Authors: Jordan Rosenfeld
INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
The defining characteristic of a contemplative scene is that your character spends more time thinking than he does in action or speech. These passages of thought are referred to as interior monologue (since they happen inside the character's mind), and are meant to reveal something to the reader. These thoughts will be overheard by the reader, and therefore have bearing on plot and character development in each scene.
While the old convention was to set off thoughts by putting them in italics, I'm more of a fan of embedding thoughts within the narrative voice as simple, elegant exposition.
For example, in Martha Sherrill's novel
The Ruins of California,
young Inez Ruin, who goes back and forth between her divorced parents, thinks about her father in passages of interior monologue:
During the lull between his calls and letters, it's not that my father was dead in my mind, exactly. He was kept on hold, cinematic freeze frame— the pause button not released until I picked up the phone or stepped off the plane.
Interior monologue is not time-based, which is why it tends to feel slow. There's no action involved. Notice how Inez's thoughts feel free-floating. You don't get a sense of when or where, but a general feeling for what she thinks about her father. Still, it evokes feelings and sets a tone and helps the readers better understand the protagonist.
Here's a passage of interior monologue from Jose Saramago's novel
Blindness,
in which it's a little more obvious what the point-of-view character, the doctor's wife—the only character in the narrative who has not gone blind—is thinking:
Now, with her eyes fixed on the scissors hanging on the wall, the doctor's wife was asking herself, What use is my eyesight? It had exposed her to greater horror than she could ever have imagined. It had convinced her that she would rather be blind, nothing else.
Notice how her thought "What use is my eyesight?" is in first person, so the reader knows these are her thoughts. But the exposition that follows is still coming from her point of view and can also be considered her thoughts.
Interior monologue is very intimate and allows readers to temporarily step inside the mind of your character. Characters really only have a few ways of reflecting in a narrative in a way that invites the reader in to experience it. Your protagonist can speak his thoughts to another character; he can write his thoughts down; or, through interior monologue, he can think important reflections. Dialogue fails as a contemplative technique because most of us don't reflect aloud—we quietly ruminate.
Since interior monologue naturally slows down the pace of your prose, use it sparingly in other scenes. Contemplative scenes, however, are your opportunity to delve into the world of thoughts, and that is why these scenes need to be strategically placed in your narrative. You want to purposely use a contemplative scene to slow things down and to shed insight on your character that dialogue and action simply can't convey.
OPENING CONTEMPLATIVE SCENES
In the aftermath of an action, suspense, or dramatic scene in which big plot events and emotional extremes were central, you want to signal to the reader that a slowdown is taking place from the very beginning of the scene by getting to the contemplation early. If you open a contemplative scene with a lot of action, for instance, the reader may feel unfairly detoured by the contemplation that follows. Some of the most common ways to open a contemplative scene include opening with interior monologue, setting description, or transitional action.
Opening With Interior Monologue
The main requirement for opening your contemplative scene with interior monologue is that the character's thoughts be related to the scene that came before. Don't force the readers to guess what your protagonist is reflecting on—make it clear.
In Charles Dickens's novel
Great Expectations,
protagonist Pip—a young boy who lives with his older sister and her husband—is accosted one morning by an escaped convict who demands that Pip bring him food and drink. Out of terror, Pip does so at great risk to himself. The next scene, which also happens to be the first scene of chapter four, opens with Pip reflecting on the fact that he has not been arrested or punished for what he's done:
I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet been made of the robbery.
The opening lines let the reader know that this is going to be a scene in which Pip is reflecting on his actions. A couple of lines is enough to let the reader know there will be thinking going on, but the interior monologue can go on for much longer if needed. Back to our
Great Expectations
example: Though the scene includes some small actions, for much of the remaining scene, Pip can barely pay attention to what is happening around him, he's so busy focused on his inner experience, worrying about the trouble he's sure to get in:
Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equaled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done.
When you open with interior monologue, you signal the reader that the character has something on his mind and that there may be a lot more interior monologue to come within the scene. It's just a nice, fluid way to transition into a contemplative scene.
The key to remember here is that thoughts are slow and timeless, so pages and pages of them will start to drag your pace down to a crawl. You want to make sure that the emphasis of a contemplative scene is on thoughts, but that they are not the sole content of the scene.
Opening With Setting Description
Setting description is a nice way to open a scene because it grounds the reader in physical reality first—the reader can see where the protagonist is before she delves into his inner turmoil. But this technique works especially well when you can use the setting as a kind of reflective surface off which the character can bounce or form his thoughts, like in the example below from Jill McCorkle's novel
Carolina Moon.
Mack's wife, Sarah, has been in a coma for years, though he still feels the need to be faithful to her. Yet he's falling for another woman, June, and in the very bedroom where Sarah's sleeping body lies, June and he embraced. In the next scene, he's deeply reflective and concerned.
McCorkle opens with a description of the setting that evokes images of family—which Mack no longer has—and uses it as a segue into Mack's internal world:
Mack sits on the porch and watches the lights go out in the houses around him. The house to his left has long been dark, the children who run screaming all afternoon tucked into their beds and sleeping peacefully. He imagines the tired mama with her feet propped up, belly swollen, dim lamp swaying overhead. Even the college kids have turned in for the night, the only window lit being the stark white bathroom that glares in full view. Sarah used to wonder why they didn't get a shade, a curtain; instead, there was an all-day parade of young men with their backs turned to the world outside.
