People as Animals in Literature

In literature, an object with human characteristics is called ‘personification‘.

Granting an animal human-like characteristics is called ‘anthropomorphism‘. (Anthropo = human being, as in ‘anthropology’. ‘Morph’ = change.)

Both personification and anthropomorphism are types of metaphors.

What do you call it when it’s the other way round? i.e., when a human being is compared to an animal by virtue of animal characteristics? Reverse personification?

Someone on Urban Dictionary notes that fantasy lovers have their own words for such things:

ANTHRO

An animal with human-like characteristics. A human with animal-like characteristics can also be called an anthro, but technically they are not. An anthro is, technically, an animal that can: a) walk upright, b) talk, or talk somewhat (AKA has human vocal chords), c) has human features (i.e. a centaur, half human, half horse), d) has the bone structure of a human, with some of its animal counterpart (i.e. a cat-anthro that although looks like a human, can jump like a cat). These characteristics separate anthros from humans with cat ears and tail (or something like that).

It is common in literature to imbue a human character with animal characteristics, even when the genre is not speculative. We are used to basic animal metaphors in daily life e.g.

• women as cats
• picky eaters as birds
• men as pigs
• thin people as stick insects

In literature, the metaphor may be short-lived e.g. a single observation.

e.g. ‘I love your dress,’ she purred.

As children we get used to reading books where the people are ostensibly animals – they have the heads and bodies of animals but essentially behave like humans.

Even authors of adult work make use of extended animal metaphor, and can continue animal characteristics across an entire story. In some cases, character-as-animal comprises the main beef of the story and is integral to the plot.

Here are some examples:

1. Caleb by Gary Crew

illustrated by Steven Woolman

Gary Crew never reveals the exact nature of Caleb van Doorn, but we are given plenty of clues that he is not quite human:

First, the narrator is ‘fascinated by insects’, and is fascinated especially by his room mate. Caleb van Doorn has insect-like qualities:

It was his voice that I heard first. A peculiar chirping sound that seemed to emanate from the back of his throat, rather than the larynx.

He was tall, well over six foot, and very thin. His head – which was little more than a skull with skin stretched over it – protruded from a high-collared shirt.

The description of the skull is reminiscent of an exoskeleton.

His acute thinness was accentuated by a loose-fitting vest of tan suede and a pair of dark-brown, heavily ribbed corduroy trousers pinched at the waist by a wide, black leather belt.

The belt sounds like it divides the body in two, seeming to create an insect-like division between abdomen and thorax.

The human race is filled with gangly youths, but it was Caleb’s eye-glasses – he was wearing pince-nez, a type of wingless spectacles that clamp on the bridge of the nose – which focused attention upon his most remarkable eyes. Blue-green they were, almost iridescent, while their unnatural enormity was further increased by the magnification of the lenses.

The eyes are a feature commonly described when authors offer thumbnail descriptions of a character. It’s not surprising that this feature is regularly highlighted in animal metaphors too.

‘Confined spaces don’t bother me,’ he answered. ‘Besides, look at this window. I can see the whole street. And the park.’

Physical similarities are only the start; once this has been set up, the author continues to find ways in which the character behaves like an insect would, or rather, as an insect would if that insect were human. Above, we have a creature used to small spaces (reminiscent of a chrysalis), and also one which either lives in trees or is used to flying, and most at home with a bird’s eye view of the world.

In lectures he was constantly wriggling, twisting this way and that and, worse, he had the habit of talking out loud… Curious little chirping noises he made…

2. The Ratcatcher by Roald Dahl

In this short story the first person narrator and his friend have a rat problem so they call on the Ratcatcher. The man they meet is very much like a rat himself, with long,sulphur coloured teeth, pointed ears and black eyes.

The man was lean brown with a  sharp face and two long sulphur coloured teeth that protruded from the upper jaw, overlapping the lower lip, pressing it inwards. The ears were thin and pointed and set far back on the nape of the neck.

3. TRYING TO SAVE PIGGY SNEED BY JOHN IRVING

This is a short story about a man who was bullied, in which the other characters are forced to confront their own behaviour towards the bullied man after something unfortunate happens. The story is from Irving’s collection of the same name. Piggy Sneed (we don’t learn his real name) is taunted and teased by small-town children, who see a resemblance between the man and a pig:

We never bothered Mr Strout [the icebox man] either (because of his ice tongs and his fabulous aggression towards dogs, which we could easily imagine being turned towards us). But the garbage collector had nothing for us — no treats, no aggression — and so we children reserved our capacity for teasing and taunting (and otherwise making trouble) for him.

