Writers in the Storm

by Susan Watts

In my previous article, we explored how powerful stories often contain both the outward movement of the Hero’s Journey and the inward transformation of the heroine’s journey. One shapes what the character must face in the world. The other shapes what the character must face within themselves.

But another question came up while I was writing about the heroine’s journey. Is it simply another name for interiority?

The short answer is no.

Interiority is a writing technique that lets readers experience what a character feels from inside the moment. The heroine’s journey is a story structure that shapes the changes a character must undergo.

A story can contain deep interiority without following the heroine’s journey at all. And a story can follow the heroine’s journey structure even if its interiority is light. The two often appear together because they strengthen each other, but they are not interchangeable.

Understanding the difference can help you recognize what kind of transformation your story may actually need.

Interiority Brings Readers Inside the Experience

Writers often hear the word interiority and assume it means describing emotions more deeply. But interiority is not about naming feelings. It is about letting readers experience a moment from inside the character. Instead of observing events from a distance, readers feel hesitation before a decision. They experience what’s happening now through the influence of something that happened before. They feel tension before action lands.

This creates emotional proximity. A decision becomes more than an action. It becomes a lived experience.

Here are examples of what interiority might look like:

Without interiority

Her hands trembled.

This shows a reaction.

With interiority

Her hands trembled. If she reached for the doorknob now, he would see it.

Now readers experience the moment with her instead of observing it from the outside.

Here’s another example:

Without interiority

He stayed quiet.

With interiority

He stayed quiet. Saying the truth now would only make things worse.

The action hasn’t changed. What changed is access to the character’s thinking inside the decision.

Interiority brings readers closer to the character’s experience. That closeness strengthens nearly every kind of story. Mysteries, fantasies, romances, and thrillers all rely on interiority to create emotional presence.

But closeness alone does not create a heroine’s journey. That requires something different.

The Heroine’s Journey Is About Reclaiming Something That Was Set Aside

The heroine’s journey centers on recognition instead of conquest. Rather than proving strength by overcoming an enemy, the character discovers they must recover something they set aside earlier in life before the story can move forward.

Sometimes that lost element is trust.

Sometimes identity.

Sometimes connection.

Sometimes permission to use their own voice.

External conflict still drives the story forward. Dragons still appear. Doors still close. Enemies still act. But the turning point comes when the character stops trying to meet expectations and starts trying to become true to who they are.

That is the structural work of the heroine’s journey.

Why Writers Sometimes Mistake Strong Interiority for a Heroine’s Journey

Modern fiction often uses deep point of view and emotional immediacy, so readers spend more time inside a character’s thoughts and reactions than ever before. That closeness can make a story feel internal, even when the character’s identity hasn’t actually changed. Because of that, writers sometimes assume their story is following a heroine’s journey when what they are really seeing is strong interiority. Or vice versa.

A character can experience fear, doubt, hesitation, and emotional conflict throughout a story without reclaiming anything essential about who they are. Those experiences deepen the reader’s connection to the character, but they do not create a heroine’s journey on their own.

Story Examples of the Heroine’s Journey vs. Interiority

Strong stories often include both movements at once. Interiority lets readers experience the transformation as it happens. The heroine’s journey gives that transformation meaning.

Examples from popular movies include:

The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen

Interiority

Katniss evaluates threats in the arena, counts arrows, reads other tributes’ intentions, and constantly calculates survival odds.

Readers feel:

• fear
• strategy
• protectiveness toward Rue
• anger toward the Capitol

That’s interiority. We’re inside her decision-making.

Heroine’s Journey moment

Katniss raises the berries and refuses to perform the Capitol’s script. She stops being a pawn and becomes someone who defines her own role.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Aragorn

Interiority

Aragorn hesitates repeatedly about claiming kingship.

We experience:

• self-doubt
• reluctance
• loyalty conflicts
• fear of repeating Isildur’s failure

Readers are inside his uncertainty.

Heroine’s Journey movement inside a Hero’s Journey story

Aragorn accepts that he is the rightful king. He stops avoiding identity and steps into it.

The war still must be won—but the story cannot resolve until he accepts himself.

The Devil Wears Prada: Andy Sachs

Interiority

Andy struggles to survive Miranda’s expectations.

We experience:

• her stress
• her insecurity
• her ambition conflict
• her exhaustion

That’s interiority.

Heroine’s Journey moment

Andy walks away from Miranda’s world. Not because she failed. Because she recognizes it isn’t who she wants to become.

She reclaims identity.

Why This Difference Matters During Revision

Your manuscripts may reach a stage where the structure appears sound, but something still feels unfinished.

Sometimes the missing element is stronger interiority. Readers need closer access to the character’s experience as events unfold. Other times, the story is waiting for a moment of recognition that allows the character to reclaim something they have been living without.

