Inside the Wonder World Lesson 24

Showing Through Interiority

Welcome to my Friday edition of Substack, which features my paid posts: Inside the Wonder World.

Those paid subscribers who stick with me for a year will get a free copy of the book as soon as it’s out.

Inside the Wonder World is the working title of my developing craft book on writing and publishing for young readers. I’m bringing it to you in pieces, both to help you learn something more deeply (lessons and exercises included) and to push me to finish this lofty goal.

Here’s the next lesson!

Interiority, aka, interior monologue, is an important way to show rather than tell, and it takes a little practice.

Internal monologue is the stuff that is going on inside the character’s head. The reader has no idea what your character is thinking and feeling unless you find a way to convey them. But once again, you have to avoid merely “telling” the reader, and this one is a little harder to accomplish.

I can still remember my first encounter with the notion that I had to convey interior thoughts. It was during the edits on my debut novel, and my editor had notes like this about my point of view character on almost every page: “What’s she thinking here?”, and “What’s going on inside?”