Notice how Mack's thoughts are stirred up in relationship to the environment he shared with his wife—a very natural and realistic way for a character to begin reflecting on events. As he looks around their neighborhood, there's no way to avoid thinking about her, and thus his guilt over falling for June, so the setting is effectively used as a way to get his thoughts on the subject of his wife. The scene could have opened something like this: "Mack felt guilty about kissing June in front of Sarah," but that's a narrative technique with no emotional weight. The way McCorkle does it, the reader sees the world that Mack shared with Sarah and understands his complex thoughts and feelings on the subject better. The scene has a more dramatic impact.
When you use setting details to elicit a character's thoughts and feelings, your character's emotional responses will feel more natural, and the details will give the illusion of action, which a contemplative scene is going to be scarce on. As Mack's thoughts interact with his environment, readers get a sense of action, even though really there isn't any. It's important to keep the energy from falling completely flat in a contemplative scene, and a great way to keep it alive is by having the character's thoughts interact with the setting.
Opening With Transitional Action
Sometimes a contemplative scene is, in essence, the continuation of the scene that came before, so you may begin by concluding the action of the prior scene. For example, at the end of a cliffhanger scene, a woman may have just watched her home erupt in flames. In the next scene, she may be standing by, watching the firemen who are putting out the flames, and reflecting on how her life is now going to change.
Ending a scene before an action is resolved—a suspense or cliffhanger ending—is actually a good technique to use because it keeps the reader worried about the character. If you're coming off a scene with a cliffhanger ending, you have many opportunities to open a contemplative scene by concluding the actions of the previous scene.
When you do this, don't worry about keeping that same cliffhanger energy alive; when you move into contemplative scenes, it's okay to bring the tension and the energy down—in fact, that's the point. Keep the actions small, to a minimum, and let them quickly lead to contemplation.
For example, in Steven Sherrill's wonderful allegorical novel
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break,
the protagonist is M—an immortal Minotaur (half man, half bull) working as a line cook in a Southern restaurant. He's lonely and awkward and has trouble making friends, but a fellow waitress,
Kelly, has steadily been making overtures to him for months. In one scene they wind up making love, but midway through, Kelly has an epileptic seizure. Afraid and unsure of how to deal with human afflictions, M flees the scene, and neither M nor the reader knows if Kelly is okay or not; for all the reader knows, he has consigned her to death. The next scene concludes his flight as M is driving away from the scene:
Pulling to a stop at the traffic light where Independence Boulevard goes from four narrow lanes to six narrow lanes, the Vega stalls and the Minotaur has to pump the throttle to restart it. He hates this stretch of road. David, a font of useless knowledge, says it's the busiest and most dangerous five miles of asphalt in the entire state.
Notice Sherrill's careful choice of actions here—M is fleeing the scene of Kelly's seizure. The actions at the opening of the next scene serve mainly to let the reader know where M is in relationship to the last scene (and also to offer a metaphor for where he is in his life: stalled and possibly in danger if Kelly is dead). Despite the fact that Kelly might be in mortal jeopardy, M is not a human man who knows to call 911, and the reader is wondering what he's going to do next and how he could just leave her like that. Notice how Sherrill shifts gears and moves quickly into the realm of thoughts.
Make sure in a contemplative scene that opens with transitional action that the action relates to or concludes the action from the prior scene, offers some thematic or metaphoric subtext, and then move quickly into the realm of your characters' thoughts.
CHARACTER AND PLOT
Now that you've got an idea of how to open a contemplative scene, it's important to keep in mind the fundamental purpose of this type of scene: to get as intimate as possible with your protagonist as he experiences the consequences of the significant situation introduced in that very first scene. You want to use these reflective scenes to move into his most inner thoughts and reflections. When you focus on your protagonist's thoughts for a prolonged period of time, the reader gets a very intimate experience of his feelings and perceptions. Because of their inherent slowed quality, you don't need many of these scenes—only a few—and usually, as noted earlier, after your character has undergone something intense, dramatic, or painful. You want to create a realistic pause for him—and the reader—to process what he's experienced.
In order to keep the contemplation relevant to your plot, you want to be sure that your protagonist:
• Has realistic and appropriate responses to a plot event
• Grapples with something that has recently happened in the narrative (the prior scene is ideal), or that is about to happen
• Uses the contemplation scene to make a plan of action, weigh his options, or make some sort of decision related to plot events
Contemplative scenes are not a time for drama—this is where the protagonist tries to make sense of the tragedy, wild success, or unexpected turn that has just taken place in his life.
Let's look at these three points in a scene from Walker Percy's novel
The Moviegoer.
In it, playboy Binx Bolling keeps falling for the wrong women— those who don't love him, and those he doesn't truly love. When he unwittingly falls for Kate Cutrer, a suicidal beauty (and also his cousin), nobody is pleased about it, especially not Kate's mother, his aunt. Yet their relationship offers the two unlikely lovers a kind of redemption, and after spending a weekend together at Carnivale in New Orleans, Binx is deeply reflective and worried ... and in love with Kate. Here is a moment mid-scene where he begins to think about what has happened: