Displaying Emotions

Wow, it certainly has been a long time since I came here. Hopefully I'll be getting on here more regularly again, I certainly have been missing it.

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about the portrayal of thought in different forms of writing. Have you ever noticed when a viewer turns to another and asks, "What do you think she's thinking? Why did she do that?" Well, obviously the two viewers are both watching the movie for the first time and obviously cannot get inside the actor's head, because it is a screened film, and the actor clearly is not the portrayed individual.

I guess this is one place where a writer carries the benefits. Sure, a screenplay has to be written before it can be morphed into a film, but a writer of a story has to create something that will continue to be simply that - a written work. But they truly have a magical tool here, because they can either write a character's thoughts in italics or somehow portray their thoughts through emotions portrayed or actions taken. In a movie, the character literally has to say something along the lines of "I'm thinking..." unless they are JUST THAT GOOD at portraying their thoughts through their actions that they can take for the camera's eye.

This message is more of a rant for myself, because I'm working on this short story with a character who has a severely developed case of paranoid schizophrenia. I will not tell you which story this is, just in case you ever decide to read my work. If you knew this about the character before reading it, then the ending would be ruined. Even though I haven't told you which character actually doesn't exist yet. :-)