In an excerpt from Writing Interiority: Crafting Irresistible Characters, published on Jane Friedman’s blog, Mary Kole discusses the importance of interiority. “A lot needs to be conveyed in a story, from the most superficial ideas to the most profound, and character is the lens through which everything is channeled,” she says.
Broadly, interiority is a character’s thoughts, feelings, expectations, reactions, and inner struggle. It is used to convey emotion, drive the plot, and demonstrate character growth. This information can be portrayed at four levels of narrative depth.
- Narration: The reporting of events without reaction or interpretation, as if the character is a security camera, seeing the scene with no specific slant. There is generally very little or no interiority in narration.
- Interpretation: Interpretation happens when a character experiences a scene from a specific emotional or intellectual POV. Generally, the reader is given thoughts, feelings, and reactions.
- Extrapolation: Extrapolation is interpretation in motion. A character finds meaning in conflict or event, perhaps by remembering something from the past, changing their opinion about something, or making a decision. Usually reserved for big moments, extrapolation may find your hero asking questions or examining their priorities.
- Subsumation: Subsumation occurs when your character self-reflects and engages their inner struggle. New information may alter their sense of self or cause them to grow or change.
“By using the tool of interiority, you are adding emotional context for what your character is experiencing in the moment (and outside of it, too, as they remember the past and wonder about the future),” Kole says. Sometimes, narration is enough, but you add interpretation, extrapolation, and subsumation, you create layers of depth, meaning, and reader attachment.
Interiority helps you reveal your hero’s emotions and true motivations, but how do you know when to use it and how much? Kole says the right time is when you want to draw your reader’s attention to something. “The more time, description, reaction, and emotion you lavish on a story element, the more a reader will believe that this thing, person, event, or idea is important,” she writes. “Spotlight moments in the plot are major turning points, instances of character change, events that alter the trajectory of a character’s objective, motivation, or need, and other places where character, plot, and the novel’s big-picture theme intersect.”
Establishing character is another good opportunity for interiority. “As a character’s mind changes on an issue, is there any background that becomes especially relevant?” Kole asks. “Do we deepen interiority as they vacillate or decide to go against their moral compass? As they’re worrying about the future, is their inner memory zooming back to some past event that makes the present even more poignant?”
