#WritersCoffeeClub July 22: Do you write your characters’ thoughts, or let their actions speak for themselves? Why?
My instinct is mostly to do an external #PointOfView (PoV) with just the actions and this is often the case with first drafts, but in the final cut I often pull in closer and write with a more internal PoV. I've actually been told by a beta-reader that my external (third-person objective) PoV was too distant in some scenes, making the characters' words and actions incomprehensible, and I did notice significant improvement in clarity and impact in these scenes by rewriting in third-person internal. In other scenes I kept the third-person objective, so it really depends on the nature and requirements of the scene.
A big exception are my short stories that maintain a tight first-person PoV, where the readers are told everything in a very close voice. This is where unreliable narration and biases get really fun 
It's still external for other characters' actions and events taking place in the world, just heavily filtered by a consistent viewpoint. In fact I wonder if this might be the more "honest" external PoV that makes no pretense at objectivity with the invisible narrator of third-person objective.
The "objectiveness" of so-called third-person objective is something that should be questioned in print as well as in video, IMO. We're pretty wise to how choices like editing, angles, distance, and screen time make a difference in the reception of visual media. Why isn't this interrogated more with print media? With limited/internal viewpoints we talk about unreliable narrators--how reliable is the author who purports to write in an external viewpoint? With no editor, producer, or viewpoint character to point to, we tend to be a little too quick to accept the impartiality of the invisible, intangible "eye in the sky," or wherever the author chooses to place it. Is it because the author makes these choices and we accept the author and their choices as authoritative, as it were, for the fiction? @writers #WritingCommunity
@writers @ljwrites i guess part of what i’m working around here is just suspension of disbelief? somewhat similarly i recall an actor from a show i watched commenting that he hates getting complements on the technical details of his acting from fans, because if they were noticing that then he wasn’t able to get them fully immersed in the world of the show. and i’m not sure i take as extreme a stance as he does (its fine to appreciate something for its artistic merits without being fully immersed, and one can certainly read/watch something multiple times through different lenses also!) but there is a valid question as to how much analytical/critical thought do i want to be doing by default and for me at least it’s hard to accept the world as “real” if i’m simultaneously pulling apart the craft of how it was written and questioning what they chose to show me
@Satsuma @writers I think we do plenty of that kind of critique already, though. Much like we can question or critique a show's choice for the camera to focus on a male character's face at the moment a female character is dying or suffering (e.g. discussed in relation to "woman in the fridge"), it's fair game when a similar thing happens in external third-person viewpoint. It wouldn't be a question so much of "did she actually die or not?" though that kind of trick is also possible and common (such as by cutting away for suspense), but more interestingly of "what meaning does this invisible narrator's framing and choices make out of her death and where/how do we place the narrator?" The same can go for omniscient PoV as well.
@writers @ljwrites there are certain fanfiction critiques that implicitly critique this (eg. missing scene/episode tag fics, outsider POV) by highlighting things the artist chose to leave out or downplay and those are often very interesting and fruitful creative avenues! but you still can only work with what they chose to show you, ultimately, even in those more resistant frameworks