To be honest for me there are several levels of thought. I think the deeper that I go the less organized the thoughts become in regards to speech and writing. So when someone says direct thoughts or indirect thoughts I still have to know where the character's head is at that moment.
For the words to come out in a meaningful pattern it has to be the more surface type thoughts that usually amount to what is often referred to as rehearsal thoughts.
I often have inner dialogue where I have an argument with someone in my head and that might involve a number of dialects depending on my own and theirs and how much that might factor into the fictitious argument. The interesting thing about this type of thought is what I consider as its contribution to the feeling of dejavu. Because you have already had this discussion on your head and some of it is playing out now how you thought it would.
The point here is that these thoughts are probably some of my most structured and could likely make sense as direct thoughts. Picking out other thoughts probably would start to become senseless on paper or even in speech. If I walked down the street muttering those thoughts, people would choose to walk on the other side of the road or maybe turn and run the other way.
Now how would this correlate to writing. In some ways...not too well.
If your character were thinking the deeper thoughts and trying to express those on paper it would be a fruitless effort. So I'd guess that thoughts expressed in writing are closer to those rehearsal thoughts. Which makes sense because this is fiction so the thought process is not necessarily reflective of actual thoughts.
On the other hand, if the character is one to always drift off with vacant eyes that stare in a fixed direction for long moments.(Something I'm often caught doing while working on a piece of writing.) Then those thoughts might actually be quite organized, because its like taking the bits and pieces from deep down and organizing them in some manner that will make sense on paper. However if this character is in the middle of an action scene that type of thought is going get him squished.
I think a lot of people have nailed it in that this is all a part of Narrative Point of View and deciding if you are in direct thoughts or if you are in indirect thoughts. Also it might be influenced by the closeness of your narrator to the character. The closer you are the more likely the thought might be a reflection of actual speech when in direct thoughts.
I think that there might be an area in Omniscient POV where you would want to be careful about how you might cross the line from the narrator's word usage to a character's usage of words and restrict it to moments when you want to get up close and personal with that character(and probably not use it if your Omniscient Narrator is expressly objective).
I found this to be quite instructive.
I first met Chris in the Pub, when a like minded group of scifi/fantasy writers from the Chronicles got together to discuss anything and everything. I saw by the way he danced lightly down the stairs that he had must have have either dance or martial arts training.
"Yar, Chris. Does 'ee taken dancin' lessons?"
I first met Chris in the Pub, when a like minded group of scifi/fantasy writers from the Chronicles got together to discuss anything and everything. I saw by the way he danced lightly down the stairs that he had must have have either dance or martial arts training.
"Hi Chris. Have you trained as a dancer in the past?"
Because the second one reads better than the first(to me); however if the character speaks in the manner of the first then I would expect him to speak that way. And one could argue then that his narration above the speech should match that speech; however I'm not sure how much of that dialect I could take if it were to be throughout the whole narrative.
Definitely food for thought.
