The central conflict of the novel I'm working on right now involves my MC looking at two accounts of the same events, thinking about them, thinking about his feelings about them, and trying to sort through everything to figure out what really happened. Other, more exciting and, like, physical things do happen, but they're sideplots; all this reading and thinking is the main focus of the novel. (And yes, trust me, it is fantasy. It's set in a fantasy world, and it needs to be set in a fantasy world, for various reasons. ) My protagonist is basically doing his thinking on paper, in letters to a woman he loved that's now dead...and he's doing a lot of, well, brooding. Talking about his feelings, philosophizing, rambling...the whole deal.

So here's my problem: How do I make this interesting? How do I still manage to show what he's feeling instead of just telling the reader by making him say "I feel confused" or whatever it is? How do I manage to keep the reader absorbed instead of thinking, "Oh great, not another angsty ramble"?

I think I've already managed to more or less hit the spot once or twice. One time I had him relate a memory to illustrate what he was feeling. Another time, instead of just saying that he was moving house, he described the boxes and jars lined up against one wall and other pertinent details. (This sounds kind of dull, but at that point in the plot moving meant he was admitting defeat.) So I can try to use more stories and descriptions. My MC is quite well-educated and academic, and so I could see him bringing in quotes from literature and illustrations from classic texts in his world. I also had the wild idea that he could have discussions with imaginary characters of his in order to sort out his thoughts...but that would be a bit silly, a bit weird, and potentially make the reader doubt his sanity, which I'd rather avoid.

Another thought I had: My protagonist is a scholar who's often written papers and essays and things, and so he's used to lists and outlines and all the other organizational tools of nonfiction writing. I have him use a list once in his narrative, but I'm not sure what other such devices would be good...If not done well, putting things like outlines and lists in a narrative could be boring, strange, and out of place. However, there must be some clever way to use them - I'm just not sure what it is, whether I could pull it off, and whether it would work in this story. So that idea's out unless I get any brilliant insights from myself or anybody else.

So. Ideas? Cautions? Pertinent experiences of your own? Suggested reading that wouldn't be too difficult to get a hold of? (I unfortunately live in a place without a good library.)

Actions. Show it through his physical actions.

If you want, give him a day or a week to mull it over. The longer the span, the easier it is for him to ruminate for awhile.

Have other people remark on his different actions, and have someone talk to him about it. One-on-One dialogue helps plenty.

'least, that's what I would do.

Thanks for the response! Good advice. Yes, I do try to show some of his feelings through his actions and his dialog, and fortunately I have a side character who will be talking to him a lot, poking him around, making him admit things. But I think actions and dialog aren't enough for this story, because he still needs to do a lot of thinking on paper about these two accounts. His general mood I can show through what he does and what he says; but his more specific feelings about those accounts need to be mostly revealed by what he directly writes about them.

Oh, and by the way, the whole novel is composed of just his letters to this woman. He does talk about things other than the two accounts in them, but yes - he's narrating all the time.

Oh, that's different...

I think one would have to focus on the tone of the paper then. I wouldn't know how to do that though...

Taking a guess, I'd think that the dialogue of the papers needs to show a marked change if he's in a good mood or a bad mood.

Big words and very professional language might be used in good papers, but in bad papers, he might slip or something.

I wouldn't know.. Sounds interesting.

Erm, when I said "thinking on paper" I meant that he'll be writing down his thoughts on the accounts...I didn't mean that he'll actually be writing a formal paper about them. He's writing letters to a close friend talking about the accounts and musing on them, so it has quite a casual tone. He won't actually be writing any formal, academic papers about the accounts, not as far as I know at this point.

However, that is an interesting idea...I'll have to remember it for later...

Internal narrative can be fascinating as long the author himself can write in a fascinating way – which is harder than carrying a decent plot and creating rounded characters, and less common.

I think you're going to have to do that to some degree.

Actually many old philosophers and teachers, like Socrates for instance, used to write books in dialogue. The discussion format made for clear explanation and also was an easy way of addressing potential doubts – you could just have the fictional dialogue partner ask about it, and the instructor answer.

If you went at it from an academic style, this could potentially be an excellent device. I can imagine someone doing it when he had a hard time knowing where to start in explaining something, or when he was unsure how to express something the way he wanted.

An idea, anyway.

I actually really like this idea. It would make the story-aware aspect very pronounced, so maybe you would avoid it at any points in which you don't want the readers thinking about the fact that the events the MC is talking about aren't actually happening at that moment. Other than that, I think it could be used in a lot of interesting ways. A list doesn't necessarily have to be any more boring than a regular sequence of sentences.

I really think which ones would fit would depend on the personality of the writer and the culture he's in, but I'm really liking the ideas you've got.

I can't think of any stories which would be very similar to yours, but the 'Just So Stories' have an interesting story-aware narrator, and it might get you into the mood. They're also just really nice stories and I think you'd like them even if they didn't help.... * grins *

One other idea I have is that when the narrator is recalling past experiences, it is likely that the emotions from them will affect him at the moment of writing. When this is the case, it would be appropriate, perhaps, depending on his personality, for him to mention the affects they are having – that his hands are shaking and he had to pause for awhile, or that he does not want to continue for the time being and will leave the rest of a certain scene to be written another time, etcetera, you know? That would bring out the emotional side of the brooding, and would keep it less dry, perhaps.

Wow, thanks a lot! That was very helpful!


Yup. I wonder sometimes if this is too ambitious a project for someone who hasn't done that much storywriting before...but I'm definitely excited about it, and other people who've seen my writing keep telling me that I'm pretty good...and there's no problem in failing!


I had forgotten about the old philosophic dialogues! Yes. I think it could be really interesting...but I see two potential obstacles: 1) If he just makes up imaginary characters and talks with them, that may cast some doubt on his sanity, as I said. 2) I could probably avoid this problem by having him say that he's imitating the form of old philosophic dialogues, &c, but it is set in a fantasy world and I'm not sure that the literature of his culture used that form. I'll have to think on that...


Yes, I certainly wouldn't do it during the segments where he's actually narrating events; I would only do so when he's analyzing them and thinking over them. Lists I can use - and I think sometimes their very conciseness can give them more impact than nice sentences - but I'm not sure about other devices...You know, I should look in my copy of Writers Inc and see what organizational devices they mention there.


Yes, I've read Just So Stories before, and then when I was writing captions for pictures in a story of mine afterwards, I could not get the feeling of the narrator out of my writing. I'll have to go look at that book again. The story about the development of the alphabet was hilarious for a lover of writing systems and their histories like me.


Yes! I do things like that, sometimes. In some cases he breaks off a sentence and tells himself to stop; in other cases he tries to avoid getting to something. Gosh, I wish that I could have the story formatted as actual, handwritten letters, because then I could have interesting handwriting changes and whatnot...but that is getting a bit too out-there. Perhaps an experimental project for another time. I am pretty good at changing my handwriting around, after all...

Anyways, thanks so much for your suggestions! Hopefully I'll be returning to my draft tomorrow, and then I can get going on trying out some of these ideas.