There were so many reasons for calling him ‘Piggy’, I wonder why one of us didn’t think of a more original name. To begin with, he lived on a pig farm. He raised pigs, he slaughtered pigs; more importantly, he lived with his pigs — it was just a pig farm, there was no farm house, there was only the barn. There was a single stovepipe running into one of the stalls. That stall was heated by a wood stove for Piggy Sneed’s comfort — and, we children imagined, his pigs (in the winter) would crowd around him for warmth. He certainly smelled that way.

Also he had absorbed, by the uniqueness of his retardation and by hisproximity to his animal friends, certain piglike expressions and gestures. His face would jut in front of his body when he approached the garbage cans, as if he were rooting (hungrily) underground; he squinted his small, red eyes; his nose twitched with all the vigor of a snout; there were deep pink wrinkles on the back of his neck — and the pale bristles, which sprouted at random along his jawline, in no way resembled a beard. He was short, heavy, and strong — he heaved the garbage cans to his back, he hurled their contents into the wooden, slat-sided truck bed.

- John Irving, from Trying To Save Piggy Sneed.

STRUCTURED WRITING ACTIVITY: ANIMAL CHARACTER SKETCH

Students might choose their own animals but this in itself takes time, so for a quicker set-up, print out one copy of the sheet below, chop them up and distribute animals at random.

ANIMAL CARDS CLASS SET (docx)

If students have internet access, give them ten minutes on Wikipedia to research their animal. On a blank sheet of paper, get them to pick out words which they could use in their story – words which are specific to their own animal. Ask them to make connections between the animal characteristics and human-equivalent characteristics. (They may or may not use these words and connections in their own story.)

e.g. The large, spherical compound eye of the fly might equal large glasses on a human. The talons of an eagle or hawk might equal long nails of a woman, or uncut, horny toenails on an old man.

ANIMAL-HUMAN STORY TEMPLATE (docx)

Some students may need no further prompting – they may be ready to start writing their story. Others might like to make use of the template above.

Be clear about what you, as teacher, are asking from the students: Do you want a simple snapshot, a character study? Or do you want a fully-fledged story? The character sketch may be completed in an hour, but a full story may need a week of classes and a gap between lessons to allow story ideas to develop.

For more Roald Dahl stories and teacher resources, available online, see RoaldDahlFans.com.

Acronyms vs. Initialisms

A.R.E.A.M. — Tombstone of someone who was really into acronyms.

- @studiesincrap

ANU, by the way, stands for Australian National University. This is why graphic designers are worth their weight in gold.

ACRONYM: a word formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name

INITIALISM: A term formed from the initial letter or letters of several words or parts of words, but which is itself pronounced letter by letter.

Anthropomorphism vs. Personification

Last month I explained how Pathetic Fallacy is not actually an insult, which involved an explanation of personification.

This is kind of related to that.

Do we need this other word? Anthropomorphism?

anthrop = human

morph = shape

[from The Cognatarium - a search engine which allows you to search for the meanings of English words by morpheme (the smallest unit of meaning).]

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERSONIFICATION AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM?

In pop culture the two terms seem to be used interchangably. See here, for instance:

 

10 Movies That Will Traumatise Your Child With Anthropomorphism from io9 (where else?).

But some people like to maintain a distinction, despite the overlapping usage. I like this explanation:

Both personification and anthropomorphization assert intangible human characteristics-such as consciousness and thought- onto an inanimate object, entity or animal. The difference is that anthropomorphization imposes physicall or tangible human characteristics onto the subject to suggest an embodiment of the human form.

- from the wordreference.com forum

To put it another way, with examples:

Personification pretends (for literary effect) to ascribe one or two human attributes (especially thoughts, feelings, intentions) to non-human things.

Anthropomorphism turns non-humans into humans completely — such as Bugs Bunny, the animals of Aesop’s fables, the Three Bears that chased Goldilocks, or the Uncle Remus characters.

Another way of looking at anthropomorphism is that it is actually talking about humans — but pretends that they are shaped like animals.

This is a popular device in children’s literature, fairy tales, and comic strips. One benefit is that the characters don’t have any race or gender, so all children everywhere can identify with them.

- from someone at Yahoo answers.

