an opinionated style that is actually not pleasant to read. While interiority is essential for us to get to know a character and what makes them tick (she bit her lip while she watched him walking across the carpark – he had no idea she was there, nor how hard her heart was beating) … if text verges on judgmental, I think it will grate on the reader, and there may be a better way of illustrating a point in a scene.

For example:

Badly managed roads soon gave way to a more structured surface on the approach to the city.

is an actual sentence in my novel; it’s been there since I typed it some weeks ago. I read back now and can ‘hear’ somebody’s opinion, the assumption, the speculation that maybe the local council there ignore mending roads. Maybe they do, but is that relevant to my novel?

I’ve changed it;

Poor road surface soon improved as the suburbs of Milan drew closer.

Only a subtle change but I’ve stuck to a fact rather than typed an opinion. I hope you agree, that this second option is far better as it allows the reader to make their own mind up as to why the road surface is bad, I am not patronising the reader by telling them what I think… I’m simply sharing Martha’s observation. I feel this second sentence is more sophisticated somehow?

Much of what I’m learning on the course is about stripping away all the unnecessary wording.. less is more, and personally for me the pandora bracelet has a beauty all of its own without a single charm attached!

Must dash … got a scene to engage with xx