Interiority

Four ways to anchor your readers in your main character's mind and body.

1. Greetings from the Discord of Doom 👻

2. Interiority: Four Strategies that Actually Work 💅🏻

3. Updates & Fact Checks ☃️

1. Greetings from the Discord of Doom

Hello there, Team Curiosity! We write to you from Day 2 of our March Madness challenge, where we’re racing other TTS listeners as we draft/revise/generally kick writing’s sparkly vampire-butt. We’ve been having an absolute blast in our March Madness Discord, where the trash talk is…very uplifting and motivating, actually. But don’t be fooled, y’all. Just because we’re externally cheering you on and falling behind our writing goals—doesn’t mean we’re not internally plotting your downfalls. 😏

^^ That right there, my friends, is interiority. Your’e welcome.

Let’s dive into one of the hardest-to-define and easiest-to-overthink elements of craft: interiority.

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2. Interiority: Four strategies that actually work

Interiority is the experience of being inside your character’s mind and body in real time. It’s the invisible current under the prose that makes readers feel like they’re active participants in the story, not passive ones.

As usual, we dive deeper in this week’s episode (highly recommend a listen if you enjoy Anna’s Jamie Fraser impression, as it makes a comeback), but below is the distilled version.

To prep for this week’s episode, Anna studied interiority across genres and extracted a few consistencies, or “universal truths” to borrow from our bestie, Jane Austen. She presented them to us in 4 easy-to-digest principles:

1. Readers care more about the present than the past.

2. Keep dialogue opposite thoughts/actions.

3. Characters crave agency. Always.

4. The best interiority is baked into word choice (and not just the italicized ones).

Not yet convinced Anna’s a genius? Fine. Let’s go deeper.

1. Readers care more about the present than the past.

This one seemed counter intuitive at first. As authors (and as a psychologist, which Lyssa mentions no less than 1000 times this episode), we care deeply about the past. So much of our writing process is discovering the wound that explains everything. But good interiority means rooting your readers in the now. Any backstory must be woven into the present. They work together, but the present is in the driver’s seat, while the backstory is in the…well, backseat.

For example, here’s a sentence with weak interiority:

She couldn’t trust him. Not after what happened ten years ago at the lake house.

And here’s the same notion with stronger interiority:

“You can trust me,” he said.
She almost laughed.

Notice how the second example lets the past be felt without pausing momentum. The reader feels history but stays rooted in the scene. This is REALLY difficult for Lyssa, who has a tendency to spell everything out and make all the connections for you (thank goodness for editors who reel her in). But people don’t think in fully connected dots. Overexplaining detracts from the present, and therefore detracts from interiority.

2. Keep Dialogue opposite thoughts/actions

Interiority thrives in contrast. Characters smile when they’re spiraling on the inside. They say “of course” while thinking abso-f*cking-not. Even If your character says exactly what they think, we lose tension. Even if your character is outspoken, chances are, there’s a gap between how they present themselves and their inner desires. That gap between outer behavior and inner reality creates friction. And, as you know from being a loyal listener, friction makes your story un-put-downable.

You can see the opposite dialogue/thoughts working in the above example (okay, fine. I’ll repeat it here):

“You can trust me,” he said.
She almost laughed.

3. Characters create agency, always.

Plot happens TO characters, but characters crave agency. Even if they can’t wrangle the hellhole you’ve plotted them into, they choose how to endure. That’s where interiority thrives. Your passive characters wish they could/would do more. Your active characters still wish they’d do more. Even powerless characters are deciding who to blame.

Interiority is a window into your mc’s fight for agency. That fight for agency is tied to your story’s third rail—their truth versus lie, their emotional heat, their internal struggle. When you nail this, even failing characters become compelling.

Going back to our example…

Weak interiority:

She couldn’t trust him. Not after what happened ten years ago at the lake house.

Stronger interiority:

“You can trust me,” he said.
She said nothing, which seemed to please him. Good. Let him think her meek enough to forgive him.

4. The best interiority is baked into word choice.

You can remove all italicized thoughts from a manuscript and still have powerful interiority. Why? Because good prose is filtered through the character. Everything the mc thinks, feels, ignores, describes—it’s all seen through whatever sunglasses they’re wearing. Maybe your Little Miss Sunshine has her rose-tinged glasses on. Maybe your Wednesday Adams sees a red door and wants to paint it black. Either way, the words you choose—especially the metaphors and descriptions—can bring the reader closer and closer to inhabiting your mc.

Going back to our example one final time:

Weak interiority:

He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it.

She couldn’t trust him. Not after what happened ten years ago at the lake house.

Stronger interiority:

He held out his hand, grinning like a snake oil salesman. His teeth were whiter than they’d been ten years ago. Straighter, too.

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3. Updates & Fact Check

A few orders of business:

• We’d love to point you to a specific TTS episode that touches upon interiority, but really, they all do. Might as well binge the last 55 episodes 🤠

• We were hoping to keep our March Madness open for the entire month of March, but we’ve had such a strong response, we may have to cap it soon! If it’s not too late, you can…

  • Sign up here. If we haven’t maxed out, we’ll send you our shared spreadsheet, along with access to our March Madness Discord.

• If you’d like to hear from us more, be sure to check us out on Instagram:

  • Anna’s IG

  • Lyssa’s IG

  • Turning to Story IG

• We’re still running our All We Hunger For preorder campaign! If you pick it up before the June release date, email proof of purchase to (TurningToStory [at] gmail [dot] com), and we’ll email you Anna’s master spreadsheet. That means you’ll see the exact outline: each plot, chapter, character arc, romantic arc, villain arc, everything. (It’s full of spoilers, so save it until after you read the book).

• Any questions? Ask away!