Those are different revisions. Knowing which one your story needs can save enormous time. The distinction becomes especially useful when a manuscript feels emotionally close to working, but still feels unfinished.

A Quick Diagnostic Question for Your Manuscript

If your story feels emotionally distant, ask:

• Do readers experience the character’s thoughts, memories, and physical reactions during important moments?

If not, the manuscript likely needs stronger interiority.

If your story feels immersive but still unresolved, ask:

• Does the character reclaim something essential about themselves before the ending?

If not, the manuscript may be missing a heroine’s journey.

One problem affects closeness.

The other effects completion.

What to Revise When One Element Is Missing

If interiority is thin:

Bring readers closer to decisions as they happen. Let them experience hesitation, memory, and meaning from inside the character rather than summarizing after the fact.

If the heroine’s journey is missing:

Look for something the character learned to silence earlier in life and ask where the story allows them to reclaim it.

Often, the strongest revision move is not adding action.

It is restoring identity.

A Question for You:
Does your story already show what your character feels—or is it still waiting for the moment when they understand who they are allowed to be? (The answer usually reveals what your next revision needs most.)

About Susan:

Under the pen name Michelle Allums, Susan Watts has authored a young adult urban fantasy titled, The Jade Amulet and is currently writing the sequel. Her short stories are also included in the anthologies Christmas Roses and Forever and Always.

Susan has dedicated over four decades to training in multiple martial arts styles and holds the impressive title of a five-time US Karate Alliance world black belt fighting grand champion. Through her karate school, she is able to impart martial arts and life skills. Susan also incorporates her martial arts knowledge into her writing.

An avid triathlete, she keeps in shape by running, biking, and swimming. She lives in the country with her husband, where they raise animals and enjoy being outdoors. Susan also has three grown children and numerous grandchildren. In addition, she is a CPA and VP of finance for a company in her hometown. 

You can connect with Susan on social media or her website.

by Sarah Sally Hamer

We’re often taught to build characters the way you’d assemble a dossier: a handful of traits, a wound, a desire, a flaw, a bit of backstory to explain the rest. But real people don’t move through the world as collections of adjectives. Neither do characters. They move as bodies with breath, tension, instinct, and the quiet calculations of safety that happen long before thought.

But they’re just characters, right?

Yes, I guess so. But characters are created from our imagination and our knowledge of humans, even if we don’t recognize or think about it when we’re creating them. If your characters don’t act like real people, no one will believe them on the page.  

In fact, a character’s nervous system is the truest map of who they are, just as it is with real people. It’s the part of them that reacts before they can choose, the part that remembers what they survived, the part that decides whether the world is a place to approach or endure. When you begin here — in the body rather than the biography — the character stops feeling like a construction and starts feeling like someone you could sit beside and recognize.

Every person carries a baseline state

We all have a way our body organizes itself around danger, hope, longing, and uncertainty. So do characters. Some move through the world with a kind of forward-leaning intensity, as if everything requires a shield. Others stay in motion, not because they are adventurous but because stillness feels like exposure. Some go quiet, not out of shyness but because their inner world is louder than anything around them. And some soften themselves into whatever shape keeps the peace, reading the emotional weather of a room with the accuracy of a barometer. These reactions to outside stimulus create the traits we use to protect ourselves and, if your characters aren’t doing the same thing, they aren’t real.

These states are not personality traits. They are survival strategies. And survival strategies shape everything: the cadence of a sentence, the way a character enters a room, the metaphors they reach for, the silences they fall into, the people they gravitate toward, the people they avoid, the choices they make when they believe no one is watching.

I really see this in beginning writers.

I don’t want to sound like a writer has to write for decades to be able to create realistic characters, but many forget to follow through on a situation. For instance, some writers create an intense scene where a human would probably react with a huge emotion, but don’t allow their characters to do so. A critique partner wrote a American Civil War story where a woman finds out her children have been sold. Her reaction in the manuscript was to ask where they were. I suggest that the woman should jump up, screaming demands, trying to force the man to tell her where they had gone. It’s a matter of extreme and overwhelming anger and grief, not calm. At least, that’s what I would have done in a similar situation. (Just for what it’s worth, no two humans – and therefore, no two characters – will react in exactly the same way.)

How to enhance your character’s nervous system

Through dialogue

Make it inevitable rather than engineered. A character who lives in a braced, defensive body will speak in sharp edges and quick conclusions. Someone who survives by staying in motion will talk in spirals, circling ideas without landing. A character who freezes will speak in pauses and half-thoughts, as if language has to thaw before it can reach the page. And someone who has learned to stay safe by pleasing others will speak in softeners, gentle pivots, and careful calibrations of tone.

Shift the character arc

Instead of forcing a character to “grow,” notice how their body learns safety. A character who has always braced might finally unclench. Someone who has always run might take one still breath. Someone who has always softened themselves might finally hold their own shape. These are small movements, but they are the kind that change a life — and therefore a story.

