Inner experience: a unique value of written stories
The privilege of sharing the thoughts and feelings of another
As I wrote in What is “spiritual, devotional, and mystical realism”?, mystical experience is personal and subjective in the sense that it’s experienced only by an individual, yet it is also objective in that the descriptions many people have recorded of those experiences since the dawn of the written word are remarkably similar. Many people, too, have given expression to those experiences in various forms of art, such as painting and music. And yet among all those forms, writing is the only one through which you can deeply share in another’s innermost thoughts and feelings.
This privilege of sharing inner experience offers a unique advantage for both readers and writers, especially where fiction is concerned, as I explore in this post and will explore in a few subsequent ones. (Though not in any particular order and not necessarily back-to-back.)
Comparing written stories to movies
For starters, let’s compare writing to another medium with which we’re all familiar: movies. Like written stories, movies can evoke powerful feelings. Yet as engaging as movies are, they’re almost always presented through the point of view of a disembodied camera or a fly-on-the-wall observer. We could even say that the perspective is that of the camera operator, who is certainly not a character in the story!
This perspective of a neutral observer doesn’t give us much access to a character’s inner experience—what they’re thinking and feeling.
Time slows down when we read, allowing us to be more present with those feelings, digesting them more fully and perhaps taking them in more deeply.
Of course, with varying degrees of success, actors communicate something of the close-in thoughts and emotions of their characters through posture, gestures, and facial expressions. As an exercise, mute your audio and then watch the following opening scene of Sleepless in Seattle so that you see how Tom Hanks portrays a widower’s pain through only his body. (The video itself is not muted.)
Here’s the question, though: even with Hanks’ marvelous performance, how much could you infer from the visuals alone about what, Sam, his character, is really thinking and how he’s really feeling? His expressions and gestures give clues, along with the one flashback that’s clearly happening in his head, but as viewers we still have to guess at what’s going on inside. Even if you watch again with your audio on, so you can hear what Sam’s character is saying at the time, you’re still left with only suggestions.
Focus especially on the first ten seconds in which, from the perspective of the camera, we see Sam only at a distance. Were it not for the music, we’d really have no clue about what he might be feeling.
Now compare that video experience to how I might express the scene in written story form, using what’s called the close third-person point-of-view that gives us—me as an author and you as a reader—the privilege of being inside Sam’s consciousness:
Sam stood at his design table, alight in the afternoon sunbeams from the full-window wall beside him. He once marveled at the view, but in time, it became one of so many other ordinary things. Today, especially, everything was ordinary. No, everything was extraordinary. Extraordinarily painful and empty. Today, especially, it wouldn’t have mattered if parade balloons were bounding along South Wells or aliens decided to invade. He just couldn’t look at the city. Not now. Not any more. Not a Chicago without Maggie.
Work. Work is good. Work is focusing. Work kept him from thinking too much on the past he lost, the present he suffered, and the future that was full of too many questions, too much uncertainty, too much heartbroken loneliness. And not just for himself, but for now-motherless Jonah, the Jonah who all this time heroically hid his grief from Sam. Maybe it’d be easier if they could grieve together. Maybe it wouldn’t. Grief and easy don’t belong in the same sentence.
What feelings or empathy did this written passage evoke for you? How do they differ or align with watching the clip, both with and without audio? If you were asked to identify Sam’s emotions, I imagine that it’s easier to do so from the written account than the video, even though you probably had a more immediate emotional experience with the video (and the music, especially). And now that you’ve relaxed away from both experiences by reading this paragraph, which one do you remember more clearly?
A distinct difference between the two, and perhaps why you might remember the written version more keenly, is a function of time and attention. Whereas the video runs about 10 seconds, I’m sure that reading these two paragraphs took more like 35-50 seconds, or roughly four times as long. Which means that time slows down when we read, allowing us to be more present with those feelings, digesting them more fully and perhaps taking them in more deeply.1 We can even read at whatever speed is comfortable to us.
Reading also allows us to slow down even further by re-reading any passages we want, however we want, whenever we want, even during the first reading of a story. It’s also easy to skip back and re-read a page or two if we like, and doing so doesn’t disrupt the flow of the story as much as the same action would when watching a movie (and which isn’t even possible in a theater).
To continue with my written version of the scene, much of this next passage describes what’s going on from the camera’s point of view, as it happens in the movie. Such description is necessary for you, as a reader, to visualize or imagine the scene for yourself. My description here may not be as rich as what a movie set provides, yet in writing I can still add more of Sam’s unspoken thoughts:
Bob, one of the firm’s structural engineers, approached in a manner not unlike one approaching a corpse. Without a word and without apparently asking whether this was a good time for an imperative gesture, he laid a business card atop the blueprints under Sam’s gaze.
