All's Fair in the Name of Conflict

In a perfect world, which my novels are supposed to be, I guess, since I'm creating them - internal monologue is reserved for secrets my POV characters don't want to divulge. My strong preference is for short, to the point thoughts that subsequently show on said character's face. Ari, from my first book, Enemy Within, did a pretty good job with that - internal monologue that was focused and specific and usually about something she didn't want anyone else in the universe to know. Most of the time that worked out for her. She managed to hide all kinds of hurtful things from her family. But then the hero came along and could guess she was keeping secrets that he subsequently took great joy in prying out of her. Her family eventually got the full story, too, because secrets kept mean the character isn't learning her lessons.

In that story, anything Ari thought was worth saying or it worth hiding. If she thought something, it was my job to push for her to say it aloud. I needed a compelling reason to keep it shut up inside her head. I've tried to keep that criteria in mind for every subsequent story and character. Some of them cooperate more than others.

In the book I just turned in to my editor, the heroine has abandonment issues. As a result, she doesn't engage with other people much. It's too threatening. That puts her in her head a bunch. I'm hoping the thing that keeps that from being hopelessly self-indulgent is that she ends up with an internal eavesdropper - a passenger sharing headspace. It was an odd balance to attempt to strike - her wanting to keep secrets, but being stuck with  no place to hide them. At that point, why shouldn't every thought that comes into her head come out her mouth? I guess when the editor reads the book, I'll know whether or not I came anywhere near getting it right.

I don't hate internal monologue in any way. I think it's necessary in moderation. For me, it should serve two purposes: 1. It should tell me something I don't already know about the character and 2. It should reveal a goal, a secret or a wound. But for the story to move forward, those internal bits of information can rarely stay internal. Unless you're writing tragedy.

Most of our stories deal with character arc, yes? Our characters change and grow in order to overcome the story conflict. Or die trying. No one wants to change. We generally have to be forced into it. You know the old saw "When the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing, you'll change."

Internal monologue that remains internal creates no stakes. There's nothing at risk. With nothing at risk, there is no impetuous to change.

So somehow, that internal has to be forced to the surface via word or deed. And then, there's some argument to say why not do away with the internal and focus on word and deed? Eh. If the internal monologue heightens tension, all's fair in the name of story conflict.

Me, Myself & I

by Allison Pang

I'm going to split this topic up a bit  - since I'm writing both novels and an online comic, I find I treat inner monologues differently depending on what I'm writing for.

And yeah, I just had to take a shot at Hamlet there - because let's face it, a soliloquy is just an internal monologue spoken aloud. (But only because actors haven't evolved to think their angst at the crowd yet.)

However, whereas a soliloquy is often necessary in a visual medium like a play or a movie, a writer still needs to be careful of how they use it.

Simply stating all the important facts and backstory to bring an audience up to speed might work for a live audience - "I remember when my shiftless, vagabond brother lost his sanity and his masculinity when he tripped over an overpass and fell into the open cage of a lion, pulled by a nearby passing circus...etc. etc."

But it also runs the risk of sounding contrived.

I tend to write in a fairly deep 1st PoV - so for the most part I try to keep things fairly organic. For A Brush of Darkness, I pretty much just drop the reader straight into the story. I don't explain a whole lot of what's going on because I'm telling the story through Abby's eyes. If she's unsure of something, she mentions it...but she can't explain what she doesn't know. And if she *does* know something - well, she doesn't always spend much time thinking about it.

(Some people liked this, some people didn't - I'm the first to admit it doesn't always work and there were some things I could have done better, but there it is.)

In the current WIP, it's all 1st person present - which means a lot of the inner dialogue is rather free-form. We're getting Magpie's stream of consciousness in a lot of ways, but again - because it's in first, we're only getting information filtered through the grasp of her own experiences - but then, that's the beauty of writing, isn't it?

In a lot of ways it's like holding a mirror up to the character - but as a writer, I can either reflect back what I know is true about the character...or I can purposely flaw it - show the character as he/she sees herself - and then it's up to the reader to decide what's true or not.

(As a side note, I tend to avoid sentences like "I wondered about X." or "I felt Y."  If you're already in deep 1st, that sort thing feels an awful lot like telling to me. Just write what the character wonders about directly.)

For Fox & Willow, I initially had NO internal dialogue at all. I'm a firm believer that with comics, the art is

what is needed to carry the majority of the story. I think that moving from the novel medium to a visual medium can be difficult for writers at first. After all, we're used to writing pages of expositions and description - but to write too much internal monologue becomes redundant in the extreme. Mentioning that your character is sad is a bit of  a space waster if the character already LOOKS sad on the page, if that makes any sense.

Now, like I said - I had no internal dialogue at first. It looked okay on the script when I wrote it out, but I did decide to add a bit here and there once the pages were drawn up.

The page on the right was one of these - I wanted to convey that Willow was hungry and probably not thinking too clearly. (And was freaking cold and miserable.) Aimo was easily able to convey how Willow feels via the visuals, but again, giving just a nudge of information here or there was enough to bring it all together.

(As a medium, I'm still learning - sometimes less is more...but sometimes it's also too little. I'm hopefully getting better at it as I go.)

Oh, did I say that out loud?

by Linda Robertson


"Some weeks, this blog is a pain in the ass." My eyes widened and I scanned around the Word-Whores meeting room. Some of the other bloggers were glaring at me. "Did I say that out loud?"

I asked the question, but I knew the answer. I had. I'd typed the damn quotes around it, yanno?