Pathetic Fallacy – not actually an insult

For a wonderful explanation of this literary technique:

Pathetic fallacy is a poetic device where, for the purpose of creating symbolic value or another higher-order creative expression, we attribute human emotions to items which don’t feel emotions.

- see more from Edit Torrent.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The term ‘pathetic fallacy’ was coined in 1856 by a man called John Ruskin (an art critic). He meant it as an insult. For John, the most important thing about art was ‘truth’. He was getting a little sick and tired of art (and descriptions in books) which did not represent the ‘true appearances’ of things. He hated when poets let their ‘emotions’ get in the way.

As an example of pathetic fallacy, John Ruskin offered the following:

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can.

- from Christabel by Coleridge.

He said that was ‘morbid’. Of course, this makes almost every author of fictional prose and poetry throughout history ‘morbid’, including Shakespeare. Nowadays the phrase ‘pathetic fallacy’ is used in a neutral way.

But hang on. Isn’t that example above simply called ‘personification’? (When inanimate objects are described using the emotions and actions of people?)

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN *PATHETIC FALLACY* AND *PERSONIFICATION*?

This is straight out of M.H. Abrams, the literature student’s bible:

“Pathetic fallacy” is now used, for the most part, as a neutral name for a very common phenomenon in descriptive poetry, in which the ascription of human traits to inanimate nature is less formal and more indirect than in the figure called personification.

- A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th Ed.

A COMMON EXAMPLE

Across all forms of art, Pathetic Fallacy is frequently used in regards to weather.

A character feels sad and it rains. (It happens in Chicken Run, but there are a million other examples.)

A character feels threatened and there’s a storm. (Storms tend to be more than just atmospheric.)

and so on.

by Paco CT

 

I really like this kind of pathetic fallacy. Especially storms. Love me a storm. (Except when a lightning bolt renders your TV aerial useless. Not a fan of that.)

But as mentioned by EditTorrent, when making use of this figure, we need to be careful of our sentence structures, and doubly careful about accidentally writing cliché.

That’s why it’s important to know what this is.

A Case For Writing With The Internet Off

This isn’t a procrastination post. I write better with the internet on.

The modern multitasking style of composing next to an open Internet browser is one solution to limiting writing’s cognitive burden.

- How To Write Faster

I have two monitors on my PC — one for the document or blog or whatever — the other for the internet. I write more rapidly when I’ve got easy access to certain oft-used webpages, namely google dictionary (when it existed) and Wikipedia.

I also read with the internet on, which is one thing I love about ebooks.

Yesterday I read about a character who wore a ‘seersucker suit’ and had no idea what that was. So I looked it up.

That got me wondering about clothing terminology, and about how poorly I know the names of garments. I had a good idea about this personal deficiency, because I had a dress fitted once when I was a bridesmaid, and it turned out every other woman in the room knew the meaning of ‘darts’ and ‘pleats’ and ‘sweetheart neck’ in the same way most (Kiwi) men know things like ‘joists’ and ‘gib screws’ and ‘spark plugs’.

Likewise, I know bugger all about plant life. Don’t ask me the make of a car, either. I’d be useless at the scene of a crime. You’d be lucky if I could give you the colour.

These gaps in my knowledge have not held me back in life, and I’ve never been at the scene of an actual crime, though I will always wonder how other people absorb such specific information.

I do think that whatever specific terminology you know as a fiction writer, it will come in handy at the word building stage.

That said, the internet is a marvellous thing, and if I don’t know what sort of car a character would drive, I do some research without leaving my chair. If I don’t know the name of those hoodickeys old women drape around their necks, I can get there somehow via google.

But here’s the thing.

If your own knowledge of a certain topic is too vast, or even a little more vast than average, or if you find yourself making use of the google machine to find specific words, there’s a question you must ask yourself, especially if writing in first or in close third person:

Would my character know that word?

Peter Cameron makes a good case for NOT LOOKING STUFF UP, not even in subsequent drafts. He’s got several techniques I really love – and will steal – but here’s one of them: It seems that if he doesn’t know the exact word for something he sometimes leaves it as is.

