Were You Planning on Thinking That to Someone Else?
I think we can all agree that this is one of the greatest songs of the 20th century:
I see this construction a lot. In fact, I’ve been guilty of it many times over:
““I’m not sure what to make of this banana in my tailpipe,” he thought to himself. ”
We see this so often, it likely doesn’t even register. Well, dear reader: IT REGISTERS WITH ME.
Admittedly, there are instances of people/beings thinking to other people/beings/machines, etc. Here’s one:
And here’s another nifty one:
In my opinion, these are two of the best films ever made (though Stephen King would disagree on the latter), and two of the best examples of telepathy/brain sharing in the movies. If you’re too young to remember these, FERGAWDSAKES, drop everything and watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (yes, that is Ricardo Montalbán’s ACTUAL CHEST), and The Shining. ASAP.
My 2017 novel, Nuala: A Fable, features telepathy as well, but I’m up front with it on page one. Remember page one of The Metamorphosis? Essentially, Kafka says, “Here’s the deal, reader. You’re going to find out on page one that a man has turned into a giant cockroach overnight. I’m not explaining it to you. Go with me or don’t.” In my book, I say to my reader, “This imaginary world is ruled by a giant puppet girl. Take it or leave it.”
Happily for me, a lot of readers took it. Some didn’t go there with me, and oh well. Can’t please ‘em all, and I refuse to die trying.
THAT SAID, all of these examples are from pop culture. Most of us can’t read minds or send our thoughts to anyone but ourselves. We also can’t receive the thoughts of others.
So, here you sit, writing your poem or memoir, or elimination cooking show script, or whateveritis you’re writing, and you see the words, “I thought to myself.”
STAWP. Is there anyone else that person/character/you could possibly be having that thought at? [I invite you to correct my shitty grammar on that last “sentence”. I deserve it.]
Similarly, we might have a character “chuckling to herself.” If there’s no one else in the immediate vicinity, there’s no one else she could be chuckling to. If we wanted to see women chuckling to themselves, we would just spend an hour here:
Like @assholeparents over on IG, you could lose an entire morning looking at Women Laughing Alone with Salad at the hilarious salad jokes their salads have just saladly told them.
Take a hitch at your book like so: search “to herself/myself/himself/themselves,” etc. When you see it, is there any chance that that phrase could go? Um:
Yep.