Rebecca Makkai, Layers of Interiority Coupled with a Melodramatic Example

One of the better teachers I’ve encountered in the literary craft world (yes, we all know about John Gardner) is Rebecca Makkai, through Story Studio Chicago. Besides being one of the most limber, twisting and slouching participants on Zoom, she also is hilarious, making up completely quirked examples on the fly. There are several conceptual architectures she’s invented that at least seem truthful even if as complicated as a Mid-East Peace Plan. Let’s take one – her framework on interiority, and illustrate it. She calls this the Layer Cake.

In order to internalize ideas (yes, a pun), I often write up my own examples, as I did for Point of View, published earlier in the life of this blog. Same here, laying out Makkai’s bullets and giving forth with soap-opera examples.

1. Reportage (no interiority):

The diary lay open on the table between Carol and her daughter Beth.

2. Sensory Input (5 senses provide external context for internal tone):

Carol took a deep breath. Beth's perfume caused her to sneeze. She tossed the damp tissue towards the kitchen trash. The diary's clasp and brass key glinted in the light. Beth's hand scuffed back and forth on her denim-clad thigh, a whispering, slithery sound.

3. Internal Physical Reaction (the old “her gut clinched”):

Carol could read the first paragraph on the left page. The adrenaline shooting through her pounded in her temples.

4. Reportage on Sensory Input with Commentary and / or Interpretation:

Carol's mouth couldn't form the words. She'd always hated confrontation. She wanted to scream at her daughter, but instead started crying.

5. Internal monologue with reaction to events in scene (what we always call interior monologue):

The diary, and its revelation, changed everything. Jesus, it's making me sick. That single paragraph meant that they had to talk, probably to fight. I hate conflict more than I hate lies. She wanted to scream at her daughter, but instead she started crying. {shows how we can move in, and move back out without any literary tricks.} [Makkai considers italics for interior monologue clunky. I like the visual clue for the reader.]

6. Memory / projection into the future / association / tangent (layering a character through interiority):

Past:

Carol and her mother had fought over her diary, just as Carol and Beth were about to set fire to the trust they'd once had.

Future:

Is this the thing that would tear them apart, destroy the mother-daughter bond?

Association:

To Carol, diaries would always be paired with guilt, and not the expunged Catholic kind, but the deep Protestant guilt that never went away.

Tangent:

The ancient Greeks had invented diaries, ethics, and guilt, hadn't they? Or was that Hadrian?

7. Self-reflection / narrative-reflection on psychology or emotion (weighing it up):

Narrative-reflection:

She considered what had driven Beth to do not what she had done, but to write it down for her mother to see.

Self-reflection:

Perhaps it was inherited from Carol herself, this self-destructive bent.

8. Subconscious:

What Carol couldn't guess at, the reason that she was so distraught with Beth was that she had once lusted after a father figure, someone who looked just like her dad.

Here it is, the entire layer cake:

The diary lay open on the table between Carol and her daughter Beth. Carol took a deep breath. Beth's perfume caused her to sneeze. She tossed the damp tissue towards the kitchen trash. The diary's clasp and brass key glinted in the light. Beth's hand scuffed back and forth on her denim-clad thigh, a whispering, slithery sound. Carol could read the first paragraph on the left page. The adrenaline shooting through her pounded in her temples.

Carol's mouth couldn't form the words. She'd always hated confrontation. The diary, and its revelation, changed everything. Jesus, it's making me sick. That single paragraph meant that they had to talk, probably to fight. I hate conflict more than I hate lies. She wanted to scream at her daughter, but instead she started crying.

Carol and her mother had fought over her diary, just as Carol and Beth were about to set fire to the trust they'd once had. Is this the thing that would tear them apart, destroy the mother-daughter bond? To Carol, diaries would always be paired with guilt, and not the expunged Catholic kind, but the deep Protestant guilt that never went away. The ancient Greeks had invented diaries, ethics, and guilt, hadn't they? Or was that Hadrian?

She considered what had driven Beth to do not what she had done, but to write it down for her mother to see. Perhaps it was inherited from Carol herself, this self-destructive bent. What Carol couldn't guess at, the reason that she was so distraught with Beth was that she had once lusted after a father figure, someone who looked just like her dad.

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A note on use of the Layer Cake. Of course you won’t and I don’t carry these eight around inked into the brain like a tattoo of craft on the back of your hand. But creating your own examples will somehow give you a neural hookup. Try your own write-out, and expect Number 6, Memory and Projection into the future to suddenly surprise you. Yes, that’s it appearing in the midst of your short story about bobsledding while impaired by Zyrtek.