Jeannine Ouellette | November 2019

Volume 52, Number 1, September 2019

Topic: Effective stories include action and events, but the inner life is fascinating, as well. How can interior stories—those exploring the life of the mind—provide enough forward momentum to keep us  reading?

 

1. Educational setting

This essay and corresponding teaching guide are appropriate for use in academic and community-based creative writing workshops. Because the article opens with how and why beginning writers often omit action from their stories, it will be useful for beginner-level and undergraduate offerings. However, the article also includes a nuanced examination of acclaimed work combining interiority with suspense and momentum, along with an indirect but deft discussion of narrative arc, making it appropriate for advanced courses. Despite its focus on fiction, the article’s central question of interiority versus action is also relevant to creative nonfiction, especially memoir.

 

II. Lesson objective

A. Students will become better able to discern the balance of interiority and action in both published work and their own.

B. Students will develop more sophisticated understanding of what Mattison calls the “unmomentous events” that drive action in stories of the inner life

C. Students will be challenged to examine the narrative link between power and action; the literary tradition of favoring powerful men as protagonists; and effective ways to write about people who lack power.

 

III. Contextual introduction or lead-in

A. The article explores the balance between interiority and events in stories, asking, “Are there good and compelling works of literature in which the chief events are in the characters’ minds? If so, what provides forward momentum? Why do we keep reading?” 

 

IV. Broader discussion points and questions for students

A. Action-oriented stories drive the narrative with events. How do interior stories— those exploring the inner life—establish momentum and suspense? Discuss.

a. Literary examples (beyond the article) of effective and enduring interior stories?

B. Consider and discuss examples of unmomentous events that might propel stories of the inner life.

C. Discuss this passage from the article: “If stories are always about action, then only people who do things can be in stories. And if action is defined as what happens when people with power do something, then fictional characters must be powerful people.”

a. The article goes on, “But as long as powerlessness exists, we will also need stories about powerless characters, about people who don’t have important accomplishments, and possibly also about people who do nothing…. People who have no power at all… still have minds, and minds that may be just as active as the minds of the people in charge. Maybe literature needs stories of what happens in the mind in order to give powerless people a place in literature.” Discuss.

b. What are the implications, in today’s political and social climate, of the link between power and action in contemporary writing?

c. Can inaction be a form of power—in life and on the page? How so?

D. Is an interior story necessarily quiet?

E. What are the artistic pitfalls of writing interior stories; i.e., in what major ways can such stories go wrong and fail as literature?

F. Conversely, in what ways can action-driven stories fall flat?

G. The article likens the mind to a story. Do you agree that minds and stories are alike? Why or why not?

H. The article points to successful interior stories by Richard Wright, Tillie Olsen, Virginia Woolf, Andrew Marvell, Robert Walser, John Marcher, and Katherine Mansfield. Can you think of more recent examples of successful stories that are highly interior?

I. How do book industry norms affect the balance between interiority and action in today’s published stories?

 

V. Considerations for students’ individual work

A. What are your tendencies regarding interiority versus action in your stories? Do you prefer to explore the inner life, or to build your stories from events and action, or both?

a. How might you benefit from writing against your own tendencies; i.e., if your stories tend to be primarily interior, what might you gain from attempting an event-driven story, and vice versa?

B. Did the article challenge you to think about your work-in-progress in a different way? If so, how?

a. Imagine revising a work-in-progress to increase both interiority and tension. How would you do this?

b. Imagine revising a work-in-progress to add more events—including unmomentous events. How would more events change the impact of the story? 

C. The article cites fear as one reason writers include too few events in their stories. Does this apply to you? Why or why not?

 

VI.  Potential activity (to be completed individually or in small groups with sharing and discussion)

A. Write a scene that takes place entirely in the character’s mind—build it solely from interior monologue.

a. Rewrite the scene as action-only, no interiority.

b. Compare the two versions, noting what works well and what does not, then write a whole new scene combining the strongest elements of each.

c. Of the three versions of the scene, which is strongest? Why?

 

VII. Additional resources

A. Related terminology

a. interiority: the quality of being interior or inward

b. interior monologue: a literary technique through which a character’s thoughts are revealed

c. narrative tension: narrative tension fuels what Janet Burroway and Elizabeth and Ned Stuckey-French, in their iconic text, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, call a reader’s desire to know, What happened next? And after that? And then what happened? Narrative tension is why we turn the page 

d. narrative arc: also called “story arc,” narrative arc is related to plot; it refers to the structure and shape of a story, whether fiction or nonfiction. A story’s arc is typically built from a sequence of events

e. melodrama: in literature and theater, melodrama refers to sensational and highly emotional events and characters

f. personification: conferring human characteristics or a personal nature on a nonhuman entity

B. Related reading

a. The 1980 novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is celebrated for its complex interiority. Upon the novel’s publication, critic Anatole Broyard wrote in the New York Times, “It’s as if, in writing it, [Robinson] broke through the ordinary human condition with all its dissatisfactions, and achieved a kind of transfiguration.” Yet, Housekeeping also offers strong forward momentum and narrative tension, making it a valuable example of effective interiority

b. Donald Maass’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Story explores the relationship between interiority and emotion in fiction.

c. Ann Beatty’s short story “Downhill” is predominately interior, yet also a beautifully gripping exploration of one woman’s breakdown.

 

VIII. Conclusion

A. Final questions and observations regarding the relationships between interiority, action, and narrative tension? Last thoughts on the link between power and action, on and off the page?

B. Reading for next class meeting: The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass, Chapter Two, “Inner Versus Outer,” pp. 6–26; “Downhill” by Ann Beattie, The New Yorker Stories, pp. 68–73.

 

Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the children’s book Mama Moon. Her short stories and essays have appeared in several literary reviews, and she has received fellowships from Millay Colony for the Arts and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts. She teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and Elephant Rock, an independent program in Minneapolis.