There’s this new term I’ve come across in the fiction craft world: interiority. I had never heard of it until last year when I took Mary Kole’s online class called Crafting Dynamic Characters. Great class.
As far as using it as a writing craft term, I don’t know who coined interiority, but Kole built her course around it. I found other articles about it, all recent. One thing I’ve learned: it’s important.
The good news is that we as writers have already been practicing interiority. We just didn’t know it. By naming it, we can be more deliberate about it.
What is interiority?
Kole defines interiority as the inner life of a character: thoughts, feelings, reactions, and inner struggles.
Savannah Gilbo also talks about interiority a lot. She says this about it: “Interiority is on-the-page access to a protagonist’s psyche as they process information in an interesting way. It’s your character’s thoughts, feelings, memories, impressions, opinions, reactions, and inner struggles expressed on the page.“
So, when I write a scene, I include the surface, objective incidents. Interiority is everything that’s not objective or on the surface. Interiority is inside a character’s mind as expressed through their thoughts and actions.
And apparently, I need to include a balance of surface stuff and interiority. Maybe even have more interiority than surface stuff. Depends upon the scene.
And apparently, interiority must go deep into a character’s psyche. Each inner thought and reaction should be more than just cliche. A character’s thoughts and reactions should be unique to that character.
What is an example of interiority?
First, here’s the opening scene of K.M. Weiland’s novel Wayfarer. Written in the third person point-of-view, this scene shows the protagonist, Will Hardy, rushing down a road. That’s on the surface. But his feelings, his interiority, are in bold italic:
“IN THE HAMLET of Affery, folk cherished the plague.
Will Hardy was not one of those folk. In all truth, he held no belief whatever in a plague he’d never had sight of in all his life.
That was why he ran, head up, arms pumping, directly towards the source of it.
After last month’s barley harvest, the fields lay in barren contentment, even with his feet flinging soil clods. The sun burnt through the crisp autumn breeze and heated his face. He was belated, and considering what awaited him, that was far worse than any fabled plague.
He reached the stile in the midst of the tumbled stone wall. In one stride, he leapt the three steps. The second stride would have been no difficulty-save for the singularly lovely face that distracted him from the corner of his eye. He caught his toe on the bottom step, and from there it was top over tail into the road.
In a flurry of green skirts, the girl scarcely halted before tripping over him. “Oh!”
The thought of her falling atop him had him flushing-and then flushing the harder because he was flushing.
A golden goddess, she was-clean and sparkling in a wide-brimmed straw bonnet tied off under the slightest of dimples. She could not be more than eight and ten-no more than a year younger than he.
A small oaken chest thumped into the dust at her feet, and she hastened to right it. Still bent, she looked up from beneath her hat brim. Dark lashes highlighted wide, slightly almond eyes. And weren’t they the smokiest of blues?”
Here’s the opening paragraph of the short story Fjord of Killary by Kevin Barry. It is written in first person point-of-view. Interiority is in bold italic.
“So I bought an old hotel on the fjord of Killary. It was set hard by the harbor wall, with Mweelrea Mountain across the water, and disgracefully gray skies above. It rained two hundred and eighty-seven days of the year, and the locals were given to magnificent mood swings. On the night in question, the rain was particularly violent—it came down like handfuls of nails flung hard and fast by a seriously riled sky god. I was at this point eight months in the place and about convinced that it would be the death of me.”
How can I practice interiority in my writing?
- Take a page or two of a favorite scene and print it out. Highlight everything that is a subjective thought, feeling or reaction of a character. See what the balance is between what is what isn’t interiority.
- Write a short scene in which a character reacts to a shocking announcement on the news. Don’t name the emotion. Show it through how they feel on the inside. What are they thinking? What are they saying? Try to have them say something different from how they feel on the inside. What actions demonstrate how they feel? Try to make the action more than a cliche. Make the action as unique as possible to that character. Instead of she frowned at his insult say she tilted her head and smirked at his insult. Doesn’t the latter give you more insight into her character?
I’ve just scratched the surface on interiority. So, dig a little deeper. Here are some good articles I found:
- How to Reveal Your Character’s Inner Life on the Page
- What Is Interiority? An Interiority Definition, and Why It Matters
- Indirection of Image: Revealing the Interiority of Characters
- How to use Interiority to write a compelling novel
- Character ‘interiority’ and clichéd physical reactions | Science Fiction & Fantasy forum
- Fiction’s Inner Landscape: Irresistible Interiority in The Journals of John Cheever
- What is Interiority?
- What Film Cannot: How interiority saves fiction
- What the hell is interiority and how do you get it?
- Showing, telling and “interiority”
I also highly recommend Mary Kole’s course on Crafting Dynamic Characters. It’s available at The Writing Mastery Academy and at Udemy.
Photo by Odonata Wellnesscenter: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-sitting-on-sidewalk-226166/
Andrew M. Friday 
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