Interior Monologue: How to Show Your Character’s Thoughts and Feelings

All novels will reveal the inner thoughts of their characters at one point or another. Some stories even take place fully within the interiority of a protagonist.

Writing interiority may be famously complex, regardless of whether your story takes place in third person or first person, but an interior monologue is a wonderful way of presenting your protagonist’s inner speech and developing the connection between character and reader.

In this article, writing coach and Branford Boase-nominated author Ella McLeod explores exactly what we mean by interior monologue, with a clear definition, examples from classic and contemporary fiction, and a guide on how to add it to your own novel successfully.

Who’s your protagonist?

At the start of a novel, your protagonist is probably in (or about to be in) some kind of crisis. Whether this is saving the galaxy or a messy break-up, they are likely in conflict with themselves and the world around them.

But it’s complicated, right? It’s nuanced and layered. Good! That sounds like a compelling narrative, and understanding the mind of a character is crucial for developing this—so tell me about your protagonist!

• Are they led by their heart or by their head?
• What are their triggers?
• What makes them laugh?
• Are they honest with themselves?

How do we convey what’s going on in a character’s mind, and why should we? How do the inner workings of our character’s emotions bring a story to life?

You guessed it: by using interior monologues.

Is it interior monologue or internal monologue?

The term internal monologue was first used by psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890). While interior monologue is the literary little sister who spends her time reading fiction, internal monologue—which we’re discussing today—is the older critical theory student who loves philosophy and psychology.

Another common term used interchangeably with interior monologue is internal dialogue: the voice that reveals a character’s thoughts, feelings, and self-perception.

William James wrestled with the idea somewhat, because can we really know our own thoughts? He said:

The attempt at introspective analysis (...) is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.
—William James

When you’re writing, you are the motion; you are the darkness. You’re omnipresent and omniscient, and understanding your character’s thoughts is so much fun!

Our minds are chaotic and conflicted. We give them drama, and they create more drama. But why is character insight so important, and how do we balance time spent in our protagonist’s head with our need for action?

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Five reasons to use interior monologues

1. For insight into your character’s thoughts

This is generally the primary use of an inner monologue.

• What’s going on in your character’s head?
• What makes them laugh?
• What makes them rage?
• What generally makes them tick?
• What makes them feel seen?

Their interior monologue will also be a vital part of their character development. Being able to shine a light on what your protagonist is thinking during various parts of the narrative is invaluable.

It’s also very important that these insights are well-timed. In stories with too much interior monologue, the plot stagnates. The story slows, and the last thing we want is readers thinking: This person’s speech is really rambling on... Equally, too much action and not enough reflection or analysis can leave your reader’s senses overstimulated, wondering why the hell your protagonist made the decision they made.

Of course, this isn’t to say that more thoughtful, quieter novels that focus on a character’s inner workings and turmoil are boring, but you should always make sure you’re giving your characters plenty of things to do—and obstacles to overcome—so they are able to react.

Being able to shine a light on what your protagonist is thinking during various parts of the narrative is invaluable... It’s also very important that these insights are well-timed.
—Ella McLeod

2. To set your characters at odds with their environment

A strong interior monologue can be vital in setting up your inciting incident. Plot is propelled by change, and change is propelled by character motivation. So, what is intolerable about their current circumstances? Their decision to fight, flee, or freeze will add depth and pick up the pace of your story.

Inner monologues can be particularly effective in highlighting the contrast between a character’s internal reflections and their external environment.

In Lex Croucher’s Trouble, Emily is pretending to be her sister and has taken up the post of governess to the two teenage children of Captain Edwards, and her interior monologue narrates her contempt for the house and its inhabitants. Captain Edwards is a snob, the staff are boot-lickers, and the children are utterly impossible. As readers, we are given, through a more exterior lens, evidence to suggest that Emily’s preconceptions are entirely wrong. Captain Edwards displays thoughtfulness and generosity, the staff hold him to account and are treated like family, and the children are complicated, grieving the loss of their mother.

Without Emily’s interior monologue, one of two things would happen. Either we’d think: ‘This person’s determination to hate everyone around her is odd, she’s foolish,’ or Emily would immediately realize her mistake, the conflict would be immediately resolved, and the story would end.

But Croucher’s writing gives us such a strong impression of Emily’s stubbornness and pride throughout the novel, and her refusal of their good faith is entirely in keeping with her character. She pushes everyone around her away, prohibiting the resolution of conflict and driving the story through to its very satisfying climax!

Inner monologues can be particularly effective in highlighting the contrast between a character’s internal reflections and their external environment.
—Ella McLeod

3. To contrast with dialogue

We may not love a liar in our real lives, but we love them when we write fiction!

