Looking Inwards

The brain, like all the organs in the human body, is an incredible thing. Twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred-and-sixty-five (or six) days a year, it’s working flat out, doing all kinds of stuff from operating how we move to keeping us breathing, from filtering out annoying background noises to controlling how we feel. It’s always thinking. In every second of every minute of those twenty-four hours that make up a day, it’s thinking several thoughts at the same time. Even when we’re asleep, thoughts are being thunk. Even when we’re in the deepest state of contemplative meditation, there are thoughts there, however much we’re trying to breathe ourselves into a vacuum of cowbells and daisies.

Sometimes, those thoughts are practical thoughts. Sometimes, they’re analytical or random or contemplative. Sometimes, they’re shaded with joy or sadness. Or anger. Or humour. But there are always thoughts going on.

We might not always be fully aware of the thoughts we’re thinking. And sometimes our brains are more cluttered than at other times. But there really is no getting away from all those thoughts and thoughts and THOUGHTS.

Thinking is an ever-present part of being a human. Yet, I often come across stories as an editor where a writer doesn’t seem to have given any thought at all to this important issue of thought. Sometimes, this works. But mostly, it feels as though there’s a missing layer to the story. Our characters are (mostly) human. And humans (as should be pretty well hammered home by now) are constantly having thoughts. Therefore, I thought it was high time (prompted by an excellent suggestion from the wonderful Ruth Brandt) I tackled this in one of my monthly craft articles.

If we’re going to be posh about it, the thoughts a character thinks (along with the feelings they feel and the emotions they experience) are referred to as “interiority.” It’s inside stuff as opposed to the outside stuff of body language and speech. Interiority is four dimensional. It incorporates everything that’s going on in this present moment, but it also incorporates memories and dreams. It’s multi-faceted (sometimes we’re thinking multiple thoughts or feeling multiple things all at the same time) and it’s tonally shifting (through all of those shades of analytical thought, random thought and contemplative thought I’ve already mentioned). It’s short-term (fleeting thoughts) and also long-term (character-defining hopes, motivations, traumas and fears).

It’s also truth.

What I mean by this comparison of interiority to truth can perhaps best be explained by comparing interiority and exteriority. The latter is the appearance of truth but the former is the actual truth. How a character presents themselves is rarely 100% aligned with what’s going on inside their head. Most people are wearing some sort of mask most of the time. Their body language doesn’t always reflect their feelings. Their inner monologue (this is another posh way of referring to all those thoughts being thunk) doesn’t always align with what they say to those around them.

The telling dilemma

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people at this point thinking that interiority is all very good in real life, but in creative writing, we must obey the golden rule of “show don’t tell.” Interiority, by definition, breaks that “rule”, so surely it’s “bad.” My counter-argument to this is that, a bit like the rings in “The Lord of the Rings”, there are rules and then there are rules – “show don’t tell” is a lesser rule, subservient to the one all-powerful rule that “rules them all.” And that rule is the rule of writing your story in the manner that creates the strongest effect.

What we gain from interiority is the ability to delve inside a character’s mind and really bring them to life in all their complexities. We get to explore their reaction to everything that’s going on around them. We get to know a sense of their backstory as well as what might be lying in wait for them in their possible futures, both the hoped-for futures and the ones they fear.

Another thing we gain from interiority is the possibility of exploring internal tension. Most stories gain narrative momentum from the tensions at their heart and often these tensions are internal rather than external. Often an internal tension can be much more resonant than an external one because it gets to the essence of what makes us human. That’s yet another thing we gain from exploring a character’s interior world. We gain the possibility of creating a strong connection between character and reader, that sense of resonance that takes a story and gives it a heart.

So, yes, interiority might break the rule of “show don’t tell”, but in my opinion, it more than makes up for this “sin” (don’t get me started on what I think of “show don’t tell” as a hard-and-fast rule or we’ll be here all day!) through everything we gain.

When to use interiority

The question of when to use interiority leads me back to that all-powerful writing rule I’ve stated above. We should use interiority when it best serves our story. This, of course, is a complete cop-out. But it’s true. In some stories, the whole story might work best told from an internal angle creating a monologue that unspools from beginning to end like in A Person's Essence Feels the Smallest (Jennifer Wortman | Wigleaf) or in my story Life at the Colliery, 1832-1845 (Matt Kendrick | FlashBack Fiction). In other stories, the amount of required interiority might be much more light touch. There’s also a dollop of subjectivity at play. Some readers love spending time wallowing in a character’s thoughts. Others would prefer it if a writer got on with the narrative a bit quicker. So, there’s really no definitive answer. But there are things to consider nonetheless.

