Pamela’s Prompts: Internal Monologue ala Jiminy Cricket

In last week’s Pamela’s Prompt, we looked at stream of consciousness, a literary term that describes a style of writing that mimics a character’s thought process. Often it uses sensory impressions, rough grammar, unusual syntax, and incomplete ideas.

This week let’s explore internal monologue because it dovetails nicely with stream of consciousness.

Internal monologue is that little voice inside your head that’s constantly telling your characters what to do, what to say – or what NOT to say. It’s your character’s conscience speaking. Remember the diminutive Jiminy Cricket® in the 1940 Disney movie Pinocchio®? Jiminy Cricket is constantly serving as Pinocchio’s guide (or conscience) as Pinocchio strives to turn from a wooden puppet and become a real boy, and to walk and talk without strings — if only he can prove himself worthy.

Pamela’s Prompt: Internal Monologue ala Jiminy Cricket

For today’s prompt, set a timer for five to 10 minutes and write an internal monologue with one of your characters. (If you don’t have a character yet, simply choose one from any book you’ve read.) Get inside his or her head. I mean really get inside their heads. It might help to envision little Jiminy Cricket sitting on your character’s shoulder doing his best to guide your character.

Let’s turn up the heat a bit. Let’s say your character – we’ll call him Johnny — is faced with a moral dilemma. He may be a bank teller and is dissatisfied with his low-paying job because he is striving to save for a new car. He is convinced that having a new car will improve his chances with a young woman named Cissy who lives in his apartment building.

One day, Johnny accidentally gets locked in the bank’s vault (you can imagine the scenario as you write to the prompt). He hits an alarm button, so he knows help is on the way, but it will be roughly 15 minutes before firefighters can arrive. He is locked in the vault with a cart and on that cart is an open till, containing more than $200,000 in cold, hard cash. There are no security cameras inside the vault. What does he do next?

This is where internal monologue comes in. What does he think? What does his conscience (think like Jiminy Cricket) tell him?

Set a timer for 10-20 minutes and write.

Ready? Set? Go!

As an aside, one of my favorite books on the writing process is the “Creative Writer’s Notebook: 20 Great Authors & 70 Writing Exercises*” by John Gillard, so be sure to check it out for great inspiration about internal monologue, stream of consciousness, and oh so much more. I highly recommend it.

*Gillard, John. Creative Writer’s Notebook: 20 Great Authors. New York, Metro Books, 2016.