Whatever the genre, deception can weave a bright tapestry through our stories, and a strong interior monologue not only gives your characters compelling layers but also gives the reader clarity, helping them to distinguish between what your characters are pretending to want and feel, and what they actually want and feel.

• How do the things your protagonist says differ from what they’re thinking?
• Is this written consistently throughout the narrative?
• Are there some people they’re more honest with? If so, why?

This is especially illuminating when we’re exploring character dynamics and we want to show how our protagonist relates to those around them.

In my adult debut, Andromeda, deception and lying are at the core of who my protagonist has to be. The façade she presents to the world differs from who she is on the inside, and how this affects her sense of self is central to the story. She spends a lot of time pretending to go along with her parents’ plans for her, presenting the public with the face of a dutiful daughter and princess.

Her interior monologue shows that, while she may be perceived as a damsel in distress who longs to be rescued by a man, she is someone else entirely on the inside. This creates a really intimate reading experience, with readers existing in private communion with the protagonist.

In her interior monologue, Andromeda is wild, mercurial, a dreamer. At its core, Andromeda is a romance, and I’ve realized through writing it that something really special happens when the love interest sees through the protagonist’s façade, engaging with the interior monologue and not the external one, as the readers have been.

Whatever the genre, deception can weave a bright tapestry through our stories, and a strong interior monologue not only gives your characters compelling layers but also gives the reader clarity, helping them to distinguish between what your characters are pretending to want and feel, and what they actually want and feel.
—Ella McLeod

4. To set your characters at odds with themselves

There is something so raw and compelling about internal conflict. It’s realistic and relatable, and as a reader, there’s nothing I love more than getting into a character’s head, feeling their emotions and their internal conflict.

It’s so delicious to ask, ‘Why?! Why did you do that?!’ while knowing the answer because of the strength of their inner monologue. You’ve been with the character for the whole story, their values and quirks have been breadcrumbed throughout, you know them... But you’re still torn up about whatever it is they’re doing!

Holly Black does this beautifully in the Folk of the Air books. Protagonist Jude Duarte is constantly at odds with herself. She loves magic, she hates magic; she loves her father, she hates her father; she loves Cardan, the diabolical prince of Faerie, and she hates him too...

Of her father, Madoc, she says:

Many nights I drifted off to sleep to his rumbling voice reading from a book of battle strategy. And despite myself, despite what he’d done and what he was, I came to love him. It’s just not a comfortable kind of love.
—Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

This is an excellent example of how interior monologue can show the nuances of a complicated character. It’s also important to remember the tool of showing, not telling.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasions where telling is necessary. In this series, there is so much scheming, lying, and manipulation that sometimes the reader needs the clarity of Jude’s interior monologue to tell us exactly what’s going on.

Black’s writing never feels expositional and clunky, because it’s so adeptly layered. Jude is at odds with the world, her family, her lover... And most importantly, herself. It’s endlessly fascinating to engage with her thoughts. She acknowledges, for example, her attraction to Cardan—‘He is even more horrifically beautiful than I was able to recall’—while determined, inwardly and outwardly, to loathe him.

We know, therefore, that the resolution must be between Jude and the world around her and also between Jude’s conflicted parts of herself.

5. To heighten big feelings

As a writer of YA fantasy, I am big on big feelings. I love yearning, I love tension, I love magic.

When writing my most recent book, The Map That Led To You, I wanted to transport my reader into the worlds of my protagonists, Levi and Reggie. I wrote Levi’s sections in third person and Reggie’s in second person (more on this later), using vivid and descriptive writing.

Let’s look at my favorite part: the first kiss.

You laugh and it is a breathy sound. You like the way she sees you. You like the way she says your name. She is not looking at you like you’re crazy or weird, she’s looking at you like... like she likes looking. Her eyes dart between your own and your mouth in a heady back and forth. She captures you with her gaze, but you are willing. The perfect pink tulip of her lips blooms before you, her neck is feather soft beneath your fingertips. You arch and brush together, like the jacaranda blooms above.
—Ella McLeod, The Map That Led To You

Here, you can see the second-person perspective at work. It’s risky as a written form, but I love how immersive it is. The reader is Reggie, Reggie is the reader, and so the interior monologue really forces us into radical empathy. I focused on writing sensations to ground the reader in Reggie’s experience, while creating little moments of relatable introspection. Liking the way your crush sees you, liking the way they say your name... These are universally delightful things, and my aim was to have readers kicking their legs and squealing!

How to use an interior monologue: five top tips

Here are some ways you might try writing interior monologue.

