When writing, it is important to create experiences where the writer pulls back and reflects on thoughts, feelings, or opinions.  It can be defined as a snapshot that takes place in a character's head.  When used appropriately, they allow for the reader to be drawn into the character's life and for the character to become lifelike.  A thoughtshot is needed when the story becomes too rooted in the physical and the reader may benefit from some thinking.  Barry Lane offers the following examples of times when thoughtshots would be beneficial.

• An important decision is coming up and your character needs to weigh the options
• A character is lying and thinks of the consequences
• A song triggers a memory
• A character says something he or she doesn't mean and thinks about it.
• A matter of conscience weighs heavy
• Something must be figured out.

Below are 2 examples of times when a writer takes the opportunity to create such an experience for the reader.
 

   Unpacking even just the few things in her brown suitcase, always seemed a waste of time to Gilly.  She never knew if she'd be in a place long enough to make it worth the bother.  And yet it was something to fill the time.  There were two little drawers at the top and four larger ones below.  She put her underwear in one of the little ones, and her shirts and jeans in one of the big ones, and then picked up the photograph from the bottom of the suitcase. (1987, p.9)

   The jolts that took the pilot had come, and now Brian sat and there as a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming roar of the engine - a strange feeling of silence and being alone. Brain was stopped.
   He was stopped.  Inside he was stopped.  He could not think past what he saw, what he felt.  All was stopped.  The very core of him, the very center of Brian Robeson was stopped and stricken with a white-flash of horror, a terror so intense that his breathing, his thinking, and nearly his heart had stopped.
   Stopped.
   Seconds passed, seconds that became all of his life, and he began to know what he was seeing, began to understand what he saw and that was worse, so much worse that he wanted to make his mind freeze again.
   He was sitting in a bush plane roaring seven thousand feet above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack and who was either dead or in something close to a coma.
   He was alone.
   In a roaring plane with no pilot he was alone.
   Alone. (1987, p. 12)
 

Snapshots also allow the reader to be drawn into the story and for the story to come to life.  Snapshots are used when the writer zooms in and looks closely at details.  It is especially important to pay attention to more than physical details.  Students often focus only on sight, but remember that there are 5 senses which play a part in creating a scene or a mood in a story.  Challenge your students to appeal to several of the reader's senses rather than focusing only on one.  In the example below, look at how the mood is created by the details provided.
 

   I went inside.  The smell of hot cocoa flowed throughout the house.  The fire crackled in the small red and brown bricked fireplace.  My mother was stirring the beef soup.  My two year old brother was quietly playing with wooden blocks that had little letters carved in them.  My father sat playing a slow, sad song on his beautiful country guitar.  I took off my parka an hung it on the brass coat rack.  My mother gave me a bowl of hot beef soup and cocoa.  The broth felt warm running down my throat.  The feeling of warmth spread all over me.

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