How Can I Add Interiority to My Memoir? (and what is interiority?)

Interiority is what we might call the internal landscape in a memoir, the combination of the thoughts and feelings you-as-character experience within the narrative. It also means the way you interpret and make meaning of the events you relate.

Cheryl Strayed's Wild could have been a very straightforward account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, but she shares so much information about her grief and self-destructive choices — that's the interiority.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking might have been an account of hospitals and the like, but she shares examples of her irrational thinking that show readers exactly what the experience was like for her in microscopically specific detail.

Tara Westover's Educated shares her confusion and shame at college over her ignorance of recent history rather than just saying her education wasn't very robust.

In short, the interiority is an equivalent of being open and honest about what the experience was really like for you.

Ask yourself questions in terms of what's on the page. Have you shared specific emotions and described what the experience felt like, or have you just written what happened? Have you used sensory language and specific details, or have you stuck with more familiar, possibly clichéd language? Are you rushing through moments of high emotion or stress? Maybe slowing the pace in such scenes will make the difference.

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