Interior Dialogue

In the last post, I discussed the reasons for sticking with one Point of View (POV) to allow the reader to get to know your main character. One of the prime ways is through interior dialogue. Just so we’re talking the same language, an example is: “I can’t do this,” Cecelia thought. “I’ll be humiliated.

How it’s useful

Most writers make great use of the main character’s thoughts to move the novel forward. Here are some ways you can use it to create the effects you want.

Make the character more likeable/despicable

The protagonist’s actions can be quite appalling or even just questionable but you keep the sympathy of the reader through his thoughts. “I have to do it. I can’t let him down.”  Or “No, no! It wasn’t supposed to happen this way!”

Similarly, you can show the character being nicey-nicey all the while having contemptuous thoughts. “Yes, I’ll donate to your charity, you windbag.” Or “Why doesn’t somebody tell her she looks a drowned cat?”

Of course, you can’t have this conflict between thoughts and actions go on forever. Sooner or later, you need to show a critical action by your POV character which is true to his thoughts. Another way to resolve this is to show the protagonist acting in a way which confirms that he is lying to himself. Either option allows the reader to come to her own conclusion on her feelings about the character.

Explain motivation

In old stage melodramas, this is the part where the villain twirls his moustache and announces to the audience what he is planning to do and why. You have a much easier way. The villain can think it. Arthuro’s eyes drew down to slits. “Not yet,” he thought. “Not now. It needs to hurt more.”

Having said that, and once again, you need to show the villain acting on his motivation to make the story credible.

Bind the reader to the main character

If your reader knows your hero’s inner most thoughts, it can increase her affection for or interest in the protagonist. As in real life, understanding a person’s vulnerabilities and secrets, exposing the soul beneath the façade, creates and sustains an emotional bond.

I want to give you an example of this but I’ve concluded that I can’t do it in a paragraph. Getting to the soul of the character needs the context of his life and events which affect it to be credible. In fact, a novel.

So access to the protagonist’s thoughts can be an important and useful tool

Do I have to use interior dialogue?

You don’t have to, of course but things can go one of two ways if you don’t.

A tour de force

Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is brilliant. He writes about cowboys—not ones for lots of mental angst, you would think—but he never enters the mind of the main character. And yet, he communicates what the protagonist thinks and feels through his actions. Amazing achievement.  Similarly with Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, we know Brodie through her girls and their parents but never from Brodie herself.

A total bust

But avoiding interior dialogue can also result in a novel which feels superficial. Without it, the reader may feel she doesn’t get to know the hero. The novel can also feel as if it is floating at the surface of the truth it is trying to get at.

So, you don’t have to use it but prepare to have a dazzling way to achieve what interior dialogue does.

But there are some real downsides to this technique. Next post.