Here’s an example, from Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You:

And so I was running the faucet, waiting for the cold water to get from wherever distance place it was to our kitchen sink…

I read that and I thought, perfect. It’s spot on for this proto-gay teenage boy who would not know, would not have even thought about, where hot water comes from. A plumber would know. A homeowner who’d fixed her own hot water tank would know. It’s likely the author knows. But not this particular character. And even if the character would know, at a pinch, would this particular character think of it in specific terms? I know I don’t think about where my hot water comes from.

from VA Heating

This non-specific way of writing works particularly well when characters recall distant memories. Below, Peter Cameron’s main character recalls a memory from early childhood:

I was still eating whatever it was I was still eating — when suddenly the glass window pane I had been sitting beneath fell out of its grooves and crashed down upon the table and the bench, right where I had been sitting.

It is authentic that the MC does not remember what he was eating, because that’s the way memories work. They’re patchy. It’s also appropriate that the word ‘grooves’ was used rather than the technical term for whatever it is glass sits inside. ‘Grooves’ is what I would call it, too, as a glazier-newbie.

A single google search took me to a website full of glazing terminology, and I learnt ‘glazing stop’ and ‘mortise’ and ‘muntin’. Mortise would make a lovely name for a girl. Muntin, not so much.

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.

- CYRUS FARIVAR

Slightly Confusing Terms

ONOMATOPOEIA AND MIMESIS

Onomatopoeia mimics an ambient sound (splish, bang, crash).

Mimesis mimics a sound which isn’t there. The speaker is imagining how something would sound… if it were to make an actual sound.

English doesn’t have a lot of mimesis, but there are many examples in Japanese.

shiiiin! = the sound of silence

fun = the sound of not knowing what the hell is going on

sara sara = the state of being silky (eg. hair)

There is a lot of mimesis in Japanese manga. That’s what those random characters are, overlaid on the pictures.

SARCASM AND IRONY

Sarcasm is used with nasty intent whereas irony can be genuinely humorous, or used to draw attention to a point. Sarcasm is a SUBCATEGORY of irony, however.

Often when people refer to ‘sarkiness’ they mean just plain old nastiness, which isn’t necessarily ironic at all.

PARODY AND SATIRE

This is like the ‘sarcasm’ v. ‘irony’ example. Parody is intended to ridicule or poke fun at someone else’s expense, whereas satire is more like an homage to great work, or else intended to make a more serious point. (Some might argue that any kind of mimicry should be considered flattery, however.)

A light-hearted parody is a ‘spoof’.

Understatement or Litotes?

I was taught at school that litotes is the fancy name for understatement. But it turns out, litotes is a special kind of understatement. (Otherwise, why bother with another word, right?)

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Understatement intentionally represents something as less than it is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact. When the writer’s audience can be expected to know the true nature of a fact which might be rather difficult to describe adequately in a brief space, the writer may choose to understate the

fact as a means of employing the reader’s own powers of description.

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Litotes, a particular form of understatement, is generated by denying the opposite or contrary of the word which otherwise would be used. Depending on the tone and context of the usage, litotes either retains the effect of understatement, or becomes an intensifying expression.

e.g. We saw him throw the buckets of paint at his canvas in disgust, and the result did not perfectly represent his subject, Mrs. Jittery.

- from A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices by Robert Harris (1997)

What is Literary Fiction?

The two most depressing words in the English language are “literary fiction”.

- David Hare

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What’s called “literary” fiction has no special interest group. It simply includes too many things. Elizabeth Gilbert, Ben Marcus, and Jonathan Franzen are all literary writers. For a literary novel to succeed, it has to create its own market—one that never existed before it hit the shelves.

Literary writing (or, if you prefer, imaginitive writing) has certain advantages of its own, none of them weakened one bit by technology. It can often be funnier than other kinds of prose. It can deal more humanly with sex. It can say shameful things about family life—not by treating them as scandals but, on the contrary, by showing that they’re normal.

- Loren Stein, full article here.

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Literary fiction is a term that has come into common usage since around 1960, principally to distinguish serious fiction (that is, work with claims to literary merit) from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction (i.e., paraliterature). In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more on style, psychological depth, and character, the plot may or may not be important. Mainstream commercial fiction focuses more onnarrative and plot.

- Wikipedia

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Have you noticed an implied snobbery that goes along with the phrase ‘literary fiction’? If you hang around writing groups, you may have noticed this reluctance – the reluctance of some writers to label their own work ‘literary’. These writers don’t know what they should call it, but some refuse to even acknowledge that there is such a thing.

Is it because ‘literary’ has connotations of unique, original, outstanding, big-prize-garnering? Nobody wants to be held to these standards. If this is your definition of literary no wonder you shy away from owning it.

