One of four basic types of narrative communication. Free indirect discourse is a narrational strategy that makes liberal use of free quotation; the narrator steps into (and out of) a character's mind. In effect, what the character would be thinking or saying is expressed in the third-person past tense, rather than in the first-person present tense. In Emma, for instance, the narrator sometimes uses language readers could assume to be Emma's, without marking that language graphically as Emma's (with italics or quotation marks). Free indirect discourse can be further differentiated as free indirect speech or free indirect thought.