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Over the past couple of days, I've asked questions about writing female characters with agency, and writing female characters as a male writer. Both have sparked some interesting, and for me informative conversations. After some consideration, I realize that, while what I learned from reading the responses was informative and useful, I've been asking the wrong questions.

I'm coming to realize that my writing, at least where my characters are concerned, is very flat. One person asked if my character, for whom I offered up a small sample of "interior monologue" (having seen the responses, I hesitate to lean to heavily on that term), was a psychopath. That shocked me a bit, but the poster backed up their question with evidence, and I couldn't argue (though I admit to being stung).

I have two characters, Celeste and Marko. The opening setting is 23rd Century Croatia. At the start of the story, the two have been courting for a few months when, on an adventure date, they find themselves thrown back in time to the 14th Century, entirely unprepared. Now they're stuck with each other in unfamiliar territory, so I have the opportunity for both external adventure (action) and internal adventure (how they respond to events). The trouble is, I don't seem to be able to write emotional reactions very well.

Celeste is smart, brash, and sharp-tongued. She admits to herself that she doesn't always think before she acts. I started out my queries (above) trying to understand how to write Celeste's interior monologue in a way that sounded like what a woman would think like, not wanting to presume that I, as a man, would be able to intuit that well (my wife insists that I usually don't get how women think).

Marko is a bit of a stoic, outwardly quiet, and internally boxes things up so he doesn't have to think too much about them. He plans almost everything, and feels confident that he has the toolkit to take on whatever is thrown at him. This adventure will test that.

Apologies for the length, but here's another snip, from Celeste's POV, as they start to realize what has happened to them. In the previous scene, they both threw up in the cave where they were swept back to the 14th Century.

“I have no idea where we are or how we got here,” said Marko.

Celeste looked at him blankly. “I clearly don’t know either. This is beyond anything I have the toolkit for understanding.” She turned, looking around the area, trying to find something… anything familiar. She saw an olive grove in the distance, but didn’t remember it. Had it been there before? She didn’t know. “Fuck!” she said.

Marko looked at her as if she were a stranger. “We may not know where we are, but between the two of us we should be able to solve the problem. We need to focus on what’s in front of us.”.

She considered him and what he said. While she took a certain joy she didn’t want to admit in teasing him about being young -- younger than her by a whole four months -- he displayed a strength of character that she hadn’t seen in others. And he was brilliant at problem solving, which she saw in the way he played chess and go with his father. Whatever this situation they were in, she felt safe with him. But what situation were they in? She had no idea. She felt sick to her stomach. “I don’t even know how to describe what’s in front of us, metaphorically speaking. Clearly… well, okay, it seems that we’re on the island we were on earlier today. Or yesterday. Or… I don’t know. The island. It looks like the same one.”

“I agree. And this villa: it looks not-as-old as it did… earlier. It’s like everything new is gone; like we’ve been thrown back in time.”

Time travel. Could she believe in it? Was it possible? She thought back to her science professor talking about quantum physics, about how scientists and mathematicians still only knew enough about it to know we didn’t know enough, and he had been fairly certain nothing would change. And there ended her learning about quantum physics and science in general. At some point you had to realize that there were limits to what you could understand, draw a line, and move on. And subjects like business, economics, and politics were more to her interest than unknowable science. Everyone, she told herself, had their limits. Her stomach growled. “One thing I can say for sure, I’m hungry. I left my lunch in that cave, and that run down the hill really took it out of me.”

So, to my question: how can I improve the emotional or just general interior perspective description for my characters? This is really going to become important when Marko falls into a deep depression, but along the way I need Celeste to go through some challenges, which will give her a toolkit to help him when he most needs it.

For anyone interested, I've shared the Google Doc that is my working document, with public comment capability turned on. All I ask is that, if you choose to comment, please be constructive.

The problem I see with your writing, the answer to your question, is that you need to immerse yourself in your character's emotion. Put yourself in that emotional experience, in that moment. What do you feel? Your thoughts? Your responses? Your associations? Your visceral desires?

To use your example, having just time-travelled, Celeste is supposed to be confused, with a beginning of fear, right? Imagine yourself confused and scared. Would you, in that moment, wish to tease your companion about their age? Or would you want to grab their hand for support? Would you be all analytical about where you saw proof that the person next to you is good at problem solving, or would it just be a fact to you? At most, I think, you might remember a previous frightening episode the person got you out of - not strategy games.

Your character's internal monologue, her thoughts, are calm and analytical where we'd expect her to experience some emotion. Which makes a reader wonder if she is capable of experiencing emotions. You haven't gone deep enough into how she feels, and so you've created a disconnect between what we'd expect Celeste to feel, and what she displays.

I've actually struggled with a similar problem. I had this argument between a father and son written out. The comment of the first friend who read it was "yeh, that's how the father wishes the argument would have gone. Only he was angry, and afraid for his son, and a bunch of other emotions besides, so he ended up saying something completely different. And the boy was equally emotional about the whole thing, so his response wasn't what he would have liked it to be either. Now go and write not what they wished they had said, but what they actually said." After which I went and rewrote the scene with more visceral emotions and responses in it, and what do you know - it came alive.

To sum up, every time your character is supposed to experience an emotion, let them feel it. Not think "I'm afraid", but be afraid. Act afraid. Respond to being afraid. If you're still struggling, try to evoke the emotion within yourself. Feel that fear, not in your mind, but viscerally, and observe yourself in that state.

I will present the counter-point argument.

It's not you, these characters are just emotionally boring – and that's ok but focus on what's interesting instead.

Here's the problem. When I hear inside their heads they are distractingly someplace else, talking about something I don't care about (chess, some old professor). As a reader, I've already accepted that we have time-travelled so these people need to get up and start exploring (adventure) this world (wonder, milieu) or have a conflict (relationship, character arc) or start solving this puzzle (mystery) about time travel (idea, event). The story needs to start going in a direction so these narrative elements can begin to develop.

Instead these characters are feeding me expository backstory that doesn't seem very important to the current situation.

Their thoughts are not that interesting – they are stupefied by the sudden situation, but they are not having any emotional reaction, at least nothing I can identify. They are also not puzzle-solving through reason. I don't need to be this close to their minds. This meandering, disengaged internal monolog is pulling me out of the immediate situation which I am curious about.

It's ok that this is their reaction, it tells me something about who these people are and maybe their competency level. They are not panicking or blaming each other. They each seem to be cool-headed, or maybe it is caution or denial. Either way their reaction might change as they learn more about their situation, but I could grasp their emotional state in a few lines of dialog while the narrator stays focused on the world details, and that seems much more important right now.