In the plot, your main fiction character has an outer journey. This is the easy part of the fictional story. For example, in the Lord of the Rings, Frodo has to journey to Mount Doom. In Star Wars, Luke goes to Death Star and back. In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe goes to the heart of Africa and back.
Those are all outer journeys for your character, and for some fiction writers this can be as easy as looking at a map and plotting a route.
It can be as simple as Mario finding his way through a video game.
The inner journey of a fiction character is a much harder.
First, though, what is it exactly? Well, the inner journey is the trip that your character takes that changes him emotionally, mentally, and psychologically.
Noah Lukeman, one of the best (if not the best) writer about fiction writing devotes a chapter to inner journeys in his book The Plot Thickens.
He says:
A character might journey in a highly visible way, might travel twenty countries and age fifty years, and yet we might not feel moved; conversely, he might journey in the smallest, least noticeable of ways and yet we can feel utter satisfaction. The answer lies in the nature of the journeys.
A character’s inner journey usually involves the character learning something. In other words, his inner journey is usually a journey of realization.
Lukeman uses the three types of realizations in describing the inner journey: realizations about other, self-realization, and realizations that lead to actions.
The best writing has an inner journey where the fiction character has a realization. Let’s look at some examples.
Here, we have the Heart of Darkness.
Marlowe has journeyed down the river through wild Africa to Kurtz, who has gone insane in the jungle, and passed away. (This is a horrible oversimplification of a glorious plot.) Marlowe has several realizations, but the most important is at the end, where Kurtz passes and leaves him with his last words, “the horror.”
At the end, we see a great realization as Marlowe returns and talks to Kurtz’s finace.
You were with him–to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .’
“`To the very end,’ I said, shakily. `I heard his very last words. . . .’ I stopped in a fright.
“`Repeat them,’ she murmured in a heart-broken tone. `I want–I want–something–something–to–to live with.’
“I was on the point of crying at her, `Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. `The horror! The horror!’
“`His last word–to live with,’ she insisted. `Don’t you understand I loved him–I loved him–I loved him!’
“I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
“`The last word he pronounced was–your name.’
“I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. `I knew it–I was sure!’ . . . She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark–too dark altogether. . . .”
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb,” said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky– seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Here is another from “The Red Badge of Courage.”
(You probably read it in high school.)
The youth in this story ran away from battle during the American Civil War. He was reunited with his fellows, who do not know about his cowardice. He learns to accept it, and look forward now.
He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier.
Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised them.
It came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers.
It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover’s thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks–an existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.
How do you make and resolve an inner conflict for your character?
Well, most characters have an inner problem of some kind, and it is through solving this, that they seem to resolve their inner conflict. It is also usually linked to the plot and the outer journey.
Look at some movies for more simple examples. If you look at the Star Wars series, we see that Luke cannot defeat the Dark Side until he comes to terms with Vader being his father. In the Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s inner journey is realizing Kurtz in himself and overcoming that.
Even children’s cartoons have inner journeys. Look at Kung Fu Panda, one of my children’s favorites. In the first, the inner journey learning to believe in yourself, “there is no secret ingredient.” The second is “inner peace.” Only when the hero can realize these ‘inner journeys’ can he beat the bad guys.
Think back on your favorite fiction books. In each, I would bet that there is a great realization by the main character at the end of his inner journey. What is it? Try to write it down.
I would also guess that this inner journey and the character realization is the reason that you liked that books so much.
It is not the outer journey, but the inner journey that makes fiction interesting.
