The Interior
Monologue point of view is one of the most powerful devices an author has to
reveal the inner core of a character. It requires sinking deep into a
character, living in the moment, voicing thoughts uncensored by political
correctness or culture. In other words, it reveals the basest emotions. It is a
great way to give a lot of backstory in a few words, but it requires real
effort on the part of the author to sink into the character and become that person.
You must lose yourself and all your inhibitions and let go. Sometimes it is called, “stream of
consciousness.” That means there are no
pronouns like I or no tags like ‘he thought.’ It is the character talking to himself,
revealing truths he’d never voice aloud.
I used this device
in a short story in a December blog about two years ago. The title is “Marilyn
Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” The scene is on a sidewalk in Chicago. Henry is
waiting for his ride. It goes like this:
“I've lost my mind. I'm standing in a puddle of slush on the
sidewalk, in Downtown Chicago, waiting for my ride and shivering my ass off,
because I've been sucked into to another Christmas cocktail party. Hell, I just
came from an office party.
“I’m a pushover that’s what. I hate these things. The food is
lousy, alcohol gives me a headache, and I stand around trying to look like I'm
having fun, but nobody wants to talk to me. Bud wants me to meet this woman
he's gone ape over--the broad he's going to marry if he can talk her into it,
and, OK, I owe him. He’s new in the office and the only one who’s tried to
be friendly in a while. The rest of those losers all took Marilyn’s side in the
divorce and now they just ignore me. Learned a lesson there. Four years
of marriage is more than enough. Shit, if the guy wants me to go to this party
to meet this woman, well, what the hell.”
So, what have we
learned about Henry in one short paragraph? He’s unpleasant, opinionated, friendless,
divorced, doesn’t like women and abused his wife, at least verbally. He’s
lonely and wants to please Bud. You also suspect that the author doesn’t like
him either and he’s being set up to get his comeuppance. You're curious, you’ll keep
on reading.
The entire story is Interior Monologue, in Henry’s point of view.
You can read the rest in my blog archives. http://joycezeller.blogspot.com
IM is a good way
to get in a lot of backstory quickly, to establish a character. Since it
involves intense emotion, it is best used in extreme situations, like the
innermost thoughts of someone about to be murdered, or commit murder, or a
character experiencing an extreme situation.
I used IM
in another way in Accidental Alien. The
scene: a seed pod from outer space, has just germinated, in a forest on Earth, producing
a young plant that will mature, in a short time, and become a being that looks
like a man, but is really a plant. At this point he has only hearing, smell,
and an imbedded artificial intelligence.
“His hearing, especially acute, detected sounds of movement—some
slight vibrations in the ground, accompanied by the approaching sound of
rhythmic crunching and tearing. A new scent caught his attention. It smelled
oddly fecal. What was it? What were those succulent sounds, wet and juicy, like
plants being ripped from moorings? He interpreted the "something" as animal,
chewing and eating vegetation, and he was directly in its path. The greenish
odor of freshly bruised leaves caught in his senses, alarming him.
“No, this couldn't happen. Terror ripped through him. He
was going to be consumed as food. Images of rending and grinding by jagged
teeth threw him into a panic. He wanted to live, to grow into his pre-destined
form, whatever that might be, and explore this strange place.”
IM is much like
internalization, where you interrupt dialogue or the progression of the story
to let the reader know what your point of view character is thinking and
feeling. The following are excerpts from near the end of Maddie’s Choice. The scene is during a gunfight between drug
dealers and the Feds. Maddie is
handcuffed to a corral fence when her captor is shot. This is internalization:
“Blood, obscenely,
brilliantly red, welled in thick globs from his shoulder. She couldn’t look
away. She’d written scenes like this, never imagining the awful color of real
blood from a mortal wound.”
If I had used IM
here, it would read like: “Blood everywhere. How could one body have that much
blood? The gorge flooding her mouth, dribbled down her chin, burning her lips.
Hold it together. Can’t black out.”
The use of IM here
would have distracted from the flow of the action, but you can see how much
more dramatic it would have been.
Next time: First
Person, present, past and future.