Genre fiction almost certainly has connotations of formulaic, light and appeals-to-masses. There are just as many writing group regulars who refuse to slot their work into a genre, preferring to pretend that their work is not constrained by the (surprisingly tight!) restraints of word-length and structure that their genre demands.

I’ve been in discussions with people who refuse to acknowledge that there is any such thing as literary fiction. Since it’s hard to define, they don’t want to go there. Just because something is hard to define, or lengthy, or requires numerous examples, doesn’t mean it can’t be defined.

But literary fiction is a thing; it’s a legitimate publishing thing. When agents and editors talk about literary fiction, their peers know exactly what sort of work they are talking about, at least in the trade sense of the term. Here’s a definition from a literary agent.

I wish someone would sweep the snobby connotations of ‘literary’ away so we can get on with the real task, which is writing, not marketing.

The Twist Ending

My mother hates watching magic shows. She feels she’s being tricked. Of course, she is right. Other people love being tricked. They love magic shows and marvel at the magician’s skill.

I also know readers who hate stories with twists in the tale. They feel they’ve been strung along, manipulated and then lured into a trap as an author’s prey. Other readers marvel at the skill of a tricky writer. These are the readers who can enjoy a tricky ending.

Which kind of reader are you?

When I read a story I always seem to begin playing “Guess the Ending” about two-thirds of the way through. If I’m very lucky, I lose. There’s a disappointment about winning, and delicious fun in being faked out.

-Dennis Whitcomb, The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing

Here are some classic films with twist endings. Thrillers, horror and mystery seem especially suited to the twist. How many of these do you know and remember? How many did you see coming? Which ones did you like?

• Sixth Sense
• Seven
• The Others
• Signs
• The Village
• Saw
• The Stepford Wives
• Terminator 3
• Flightplan

Here are some more. Do you agree with the list?

Some masters of story-telling trickery:

1. Agatha Christie (by setting up false villains. The twist ending is almost mandatory in a good mystery.)
2. Roald Dahl (in numerous ways, especially in his short stories.)
3. Michael Crichton (e.g. Prey)

Whatever your enjoyment of twist endings (a.k.a. switch endings, the subverted trope), there is much skill involved in doing it well. First of all,inexperienced writers (or readers) may think they are twisting the ending when they’re falling into cliche.

How to Stuff It Up

1. The viewpoint character wakes up and it’s all a dream. (Didn’t you do this as a kid, at least once? I did, when time ran out in class.) Similar to this: the VP character is actually crazy and it never happened after all. In fact, any ending in which the reader learns ‘It never happened at all’. This is a disappointment because there is no usually no epiphany, nothing to be learned and the reader feels they have wasted their time.

2. The viewpoint character is already dead. (Okay, I recently wrote a story like this but I had to be very careful to make it different.)

3. Introduce something random, out of left field, something obviously contrived and tacked on. Storytelling is like writing a transactional essay in this respect: Never introduce anything new in a conclusion. You’ll end up with classic plot holes.

4. The Shock Value Ending. Someone gets killed off for no good reason. Or similar.

5. Unnecessary Complexity. Some post-modern story-tellers expect an audience to read/watch something more than once, and carefully, before making any sense of it. If this is your style, you’ll attract a specific sort of audience. Many people would rather not put in all that work.

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How to put a great switch in an ending

1. Engender empathy in a character then expose that character for what they really are.

Bad characters are actually good. Good characters are actually bad. Such endings can make us question our own quickness to judge. It encourages us to see shades of grey in character, and this is its own epiphany. The trick-ending has a special kind of ‘epiphanic moment’, known as the ‘anagnorisis’ (discovery) – the protagonist’s sudden recognition of their own or another character’s true identity or nature.

2. Foreshadow without telegraphing.

You probably know what ‘foreshadowing’ means. In a good twisted tale, you can read the story again and see hints at what’s coming. You can enjoy the tale a second time in a completely new way. ‘Telegraphing’ is basically ‘stuffing up an attempt at foreshadowing’ by dropping such heavy-handed hints that any audience with half a wit knows exactly what’s coming at the end. Aim to foreshadow. Avoid the telegraph. At the end of the tale we should see how certain inconsistencies become logical.

