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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/22043
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/22043
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A simple way is to differentiate the narrative voice. Your narration should be clean, standard, grammatically correct prose, while these narrated thoughts can sound a bit choppier and more like speech.

(Separately, this is much harder to do if your book is in the present tense, so I'm shifting it to past for now.)

> Leeanna had been taken to an unknown room for an unknown reason, though Emma assumed it wasn't so they could give her a cake. She could have been be in trouble. Still, this man needed them. Hurting them would only keep him from getting what he wanted. Best guess, Leeanna wasn't actually being hurt. They _could_ be trying to control her, using whatever method they had to get into people's heads, but even if they were, they thought she was Emma, and whatever they might be doing would be aimed at Emma's powers. Leeanna wouldn't be affected much at all. Probably. Most likely. Really, there wasn't much reason for Emma to be concerned.
> 
> Emma's worry began to dissipate. She took a few deep breaths, closed her eyes, and reached out with her mind. Her awareness rose to the top of the building and then slowly sank, floor by floor, as she searched for the object she'd been assigned to find.

The "Emma assumed" (thinks/understands/etc.) tells the reader that this is Emma's POV, and the speech-like patterns shows that it's narration of thoughts (the thought process).

Original score: 2