1. Epistolary

Stories written in or around the form of letters are an excellent way to speak from the hearts and minds of your characters. As you write, you can play with what’s included in the correspondence and what’s omitted, and you can really explore how the nature of exchanging letters changes over time.

You can also play around with how epistolary your interior monologue is. In S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood, the story isn’t formatted like a letter—there’s no address, for example—but it has a deeply confessional tone from the very beginning. This is such a scintillating way to engage with the protagonist’s interior monologue; an immediate sense that this will be a brutally honest recounting of events.

I never dreamed it would end like this, my lord: your blood splashing hot flecks onto my nightgown and pouring in rivulets onto our bedchamber floor. But creatures like us live a long time. There is no horror left in this world that can surprise me. Eventually, even your death becomes its own sort of inevitability.
—S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood

We learn so much about our protagonist, and we don’t even know her name yet! Again, that confessional tone promises something unflinching. Later on, there are lines crossed out and rewritten, as though the protagonist, Constanta, a bride of a vampire, is wrestling with her own memory or emotions, and yet is still desperate to tell the story as it happened. Indeed, she says as much:

Nothing else will do. Nothing less than a full account of our life together, from the trembling start all the way to the brutal end. I fear I will go mad if I don’t leave behind some kind of record. If I write it down, I won’t be able to convince myself that none of it happened. I won’t be able to tell myself that you didn’t mean any of it, that it was all just some terrible dream.
—S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood

This is a common form of narration in vampire stories, which I love: the pressing need to recall and recount. Maybe the nature of a story centered on immortal beings lends itself to the kind of existential introspection that can make the interior monologue a fascinating place for a reader. Or maybe I’m still a Twilight girlie at heart...

2. Stream of consciousness

This is a term coined by the psychologist William James (remember him?) and is a writing technique that seeks to emulate the chaotic and disordered way we absorb information before we’ve processed it.

Giving an insight into a character’s unfiltered thoughts can be an incredibly raw and sensory form of narration. In your writing, you might draw on the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, and more. Some things to bear in mind:

• What associations is your character forming with things in their head?
• Why?
• What elements of their backstory influence these associations?

You could tease out their inner monologue by writing incoherent thoughts, snatches of phrases, or ungrammatical sentence structure.

This style is used brilliantly in The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride:

Seated on the floor this, lino underfoot. Her giving out little thoughts, some simple things she’s understood. This lady in her simple skirt, hands open to a gentle earth and though I’m close inside my voice fills wide into the calm. Beseeches but such a quiet way. And this time they are with me, know in her I’ve done my time. May hold her up for looking at and gently set her down. Then let chipped paint oceans roll me back to their shore, hopeful as a breeze. And they only Thank you we’ll let you know. That’s it? Letter next week in the post. Go on out through the canteen. So my audition’s done and can’t be undone now.
—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

In this book, we meet Eily, a young drama student who comes to London from Ireland in the nineties. She begins an affair with Stephen, a handsome older actor, and the story chronicles their relationship with each other and themselves. McBride writes intimacy so startlingly because the stream of consciousness allows us to really get inside Eily’s head and body. We feel her world wash over us as it does her. Even the exterior feels richly, deeply interior. This is a hard style to execute and something not everyone will love, but when done well—damn, it’s arresting!

3. Dialogue

Using dialogue instead of straight interior narration helps writers avoid the habit of telling, not showing. It will also help you refrain from telling the reader everything at once. Remember, we want to breadcrumb to keep readers wanting more!

Dialogue can also be used to punctuate interior monologue. Remember when we talked about using dialogue to contrast interior monologue, thereby creating characters who are conflicted, layered, or duplicitous? You can do the reverse, too.

In my debut novel, Rapunzella, Or, Don’t Touch My Hair, we follow my lead character from the age of six to sixteen. While she spends a lot of time saying something different from what she means later in the novel, I found that when she was younger—perhaps less self-conscious, and therefore kind of guileless and authentic—it was natural for her interior monologue to echo her dialogue and add some bite to her speech.

You fish a tissue out of your bag and dab at the cut on Saffy’s cheek. It is shallow and has stopped bleeding, but the wobbling of her bottom lip beneath her determined fierceness breaks your heart and you stand, take her hand, Baker flanking you both.

‘Listen to me,’ you say to the girl on the floor. Your voice is low and you are satisfied by the sight of her pale face going even paler. ‘I don’t know what it’s like at other places you’ve been. But people who say things like what you said, don’t fit in here.’ You step towards her. ‘Touch my sister again, throw paint at her again, and I will fucking throw hands, all right.’