"Here," Bob said in the tone of an undertaker, "my shrink. Call him."
Oh God, another one. It was all Sam could do to keep himself from screaming, or crying, or both. I need strength, not advice. And I certainly don’t need you to pass the problem off…no, no, just breathe, you can get through this.
Without a word and without even rolling his eyes, Sam dropped his three-sided ruler, jabbed a hand into his suit jacket on the chair behind him, and extracted a fistful of cards. With an are you effing kidding me? look, Sam waggled the cards at Bob and slipped one off the top.
"Loss of spouse support group," he monotoned, and slapped the card down.
"Chicago Cancer Family Network," he continued, giving this card a derisive spin.
"Parents without Partners." Flick. "Partners without Parents." Drop. "Hug yourself." Toss. "Hug a Friend." Slap, with emphatic disgust. "Hug a shrink. Huh! Or…" His eyes burning now, his voice growling, he picked up the cards, deciding at that moment to feed them to the shredder.
"Or work,” he sneered. “Work hard! Work will save you. Work is the only thing that will see—you—through—this!"
Bob swallowed and reddened, but held his ground.
Sam scolded himself for his outburst. Bob acted in good faith, like everyone else. It’s just that his timing was poor. But then again, what timing could be good?
Sam softened with apology. "Don’t mind him, he's just a guy who lost his wife." He slumped into his chair with a sigh.
“What I think we really need is…change."
Bob brightened. "Good idea. Take a couple of weeks off, get some sun, take Jonah fishing…"
Sam shook his head. He gazed through the windows to the skyline that was now nothing more than a backdrop to his despair. He saw no buildings, no clouds, no sun. He saw only himself with Maggie and Jonah, walking into Wrigley Field, ready to enjoy an afternoon of baseball, one of far too many memories that haunted him now and would continue to haunt him for God knows how long. Chicago would forever be a city of ghosts…one ghost in particular.
“No, real change,” he mumbled. “A new city. Some place where every time I go around a corner I don't think of Maggie."
New York? he thought. No…too similar to Chicago, or too dissimilar. Miami? Too hot, no winters. Atlanta? Dallas? St. Louis? No, all too close. Somewhere like LA, perhaps, but not so impersonal, maybe, maybe…and a definite image began to form in his mind, a place where both he and Jonah could find—could start—life anew, with no expectations.
Bob broke Sam’s reverie. “Where you gonna go?”
Spinning in his chair, Sam made a solemn announcement that surprised even himself.
"I was thinking about Seattle."
All in all, a written scene like this can’t communicate the nuances of voice and body language like a good actor can, at least without boring the reader to tears with excessive descriptiveness. But it can take the reader much more deeply into a privileged experience of a character’s thoughts and feelings, especially those like mystical experiences that don’t lend well to being depicted visually.2
What about voiceovers in movies?
Occasionally a movie includes some voiceover for the protagonist, which can give a little peek inside their mind. Sleepless in Seattle, for example, opens with a few lines of such narration (replay the video above from the beginning). In that case, however, the voiceover that starts with “Mommy got sick” is only Sam talking to his son Jonah. It does not reveal Sam’s innermost thoughts, and it’s the only voiceover in the entire movie.
A movie that includes more frequent voiceovers is the quirky indie comedy Interstate 60, where the voiceovers probably saved a great deal of production costs by having the protagonist simply tell the audience what’s going on instead of having to act is all out. Thankfully, the voiceovers are consistently and effectively used to link scenes together and don’t distract from all the wonderful performances of Chris Cooper, Ann-Margaret, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd, Amy Smart, and Kurt Russell, among others.
All that said, for as much as voiceovers might reveal what characters are thinking, they seldom express how they’re feeling. After all, how many of us can actually verbalize our feelings, especially in the moment? That’s why the feelings of characters in movies are communicated through the acting and especially the music. (Try watching the same Sleepless in Seattle clip with the audio muted but closed captions turned on and compare that to when you can also hear the music.)3
Writing can take the reader much more deeply into a privileged experience of a character’s thoughts and feelings, especially those like mystical experiences that don’t lend well to being depicted visually.
