While writing the novel that would become Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf journaled with increasing excitement about a way she’d found to portray her characters’ inner lives. She describes digging “beautiful caves” behind her book’s people and then orchestrating things so that these private tunnels intersect in scenes. During this same fertile period, Woolf was corresponding with her friend “Edward” Forster, who was finishing his novel A Passage to India. If you’ve read the latter, you know that caves figure prominently there, as well. Coincidence? Zeitgeist? Who cares, if it helps us write like these two! Let’s take a look at how burrowing into the unconscious and tuning into the background talk-talk-talk of a busy mind can bring our characters to a deeper, richer life; and make our work a more profound and persuasive experience for readers.
SUGGESTED READING: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; A Passage to India by E.M. Forster; Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors; The Theory and Play of Duende, a lecture by Garcia Lorca (available in print and also, free, at http://www.poetryintranslation.com)