Area II · Narrative Distance & Point of View
Free Indirect Discourse
Unattributed interior voice
Fuse third-person narration with a character's own thoughts—no “she thought” tags.
Definition & mechanics
Free indirect discourse fuses third-person narration with a character's own idiom and thought, dropping tags like “she thought” or “he wondered.” The narrator's grammar (past tense, third person) persists while the vocabulary and judgments belong entirely to the character.
A curiosity
It is the quietest magic trick in fiction: the narrator vanishes and the character's voice speaks through third-person grammar. You feel the mind without ever being told you are inside it.
Example
Before (tagged)She looked at the invitation. “This is a disaster,” she thought. She wondered how she could possibly refuse.
After (FID)She looked at the invitation. This was a disaster. How could she possibly refuse?
Copy-ready prompt
Copyable Prompt
Apply the concept of Free Indirect Discourse (blend third-person past-tense narration with the viewpoint character's own diction, syntax, and judgments; remove all thought-attribution tags such as “she thought,” “he felt,” or “she wondered,” letting interior voice surface directly in the narration) to the provided text and rewrite in place. Apply the edits directly to the file as a clean, production-ready deliverable. Output ONLY the revised document text without embedding revision notes, changelogs, or meta-commentary in the file itself—put any explanations in your chat response only.