Not only had I shown myself to be a complainer, I could see that I'd offended them. I hadn't meant to. It's like that old Dan Hill song...sometimes the honesty's too much. And I was worried. They're writers too, after all. They know that by revealing these concerns within my own thoughts, those sentences conveying what's in my head without the quotes, I was showing the reader that I felt insecure.

I wished I had the guts to be all up in their faces. I wished I could have had an internal monologue more like: Yeah. Screw them. This blog IS a pain. I'm just saying what everyone is thinking. They should be thanking me.

But I'm just not geared to build myself up like that in my own thoughts. But a conceited character would. And they'd say such things all embraced by quotes, too. You bet your ass they would.

Maybe it would be better if I showed my character to be sweet and likable instead of an offensive complainer, they would all forgive me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be irritating. It was just an example, really. To make a point, yanno? I love this blog. I truly do. Sometimes life gets ahead of me and it is hard to get the blog written in time--Y'all know what that's like, right?--but some wacked idea will strike and I manage to meet my obligations. We're good, yes?"

They nodded.

My shoulders relaxed and I sighed. Yeah. These were my buds. My pals. My Word-Whore Posse.

Navel Gazing: It's All About Me and My Lint

Navel Gazing: The excessive use of internal monologue. 

You may have noticed a theme to the topics of the past weeks and my stance on them -- too much is a turn-off. The same holds true for POV characters who disengage from their stories to focus on the world festering in their belly-button.

But private thoughts are so fascinating!


Everything in writing is a grand game of balance. Striking the balance is subjective, naturally. As the author, I ought to be aware when a monologue has crossed the threshold from showing internal conflict into a description of carbon-dating lint.

Ought.

Circling the writer-verse is the editorial advice to color code your nearly perfect WiP based on key components such as narrative, dialogue, monologue, backstory, action, reveal, climax, and resolution. Back the document view out to 20% and inspect the Jackson Pollock.

How's the color distribution? Did the infernal internal monologue interrupt an action sequence? Did it overtake a scene? A chapter? Is it peppered throughout or oozing clumps? Random tiny splotch?

Your literary painting will reveal your penchants, propensities, and verily your style. Whether or anything needs to be changed largely depends on your genre. Certain genres are more accepting of -- even dependent on -- internal monologues. Others demand the characters shut their pie-holes and do something.

What's Too Much?

When your character is telling instead of showing -- that's the glib answer.

I tend to think of the "right" balance being akin to chatting it up at a cocktail party. The more I talk about me, me, me, the more people I repel. When I encourage others to speak, I attract more and more people to me.

Much like an author wants their story to attract readers.

Do you, dear readers, have ways of determining when your characters are being too self-indulgent? Please, share your methods!

 
photo originally found here: http://www.factfixx.com/2011/09/21/weird-words-omphaloskepsis-navel-gazing/

Turning the Private into the Public - Games with Internal Monologue

It's getting to be summer here in Santa Fe and I'm having a lovely time getting our patios all set up for long hours of enjoyment.

This week's topic is Internal Monologue: What it reveals about your POV character. I admit I felt a little frisson of pleasure when I saw it, though I'm quite sure I didn't suggest this one. See, I'm the Queen of Internal Monologue.

Or, at least, my heroine from the Covenant of Thorns series, Gwynn, is.

And yes, she's the POV character - which means the story is told from her point of view. It's first person, which is a very close perspective. The reader is essentially riding around in her head, hearing her thoughts. It's a fun way to tell a story, because we discover aspects of the new world she's been plunged into - Faerie - along with her. We are also there when she figures things out, though a smart reader without Gwynn's particular emotional biases or blind spots might get there ahead of her.

A huge part of the story, however, is informed by her internal monologue.

I would have guessed this concept came from theater, but a bit of slapdash Google research reveals that it began as a literary device.

The term interior monologue is often used interchangeably with stream of consciousness. But while an interior monologue may mirror all the half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character’s consciousness, it may also be restricted to an organized presentation of that character’s rational thoughts. Closely related to the soliloquy and dramatic monologue, the interior monologue was first used extensively by Édouard Dujardin in Les Lauriers sont coupés (1887; We’ll to the Woods No More) and later became a characteristic device of 20th-century psychological novels. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/290310/interior-monologue)

 It is notable that it's a more recent device. Jane Austen's novels, for example, are interesting in that they have practically no internal monologue. The reader gathers how the people think and feel from their actions and what they do and don't say. But they don't ruminate on their feelings.

Gwynn, however, is a thoughtful person. And by that I mean, full of thoughts. She's an academic, a scientist, and she's trained herself to be analytical, to take notes and examine the world from an objective standpoint. As many "in-their-heads" people do, her thoughts run All The Time. It's nearly impossible for her to shut it off.

Amusingly - to me as an author, though it's infuriating for her as a character - in Faerie, her thoughts can be overheard. Particularly by her would-be lover and nemesis, Rogue. If she's not careful, which can happen when she's either emotionally involved or really interested in something - which amounts to the same thing, really - she gets "loud."

And he calls her on it.

It's a fun way to play with her subtext, which should be available only to her and to us, her readers and voyeurs. Instead of being private, it becomes public, at least to Rogue, who uses every advantage he can to sneak inside her motivations and direct them towards his own ends.

Or maybe he just wants to understand her better.

At any rate, it's one of those fun author-games to play, that often leaves me chortling as I wiggle in my seat.

Who says an author's life isn't glamorous??