So how *do* I use interiority and expositional elements in my writing...?
So I was reading a tumblr post + article about people 'writing like tv' with little to no interiority, and I had thoughts about how I did that, but then I got curious about what actually ends up on the page, and looked up some recent fic to see.
So here's a couple of scenes from Luocha Undersea City, where the POV character Yin Xinyue is tripping through a dreamscape, finding versions of her life where her friend/crush Yatou is still alive. Expositional writing (what someone thinks, backstory, anything that wouldn't show up on a tv screen if this were filmed) marked in bold.
Yatou caught [Yin Xinyue's] hand and turned it palm up with delicate fingers, drawing it into the pale winter light slanting through the boarding house’s high windows.
She clucked her tongue regretfully. “A sore wound,” she said, studying the graze on Yin Xinyue’s palm.
“I was so brave,” Yin Xinyue joked, her eyes wide. The graze was a nothing but in truth she had been brave – the supply truck she’d driven that day slipping badly on a cliff road. Her arms still shook under their thick sleeves from yanking the wheel around. But it was a nothing. She flinched as Yatou smoothed cool white salve over her damaged skin and pouted. Yatou smiled indugently and tapped Yin Xinyue’s nose, leaving a smear of astringent cream on the tip.
Out of long, long habit, Yin Xinyue’s fingers curved around Yatou’s wrist to feel her pulse, but it was still strong, still stable, and there was colour in the woman’s cheeks despite the tiny portions of food they were surviving on as they crept through their invaded country like stubborn ants.
Like an alpine flower removed from lowland smothering, Yatou thrived in the privations of their travels. And wasn’t that a wonder?
Over Yatou’s shoulder, Yin Xinyue saw two photos propped up on a dresser in an impromptu shrine, the small rice cake that was the only offering they could spare set between two sprays of dead incense sticks. From grainy black-and-white paper Fo-ye’s bright eyes met her own; he was very handsome in his military cloak. He would not mind sharing, Yin Xinyue thought, not with his old friend Er Yuehong coolly elegant behind him.
Yatou dropped her hand and smiled. Her breath steamed in the chill air but her qipao was thick and quilted – Yin Xinyue could provide! – small stitches showing neatly in the woollen tweed that was the outer cloth where the batting was anchored to it.
“I saw some more of the munitions camp,” Yin Xinyue told her breathlessly, taking Yatou’s hand back and swinging it. “I think I’ve worked out the best place to plant an incendiary device. After that it’s –” she drew a finger across her throat – “all over for the Japanese dogs.”
A line showed between Yatou’s birdwing brows. “You will be careful,” she said.
“Of course,” Yin Xinyue said blithely. “I have to come back to you, don’t I?” She repeated her words, stroking her thumb on Yatou’s inner wrist. “I will always come back to you.”
Yatou smiled at her, indulgent, affectionate, then tugged off Yin Xinyue’s cap, and gently worked at the pins in her coiled up hair.
Somewhere outside, a dog was barking. Yin Xinyue turned her head in startlement even as hair slithered down –
– and tickled her shoulders, the neatly permed curls bouncing on the fine knitting of her dainty little cardigan as Yin Xinyue paced back and forth across the fine carpet of Hong Manor’s parlour.
“And then he said, and then he said – can you believe what Husband said?” She threw up her hands.
Curled up in one corner of the couch, Yatou tucked a finger into the pages of her romance novel to hold the place and lowered the book, looking up at Yin Xinyue. Her eyes were huge and amused behind the silver rims of her spectacles; the silver hairs she had chosen not to pluck out glinted in the warmth of the electric light. “I don’t know,” she said gravely. “What did Fo-ye say?”
Yin Xinyue lifted up her arms dramatically to declaim, “He said –” but the parlour door opened after a brief knock, and Er Yuehong came through. The upright old man still wore a long, high-collared changshan in his own home, despite the changing fashions of the time, and the midnight blue brocade of it suited him well. A lacquered tray balanced on one hand, holding an array of steaming bowls and lidded cups.
“Er-ye will you marry me?” Yin Xinyue pleaded, clasping her hands. “I can no longer thrive in Fo-ye’s household.” She turned and knelt by Yatou’s couch, eyes wide and welling with emotion. “Can I be your sister-wife, I’ll be so good as wife number two, I’ll wash socks…”
Yatou touched the side of her head gently, smoothing her hair. “Oh dear,” she said softly, “that sounds serious.”
A soft cough and the women turned their heads.
“Alas,” said Er Yuehong, “I am a one-woman man. However, we can sustain you in your travails.” He placed the tray of food and drink on the little side table. Softly, he added, “Can I talk to Fo-ye for you?”
“Would you?” Yin Xinyue blinked again, her eyes prickling. “Can you remind him that the chicken soup is in the icebox on the left and he mustn’t forget it. And tell him that I. That I. That.” She foundered.
“He will understand,” Er Yuehong reassured her. He bowed briefly to the women, and left. Yatou’s hand landed lightly on Yin Xinyue’s shoulder, and squeezed.
I guess my answer is, It depends?
Arguably the mini-flashback in the first section to driving a truck could have been filmed, if this were tv, though a flashback at that point might have been jarring. There could have been a looooong, loving shot of the photo of the dead husbands, though again, telling the audience what exactly Xinyue was thinking mighta been awkward and intrusive. On the other hand, an 'as you know' conversation about how Yatou was mysteriously not sick anymore would have been griiiiiindingly slow, and I got to do the poetical 'alpine flower' metaphor while I was at it. (Let language be beautiful.)
On the other, other hand, the second scene is conveyed almost entirely through visuals and conversation. And why shouldn't it be? Sometimes showing how people feel through their movements and the stutter-start of their words is both the most economical and the most immediate way to break a written scene.
And... yes, I often do think of the visuals of the scene when I'm writing it out. That focus on hands in the first section felt like a close-up in my mind. The windows of the boarding house, Yatou's padded qipao -- or the permed hair and the spectacles in the second scene -- they were all chosen to convey information about place without me having to dip overly into expositional language.
I guess my advice would be something like: if you're having trouble with a scene -- too long, too dry, too windy, too rushed -- try altering the frame of the language. What visual information do you need to make it clear what the characters are doing? Can your visual information add emotional nuance to what they're thinking or saying? Is it more economical/vivid/both to write out the conversation word for word or summarise it, or skip it and show the aftermath...? What makes us feel closer to the characters in this paragraph?