You think it might be the first time you’ve ever sworn out loud. The effect is impressive. The surrounding kids go deathly quiet.
—Ella McLeod, Rapunzella, Or, Don’t Touch My Hair

There was something particularly clarifying about using second person here. The reader is placed into my character’s ten-year-old shoes, forced to almost observe themselves standing up for ‘their’ little sister. The eddying sense of pride (at being so badass) and rage and heartbreak are made all the more potent by the dialogue. In true ten-year-old fashion, my protagonist feels the feeling and immediately acts on it!

4. Show, don’t tell

Although we’re here to explore how and why you might bring your character’s thought process to life, we must remember that subtlety is key.

Like anything, it’s about balance. Need to do some problem-solving in your story? Perhaps there’s too much action (the characters become flat), or too much interior monologue (the plot stagnates). Give your characters things to do: obstacles to overcome, people to respond to.

The Girl sat patiently as Bird told a story in her own words, then picked out each syllable on paper until they came together in the story she had just recited. At first the Girl did not see the sense of the lessons. No one she knew ever had need of reading, except the black preacher who came over on Saturday nights to deliver a sermon under the watchful gaze of the overseer. Even he was more likely to thwack the Bible with his rusty hand than read from it.

But soon the Girl began to enjoy the lessons. She liked knowing what Fanny was talking about when she exclaimed that Rachel was ‘as hard headed as Lot’s wife,’ or recognizing the name of the Louisiana governor when she heard it cursed around the kitchen table.
—Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories 

At the beginning of this novel, ‘The Girl’—who will become Gilda—is young for a vampire. Her world is opening up, and we see this here as she comes to gain knowledge about her environment. This is an excellent example of interior monologue still being used—we are close to the Girl, her thoughts, her memories and experiences—while there is activity on the page. She is reacting to her lessons, changing and developing as a character as well as growing in relation to others around her.

5. Inner voice and perspective

Many writers find it easier to write their protagonist’s interior monologue in a first-person voice. Using the ‘I’ form of speech gives you a direct channel to their thinking and their ideas, to such an extent that first-person stories often feel close to a soliloquy—a dramatic monologue used on stage without interruptions. These are also forms of interior monologue, giving the audience an intimate insight into a character’s deepest thoughts. 

This from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is possibly the most famous soliloquy of all time:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. 
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Here, Hamlet debates whether death would be more brave and peaceful than life. It’s a haunting speech that has stood the test of time because it is devastatingly personal. When physically embodied on stage by a good actor, it invokes our empathy even more. 

So, what if there’s no one to actually voice that inner speech? You might worry about this if you’re not writing in first person, concerned that the narrative feels even more removed.

Never fear! It’s still possible to write a striking interior monologue: it’s all in the specificity. Ask yourself:

• What is your main character experiencing?
• How granular can you be?
• What metaphor or simile is the most apt?

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a perfect example of this. Not only does she employ a third-person perspective, but she also moves back and forth between Marianne and Connell’s points of view. It is her incredibly detailed understanding of their voices—as well as their fears, desires, and insecurities—that allows her to do this so comprehensively. 

He could tell her anything about himself, even weird things, and she would never repeat them, he knows that. Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him. He’s not frightened of her, actually she’s a pretty relaxed person, but he fears being around her, because of the confusing way he finds himself behaving, the things he says that he would never ordinarily say.
—Sally Rooney, Normal People

Here, Rooney’s third-person narrative almost peers into Connell’s mind as he’s thinking about Marianne. In this flow, we learn about him, we learn about her, and we learn about who they are around each other. Seeing Marianne through Connell’s eyes is so illuminating, while also leaning into Connell’s neuroses about how he is perceived.

Final (inner) thoughts

Interior monologues express something intrinsically human when written well. They can imitate the flow of natural thought patterns and private speech, can interrupt themselves, and can go off on tangents that feel very organic while serving to move the plot. An internal, mental tangent can lead to a surprising train of thought, resulting in a decision that can be a catalyst for action. Interior monologue really is where plot and character overlap—that juicy little sliver of Venn diagram where so much good stuff resides.

As always, be playful! Talk to yourself, talk to others, talk in your character’s voice. How do they talk to themselves? It’s not crazy, it’s creative! Try writing in different forms and other types of voice, as if you’re out shopping and trying on shoes. Stories live in souls, and outlast even the hardiest soles.

Write your novel with coaching from Ella McLeod

If you’re writing romantasy or YA fiction and would appreciate some experienced guidance from an award-nominated published author, Ella is an encouraging and insightful writing coach who can help you on your way. Find out more about how you can work one-on-one with Ella on your own story.

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