In a post on Writer Unboxed, Donald Maass shares his advice for depicting internal milestones in a character’s growth. “Some of the most important moments in our lives could not have been captured on video,” Maass says. “They happened inside. I’m talking about the moments that define who we are and whom we are becoming: realizations, revelations, decisions, turning points.”
In real life, we might mark these moments with a journal entry or create a story about them. But how do we capture these moments in fiction? “Despite the difficulty, writers have for centuries found ways to pin down the wispy fog of self-realization,” Maass says. “That is especially evident when an effective story brings a character to what is often called the mirror moment, middle moment or dark moment…the time when a character is sunk in despair, hollow inside, lost in the dark with no lantern or map.”
Maass shares some examples of the “dark moment” from Rene Denfeld’s The Enchanted, Patrick Modiano’s Missing Person, and John Buell’s The Pyx. The examples show three possible approaches to capturing an inner state that might seem impossible to convey:
- Establish the inner state by writing not about what it is, but about what it isn’t.
- Conjure the inner state by analogy.
- Imply the inner state through selective details (atmosphere) and paralell language.
You can use these techniques to show other inner moments, such as a moment of conviction, humiliation, self-deprecation, loss, or falling in love.