First, it’s probably almost always true that the more mundane thoughts don’t serve a story as well as the bigger ones. It’s also probably true that in most stories, we want to delve into interiority at the most important moments, when the narrative needs space to breathe, when it makes sense to bring time to a pause before speeding up again. This might be:

• To explore the POV character’s reaction to the changing nature of the world around them; the things they see, feel or hear.

• To reveal a difference between what a character is saying and what they’re thinking, or to reveal an extension of something they say that they don’t share out loud.

• To delve into their emotions at times of mounting tension, disappointment, anger or joy, pausing over the moments of change within a story.

• To access memory (thus exploring context / backstory) or expectations (what possibly lies ahead)

When interiority is a dangerous place

There are, of course, dangers when it comes to interiority just as there are with any aspect of writing. One of those dangers relates to perspective. We start exploring the inner monologue of one character and suddenly we want to delve inside the minds of every character on the page. This is possible if our chosen perspective is very omniscient, but in first-person, close third-person and in less usual perspectives like second person or first-person plural, we only have one viewpoint character where we can access the interior monologue – everyone else’s thoughts and feelings are obscured by perspective. They can be guessed at by the POV character but they can’t be known.

Another danger when it comes to interiority is pushing things too far. There’s far more going on inside our brains than is going on in the outside world. Right now, for example, I’m sitting at my computer typing this article. Nothing particularly exciting is going on. But my brain is full with the sound of a bird, a churning to-do list, reminding myself to water my pet cacti (Nora and Dora), and pondering what I’m going to watch on the telly later on. Because I’m currently waffling on about interiority, that becomes relevant, but if I were writing about metaphors or the mating habits of greater spotted woodpeckers, it wouldn’t be relevant at all, and its inclusion would knock the pacing of this article / story off course.

And when it’s an opportunity

On the other hand, we come back to the issue of no interiority at all. As I’ve said above, sometimes this works. But creative fiction isn’t a screenplay. What we gain in writing stories over writing a screenplay is this very ability to delve inside a character’s mind. We are robbed of motion and soundtrack and the rich nuance afforded by actually hearing a voice, but what we gain is the ability to describe smells and tastes and thoughts and feelings in a way that can only be hinted at in a TV show or movie. No interiority at all often means we aren’t exploring a story in all its potential layers.

A final thing to ponder is how interiority allows us to properly explore the rich specificity of what makes our POV character utterly unique. What is going on inside their head? What are their hopes and fears? How do they feel in this current moment? What do they think of the people they are with? What do they think about the place they are in? The more detailed an impression you have of your character’s inner world, the more effective any interior moments will be. The things we see and hear are different from person to person. How an avocado tastes or how an onion smells also differs. Looking up at the sky, I might describe the oncoming storm as a foreboding of grey, but a farmer hoping for rain might describe it as a blessed relief. When a character thinks in similes or metaphors, this can again tell us so much about who they are and how they see the world. On my Glorious Words course, I use the example of a man comparing his sense of sadness to an empty tub of raspberry ripple ice cream. Someone else might compare the same sense of sadness to a wilting sunflower or an uncared-for grave.

Final thoughts

Once you have all of that, you should be cooking with gas. All you have to do then is choose the right thoughts at the right moments to include on the page, which is… okay, it’s still hard, but it’s hopefully easier if you know your character inside and out, if you get a deep sense of their history and motivation, if you keep in mind your chosen perspective, if you hone in on those key moments of drama and change, if you think about how your character reacts in those moments, if you properly define the internal tension swirling around in their soul.

Taking things further

Want more on interiority? Read Interiority Complex (Rebecca Makkai | Craft Literary) or Indirection of Image (John Thornton Williams | Electric Literature).

Recent publications

The lick (MoonPark Review)

Wittgenstein sits at the piano after the long cacophony of the war (Bulb Culture Collective)

Best of the Net nominations

I’ve been wonderfully lucky to receive two Best of the Net nominations in the past month from Ghost Parachute and Emerge Literary Journal. You can read the nominated pieces here:

Yellow is the colour of make-believer (Ghost Parachute)

Trevor (Emerge Literary Journal)

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