Balance: Interiority and Exteriority in Writing and the Writing Life

Interiority is what is going on in the minds of your characters: thoughts, memories, ideas, daydreams. Interiority is what is “inside” versus what is external or exteriority: action, gesture, setting, description.

Writing interiority is at first pass, for some of us, easier and more pleasurable than recording imagined or remembered scenes. Is that true for you? Interiority is that which takes place inside your character’s head. That’s where we are when we write, isn’t it? In our heads. It makes sense that writers might be good at interiority. The things we draw on to write–thoughts, evaluations, decisions, memories, imaginings–are all interiority. But that doesn’t mean that what we write should all be interiority.

Leaf through books you love, and you will likely find less explicit interiority than you think. Interiority is usually grounded in scene and action, interwoven with external detail. Exterior action and detail produce a strong sense of emotion, opinion and interiority, so that we leave a book with the impression that we’ve been given the inside of a character’s head (or soul) but often that’s come to us largely through exteriority. This is a really important point. Looking at the world through the perspective of a character creates an intimacy with that character’s interiority without dwelling on it. Exteriority is vital to interiority.

Exteriority is how a story earns interiority, too. We won’t believe what a character thinks if we haven’t seen the character in action.

Three Ways to Balance Interiority and Exteriority in Your Writing . . .

1. Write a scene entirely objectively (exterior only), and then write the same scene using only interior impressions, thoughts and feelings. Now interweave, choosing the strongest of each. Notice how the exterior carries the weight of emotion, opinion and idea.
2. John Gardener has great exercises for interiority and exteriority, such as the one where he suggests writing a description of a lake from the point of view of a man whose son has just been killed in war, without mentioning the son or death or war. This is about getting so close to your point of view character that you see what s/he sees because of what s/he is feeling.
3. Now try an interior version of Gardener’s exercise. Write the interior and exterior actions of a character determined NOT to think of some particular subject or incident. Let the character’s thoughts and feelings skirt around the subject; show us the character’s actions, too.

Let’s acknowledge that these kinds of exercises can be hard to do. I’m not the only writing teacher I know who has picked up an assignment of my own after I’ve assigned it, only to discover how very useful it is. Make these exercises part of your draft. That way, it won’t feel like extra, but you can still explore and strengthen your craft.

Now, here are . .

Three Ways to Use Exteriority to Support Your Writing Life

1. Check in with friends. (I email my goals daily to a friend and report back on my progress.)
2. Go for a walk before you write—without listening to anything or talking on the phone. Just look around and walk. This will get your forthcoming pages pumping in your blood.
3. Print your day’s writing. Let that stack of pages build. Read it in hard copy. Get it out of the radical interiority of the computer and into the hard copy world.

Post your thoughts: Do you tend to write exteriority (action and scene) more easily or interiority (thoughts and feelings)? How do you encourage a balance? Which do you love to read? How do you bring exteriority into your writing and into your writing life—i.e., how do you get out of your head?

 

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