Giving outward voice to deeper experiences
If verbalizing even simple feelings is a challenge, how much more difficult is it to outwardly give voice to deeper experiences like the awe and wonder of viewing the Redwoods, the Pyramids of Giza, a sunrise over the high Himalaya, or a total solar eclipse?
Consider how the above photograph at least conveys the idea of the sight of a Himalayan sunrise. But also consider how little it really conveys. A small image on a flat LED screen hardly does justice to the in-person 360-degree experience. Even a big image on a big screen won’t do much better. A few forms of presentation might get close, like an IMAX film or custom-made attractions like the Soarin’ ride at the California Adventure Park next to Disneyland. But writing can bring a reader much closer, not because it necessarily conveys the exact experience of the writer but because it stimulates the reader’s imagination. And imagination, like a dream, is much more immersive and much more personal.
However good they may be in themselves, pictures do little good in fairy-stories. All art that offers a visible presentation imposes one visible form. Literature, on the other hand, works from mind to mind and is thus at the same time more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or store or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas, but each hearer gives them a peculiar persona embodiment in an imagination derived from his or her unique history of experience.
J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 1965
What’s more, visual imagery and sound, even when adding the kinesthetic element of rides like Soarin’, still lack the other senses as well as the more specific intricacies of the whole experience.
For example, if I were to write up my account of this Himalayan sunrise, I wouldn’t limit that story to only the moment in the photograph. To give it much more richness, I’d start back at the hotel in Darjeeling when we dragged ourselves out of bed at 3am. I’d give you a literary taste of choking down musty cornflakes with instant mango drink instead of milk because that was the only thing available for breakfast at that hour. I’d take you on the harrowing ride in a 1930s Land Rover around many sharply switchbacked roads that cling to vertiginous cliffsides on the way to Tiger Hill Observatory, and I’d add color with details like the Rover’s hack-job plywood dashboard and our utter amusement—or perhaps utter disbelief—when we found the driver’s bottle of hootch in a back compartment.
I’d also help you feel the freezing wind on the mountaintop as we waited for the dawn’s rays to alight upon the roof of the world, blended with occasional breaks to the most repulsive latrines known to humankind. Then…first light breaks the nascent glow, initiating a dynamic dance that changes from moment to moment, illuminating one peak, then another, then a ridge, then a canyon, changing colors from rose to pink to orange to yellow, leaving us all with a legacy of joy that made everything else worthwhile.
…
After reading the previous two paragraphs, take a few moments to reflect on the range of feelings you experienced. What’s going on in your imagination? What sort of bounty are you harvesting from this collection of fewer than 200 words? What sorts of memories have these words evoked, even though all I’ve given you is a mere outline of the story?
Now watch either or both the following time-lapse videos of the sunrise experience, then and do the same reflection.
I’m curious: what do you find different between the feelings evoked by my outline and those evoked by the videos? What is similar? What, also, do you think of watching the sunrise in a rapid time-lapse sequence (as in the videos) vs. watching it unfold in real time vs. sharing the experience through a fully written story of 2500 to 4000 words that might take 15-20 minutes to read, and perhaps longer to savor?
Personally, I think the differences are quite striking, but then again, I have the bias of a writer! But I’d love to know what you think.
In studies I’ve done of the inner effects of music, I can say that in addition to a certain immediacy of experience when listening to music in real time, there are other depths to explore when listening more carefully to individual segments and spending time thinking and/or writing about those passages in themselves and in relation to the song as a whole.
I think these complementary strengths are why we can enjoy both book and movie versions of the same story, at least when the movie is well-made and doesn’t depart too far from the book. In any case, books can also provide much more backstory and exposition than movies. If you’ve read novels like 2001, Dune, and The Lord of the Rings, for example, the movies make a lot more sense, even though the movies are very well-done in themselves. Novelizations of successful movies, similarly, can fill spaces that the movies leave unanswered. For example, in the Arnold Schwarzeneggar action thriller, Total Recall, the heroes discover and activate an ancient alien machine on Mars that creates an earth-like atmosphere. In the novelization, Piers Anthony (the veteran sci-fi/fantasy author) added some exquisite passages about the origins and purpose of that machine along with much more interiority than an action movie could ever convey or would ever want to convey.
Another example of a movie with frequent voiceovers, and one that also stars Tom Hanks, is Forrest Gump, where most of the movie is Forrest telling stories in flashback to people sitting with him at a bus stop. As with Interstate 60, the voiceovers and the scenes with him telling those same stories primarily serve the purpose of jumping between scenes and are primarily narrative in nature. What Forrest is feeling is still conveyed through Hanks’ acting.