By Ashley Goodnow
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo bands together a motley group of thieves and criminals for a jailbreak heist set in a fantasy world that’s bleeding with magic and racial strife. As the story unfolds through different point of views, it creates a strong sense of each character’s individuality and allows readers a glimpse into each of their backstories.
The found family trope is one of my favorites, and heist plots seem to regularly use it. But does this mean that these outlaws and con artists, who know all too well the consequences of misplaced trust, easily buddy up and confide their deepest fears and compromising motivations with each other?
No, definitely not.
The whole crew of crows all keep their pasts very close to themselves as well as any motivations that other characters in the crew might find traitorous. Most of these details are crafted into the subtext of dialogue between the characters so that while the characters don’t tell each other everything, readers can still understand the whole picture. Dialogue is two or more characters exchanging information, bracketed in quotation marks. Dialogue also includes everything surrounding the characters’ conversation: body language, actions, and most importantly internal thoughts. Just like how tone of voice can change the meaning of words, body language, actions, and internal thoughts can add a layer of subtext to any conversation between characters.
Let’s focus on how to layer internal thoughts into dialogue to add more subtext.
These internal thoughts might be brief and merely hint at or reference something that happened in a character’s past to show readers that there’s something going on that will be explored in further details later, like in this example from Chapter 3, pages 57-58:
“Thank you for sparing me that discomfort,” Van Eck said disdainfully. He opened the door, then paused. “I do wonder what a boy of your intelligence might have amounted to under different circumstances.”
Ask Jordie, Kaz thought with a bitter pang. But he simply shrugged. “I’d just be stealing from a better class of sucker.”
Readers don’t know who Jordie is, but the internal thought shows them that he’s someone Kaz knows and that there’s something complicated about their relationship. While the internal thought doesn’t go into great detail about it here, it gives the readers a promise that things will be explained later or that hints will be given throughout the progression of the story until readers have the full picture.
Not all internal thoughts have to be a bread crumb trail though. They might be lengthier and go directly into what happened in a character’s past, like during a conversation between Inej and Nina in Chapter 16, pages 187-188:
Inej was quiet for a while. “You saw my scars.” Nina nodded. “When Kaz got Per Haskell to pay off my indenture with the Menagerie, the first thing I did was have the peacock feather tattoo removed.”
“Whoever took care of it did a pretty rough job.”
“He wasn’t a Corporalnik or even a medik.” Just one of the half-knowledgeable butchers who plied their trade among the desperate of the Barrel. He’d offered her a slug of whiskey, then simply hacked away at the skin, leaving a puckered spill of wounds down her forearm. She hadn’t cared. The pain was liberation. They had loved to talk about her skin at the House of Exotics. It was like coffee with sweet milk. It was like burnished caramel. It was like satin. She welcomed every cut of the knife and the scars it left behind. “Kaz told me I didn’t have to do anything but make myself useful.”
In this example, Inej thinks about a specific event that happened in her past instead of just briefly referring to it, but she doesn’t confide the whole experience to Nina. In fact, throughout this conversation, her internal thoughts often make references to her past that she doesn’t voice. Her personality is mistrusting and reticent, so it would be out of character for her to say these out loud. These internal thoughts allow readers to know more about her and her past while keeping her in character.
Of course, internal thoughts can show readers more than just a character’s past. They can show readers anything that a character might be hiding or anything that would be stiff or unnatural to say out loud, as they do in Chapter 18, page 205:
“I don’t want your prayers,” he said.
“What do you want, then?”
The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.
He shrugged and turned away. “To die buried under the weight of my own gold.”
Inej sighed. “Then I’ll pray you get all you ask for.”
Here, Kaz is trying hide that he likes Inej, and most of his internal thoughts throughout this conversation pertain to what he doesn’t say about his feelings for her. This shows readers, without telling them, what he feels and keeps his dialogue from being out of character or too on-the-nose. It also sets up an inner conflict he has between different things that he wants which will affect the story later.
Internal thoughts can clue readers into what a character’s really thinking despite what they might say, providing information about what’s being discussed that a character might loathe to share with their listener. This not only keeps the characters in character, but it also allows the dialogue to flow more naturally since in real-life, people rarely say everything that they mean or want to say. Layering internal thoughts into dialogue can help the scene multi-task and move both the big story (plot) and small story (character arcs) at the same time.