I've been working on a story for some time, and have been having a recurring problem. My viewpoint character has two types of internal dialogue, one where he describes the events that are happening, usually in past tense, and the other where he gives his opinion on the actions of other characters, usually in present tense. I'm having a hard time balancing the two. I've usually been breaking up his descriptions of actions and thoughts by inserting spoken lines in between, but it feels awkward at times. The protagonists thoughts are typically cynical internal remarks on the actions or behaviors of the character's around him, while his descriptions are just normal narrations, but both are used as narration.
It's hard to explain, so here's a case similar to the problem I've been having, using the system I've been using to determine thoughts and speech.
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(I reached out and grabbed her hand to keep her from falling. Unfortunately for us, my footing was equally unstable as her's and we both rolled down the hill, landing side by side on our backs at the bottom.)
"Girl" You really suck at rescues.
(Oh really do I? Maybe if you didn't weigh so much I would have succeeded. Graciousness never hurt anyone you know?)
At least I tried to help.
This just feels painfully awkward to me and I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about correcting it without doing some thing I really don't want to do. The simplest solution I can see would be to make the physical descriptions a third person narrative, but I really want to avoid that. I feel it takes something away from the protagonist doing that.