An Introduction to Interior Monologue
Interior monologue is the fancy literary term for a character's thoughts in a novel.
In real life, the stream of thoughts we all have running through our heads at any given moment is more often referred to as internal monologue, though the two terms mean precisely the same thing.
While we are dealing with definitions, a couple of closely-related literary terms are...
- Stream of Consciousness. This is where an entire novel, or at least large chunks of a novel, takes the form of the central character's thoughts. Such novels tend to be light on plot, so I wouldn't recommend this device. A good example is James Joyce's Ulysses.
- Soliloquy. This is where a fictional character voices his or her thoughts out loud, as in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech. Talking aloud to yourself at any length is frankly strange, so always keep any interior monologue unspoken unless you have a good reason not to.
Why Is Internal Monologue Important In Fiction?
The ability of readers of fiction to hear a character's thoughts directly is one of the huge advantages of novels and short stories.
You can't hear what is going on inside a movie character's head.
You can't hear a person's thoughts in real life, either, unless of course they voice them out loud. (Even then, you don't know if they are being altogether truthful.)
Sure, you can guess what a person is feeling and thinking inside by their body language, their facial expressions, and so on. But the only time we get to hear another person's thoughts word for word is when we read interior monologue in a novel or story.
This ability to experience what life is like inside a fictional character's head, hearing everything they think and feeling everything they feel, is one of the main reasons people read fiction.
When movies were invented, it was supposed to mark the beginning of the end of novels. The same thing was true when television came along a few decades later. But it never happened.
People continued to read novels and they probably always will.
Now, I am not arguing that written fiction is superior to fiction on the big and small screens, because films and television clearly hold many advantages over books. But books have their advantages as well, and I would suggest that the three biggest ones are...
Novels Are User-Friendly. You can't easily watch a movie in the dentist's waiting room. Plus, films are best seen from start to end, whereas novels are easy to dip in and out of.
Novels Fire the Imagination. In a movie, the fictional world is created for you and projected onto a screen. In a novel, you can create the world in your mind's eye and picture something more attuned to your personal tastes and preferences. When we picture a beautiful landscape in a book, for example, we will each have slightly different mental images; when we see a beautiful landscape in a film, we are all stuck with the same image.
Novels Contain Interior Monologue. Like I said, it is only in novels that you can get inside another person's head and experience life from a totally different perspective.
The third of these advantages is, I believe, the fundamental reason why written fiction will never die. Put simply, you can establish a far more intimate relationship with a character in a book than a character on a screen.
Sometimes, you even lose your heart to a character in a favorite novel.
And it is all because you have direct access to what that character is thinking.
All of which is a long way of saying that interior monologues matter. Thoughts are important in written fiction because it is the only place you can find them, so if you are planning on not making much use of what is going on inside your protagonist's head and writing in a more distant and cinematic style, think again.
"You know people better in a novel than in real life because you know what people think - not just what they say they think."
- Nina Bawden
Interior monologue is one of the best tools in your toolbox, and this string of articles will tell you everything you need to know. More specifically, I will look at...
- The two varieties of interior monologue
- Internal monologue mechanics
- Interior monologue is a 1st person novel
The Two Varieties of Interior Monologue
In a nutshell, the two kinds of interior monologue you will find in a novel are:
- Long interior monologues
- Short interior monologues
A short interior monologue tends to happen in the midst of a scene. Because scenes are generally characterized by talk and action, you don't want to destroy the pace with too many lengthy thoughts from the viewpoint character.
That is why you tend to get just a line of thought here and a line of thought there - enough to directly connect us to the viewpoint character's mind but not enough to disrupt the flow of the scene.
All other clues about how the viewpoint character is feeling can be presented indirectly - that is, through their words, actions, facial expressions, and so on.
Here is an example of a short interior monologue from Nick Horny's novel Juliet, Naked. The viewpoint character, a man called Tucker, is having a talk with his son...
Jackson was in his room, bashing the hell out of the buttons on a cheap computer game. He didn't look up when Tucker opened the door.
'You want to come back downstairs?'
'No.'
'It'll be easier if the three of us talk.'
'I know what you want to talk about.'
'What?'
'"Mummy and Daddy are having problems, so we're going to split up from each other. But it doesn't mean we don't love you, blah blah blah." There. Now I don't have to go.'
Jesus, thought Tucker. Six years old and already these kids can parody the language of marital failure.
'Where did you get all that from?'
'Like, five hundred TV shows, plus five hundred kids at school. So that's a thousand, right?'
'Right. Five hundred plus five hundred makes a thousand.'
Jackson couldn't prevent a tiny flicker of triumph crossing his face.
'OK. You don't have to come down. But please be kind to your mother.'
Here, we get one short paragraph of interior monologue ('Jesus, thought Tucker. Six years old and already these kids can parody the language of marital failure.')
It helps us to experience what it feels like to be standing there in the father's shoes, but it doesn't affect the pace of the scene significantly. If you re-read the passage but leave out the monologue, the effect is cooler and more distant.
A long interior monologue tends to happen during the slower bits in between scenes - what I call interludes (see this article on plotting the novel's middle for more on scenes and interludes). During an interlude, a breakneck pace isn't necessary, and so having direct access to the character's every thought for a few sentences or paragraphs or even a few pages is not a problem.
Also, it is natural for a character to do the bulk of their thinking in between scenes...
- During the scene, they are too busy doing things and saying things, and reacting to things being done and said to them, to have the time for a lengthy internal monologue.
- Once the scene is over and they can pause to draw breath, they have plenty of time for a good long think. Plus, of course, they will have plenty to think about, given that the scene just ended will probably not have gone according to plan, and they must now decide what to do next.
I am not saying that all interludes consist of characters thinking. Sometimes an interlude between scenes can be a simple "Two days later..." But where you do have lengthy internal monologues in a novel, it is generally better to have them in the calm period between scenes.
Here is an example of a long interior monologue (or the very beginning of one), again from Nick Hornby's novel Juliet, Naked...
On the way to the airport, Jackson chatted about school, baseball and death until he fell asleep, and Tucker listened to an old R&B mix-tape that he'd found in the trunk. He only had a handful of cassettes left now, and when they were gone, he'd have to find the money for a new truck. He couldn't contemplate a driving life without music. He sung along to the Chi-Lites softly, so as not to wake Jackson, and found himself thinking about the question that woman had asked him in her email: 'It isn't you really, is it?' Well, it was him, he was almost positive, but for some reason...
And off the character goes on a lengthy interior monologue...
Novel writers can keep these longer internal monologues going for several pages if necessary. You are not disrupting the flow of the narrative because not much is happening anyway (in this case, the character is simply driving and listening to music while his son sleeps beside him).
And that is all there is to it.
Any internal monologues in the middle of a scene will generally take the form of one-liners, while the internal monologues in the interludes can run on for pages.
Long interior monologues are easy to handle...
- You start with some narration, just to show the reader what the character is doing (in the case of the example above, the character is driving and listening to music).
- Then you launch into the monologue itself, perhaps introducing it with a phrase like "he thought about..." or "she wondered if..." (Hornby wrote that the character "found himself thinking about...")
Short, one-liner interior monologues in the middle of a scene are trickier, simply because you need to make it clear to the reader that this particular sentence in the middle of all the talk and action is indeed the viewpoint character thinking.
To do that successfully - like a professional novelist - you need to understand the mechanics of short interior monologues...
Next Step: Internal Monologue Mechanics...