Sometimes foreshadowing is done by making use of a ‘plant’ – an object that is ‘planted’ earlier but doesn’t become important until later. The plant is useful in any kind of storytelling, even if there’s no particular twist. e.g. in Six Feet Under, Brenda is writing a novel about the sexual exploits of a fictional character. The audience knows that she is not writing fiction; we’ve seen enough scenes where she has sex with a random stranger, confesses to her prostitute friend then types away on her laptop. One day, she writes a scene about a guy wearing a certain baseball cap. Nate reads her work. Then, while sitting on the veranda with Brenda, the guy turns up, wearing the planted baseball cap. This leads to the end of their first engagement.

Where something – be it an object, situation or character – is introduced early in a story for use much later, this is known as Chekhov’s Gun. Anton Chekhov himself, said that everything mentioned in a short story must have a use. Do not include a gun unless there is some use for the gun.

When the author makes use of false foreshadowing, it’s then called a Red Herring. This is most acceptable in mystery and detective stories. Readers of other genres may have little time for this technique.

3. Irony.

For example, after a long hard struggle, we learn the struggle wasn’t necessary. (e.g. Office Space, the movie.)

Or, what a baddie gains wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Can you think of an example?

Writers also make use of these literary techniques:

1. Flashback

Flashback, or analepsis, comes in useful for a variety of reasons, not least to provide a reader with backstory. In a trick ending, the flashback is used to suddenly reveal information/vital memories which provide the missing information needed to complete the puzzle.

2. The Unreliable Narrator

e.g. Notes on a Scandal (Zoe Heller), Je Ne Parle Pas Francais (Katherine Mansfield).

The reader is told a story through the eyes of a certain character who doesn’t quite have the story right. We eventually work out for ourselves that we haven’t been told the whole truth. We meet unreliable narrators in real life, too. Have you ever started a new school or workplace and been told, on your very first day, to avoid certain people in the playground or workplace because they’re idiots or whatever? Eventually, you work out the true balance of power and you realise the person who tried to get you onside on your very first day was the very person who needs friends most, because that’s the person who is ostracised.

3. The Cliffhanger

The ending is unresolved. The characters are left in the lurch.

Some readers really hate cliffhangers. So why would you do this to your readers, who’ve loyally followed you all the way to the end? Maybe to recreate the Zeigarnik effect, in which frustrating and unresolved emotions are those best remembered.

Cliffhangers are best used at the end of a series, and only when another series follows. This will keep the audience coming back for more, without letting them down.

4. Reverse Chronology

The story opens after some pivotal event and works backwards via flashbacks or scenes which are dated and timed. Amnesia stories often work like this: A character wakes up and has no idea who he is. He works it out little by little.

5. Non-linear Narration

Readers have to work hard to get these stories, because we are given a series of random scenes and expected to piece the story together ourselves. Lost makes use of this technique and I, for one, can’t be bothered. Quentin Tarantino does it better in Pulp Fiction. The story may begin in medias res (in the middle of things), jump backwards for say, two thirds of the story, then exist in the present for the final third, after the cliffhanger. These stories are also non-linear, but audiences can grasp these kind more easily.

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Remember, when matching wits with the reader, that your readers will be on the lookout for the twist in the tale. Especially readers of short stories, who tend to be the most widely read group of people of the lot.

Related Link: Spoilers don’t ruin stories after all.

Stream of Consciousness vs Interior Monologue

Interior Monologue

A stylised way of thinking out loud. (Technically: thinking ‘on the page’.)

Unlike stream-of-consciousness, an interior monologue can be integrated into a third-person narrative. The viewpoint character’s thoughts are woven into authorial description, using their own language.

This is the essential difference between interior monologue and straight narrative:

Narrative = the narrator talking (You know ‘the narrator’ – that made-up character who sounds like the author – but please don’t mistake authors for narrators – not all authors are crazy axe-weilding, mentally unstable murderers, unlike many of their narrators.)

Interior Monologue = a character talking/thinking, using words specific to that character, making assumptions, mistaken judgements, conclusions RIGHT FOR THAT CHARACTER.

If interior monologue is done well, you won’t even notice it.

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Stream of Consciousness

Another stylised way of thinking out loud.

The term ‘stream of consciousness’ is very similar to interior monologue – and used interchangeably by some – but this refers more specifically to a first person narrative which mimics the jumble of thoughts, emotions and memories passing through a character’s mind. (Interior monologue is not necessarily written in first person.)

Stream of consciousness tends to be less ordered than interior monologue. Consciousness has no beginning and no end – thoughts flit quite randomly from one thing to another.