Use relationships to create new texture

Match characters against each other by understanding the nervous systems inside them. Two characters who both survive by appeasing others will create a quiet ache, each waiting for the other to declare a preference. A character who freezes paired with someone who flees will create distance without ever meaning to. Someone who fights paired with someone who fawns will create a dynamic that feels inevitable, even if neither of them wants it. These patterns are not plot devices; they are the emotional physics of human connection and very real in the human realm.

Make sure you don’t forget the visceral reactions of the body

Write from the pulse of emotion instead of writing from the mind. Use the involuntary action of the body to bring the character back into focus. How do they breathe when they’re alone? What happens in their chest when someone they love or are afraid of says their name? What part of them tightens when they hear footsteps behind them? These are the questions that reveal a person.

The best place I can send you to learn visceral reactions is margielawson.com. She has several lecture packets that helped me immensely to understand and reframe a lot of my writing. I recommend Visceral Rules: Beyond Hammering Hearts. She knows her stuff!

Final Thought

Remember, a character is not built from adjectives but from the way their body braces against the world. Before they speak, their nervous system has already chosen the tone. And when they finally change, it isn’t because the plot demanded it — it’s because something inside them softened, warmed, or steadied enough to let a new possibility in.

Write from that place, and your characters won’t just appear on the page.
They’ll arrive.

How do you make your characters human-like instead of cartoons?

About Sally

Sarah "Sally" Hamer has a B.S. in Psychology (which only makes her dangerous) and an MLA in history and philosophy. She is a multi‑award‑winning author (with two RWA Golden Heart finals) who has taught creative and nonfiction writing at LSUS for over twenty years.

She writes for two of the top one‑hundred writing blogs in the world (writersinthestormblog.com and thewriteconversation.blogspot.com), teaches online for three academies, and has been a long‑time columnist for The Best of Times senior magazine. She speaks nationally on writing, history, and philosophy, and believes wholeheartedly that every human being is an amazing story waiting to be told. She can be reached at sally@mindpotential.org.

Featured picture from Pixabay.com

by Michelle Johnson

We all have questions, hesitations, and those moments when we lack courage. As a writer, you will also often encounter doubt. It is an enemy you will have to defeat more than once. 

Doubt takes many forms.

It is the voice that questions your right to create, the one that rehearses worst-case scenarios, the one that keeps you safe by keeping you small. Doubt can protect you by making you consider if there is a better option or another perspective. Should you consider how the intended audience might misunderstand your message? What if there is a better way to make your point?  

But too much doubt can stop you from starting.

This is when doubt gets in your way. Your thoughts will begin to focus on limits. This leads to thoughts such as “What if I’m not good enough?” As you can see, this is definitely a battle. The push and pull of doubt could paralyze your creativity and passion for writing.

Good News from Your Imagination

In a perfect world, writers would just sit down and type a first draft that is meaningful, exciting, and beautifully edited. Alas, ‌it would be easier to win the lottery. The good news is that you don’t care if it’s bad because, when you write the first draft, you are throwing ideas on the page while your mind gives you the gist of your story.

Forget about stress, because your imagination plays tunes in your head long after that first draft. You’re still on the train tracks and looking to fuel your story with steam. 

What if Stephen King had written his book, Christine, about a car owner who is obsessed with his 1958 Plymouth Fury (something classic car owners can relate to) and instead went with the first idea that came to mind, such as a 1968 Mustang convertible? 

Let’s pretend that he did.

Suppose he spent time imagining and saw that the Plymouth was bigger, stronger, scarier, and, in a word, better. He may have even looked at cars on the internet or randomly seen the Fury at a car show. Anything that sparked his imagination would be worth the time spent asking himself the question, “What if ?”

Imagination is your sword to fight doubt. 

It challenges your hesitation and limits that keep your first idea smaller than it might need to be. Some of your ideas may be perfect the first time, but the test will come when you try other options. Your result may surprise you!

Let’s explore the tension between Doubt and Imagination.

Instead of enemies who must win every time, you may prefer to consider them as two friends who don’t think alike. Doubt will negotiate the situation as an editor, reminder, or guardian. It covets fear and wants things to be short and specific. Imagination will want to push for more details, imagery, and may go overboard.

The result is a compromise of ideas after a series of negotiations.

Doubt	Imagination
Questions one's ability	Explores possibility
Creates hesitation	Encourages creativity
Focuses on limits	Pushes boundaries
Doubt thinks, “Not yet?”	Imagination thinks, “What if this is amazing?”

Writing Insight

Your first drafts need imagination to get ideas flowing, so think of them as a sketch of a house. 

You haven't built the house yet, so you still have time to decide how many rooms and cars you want, whether it's in the city or country, who will live there, and so on. You are not spending money on materials, and using your imagination saves you money. 

This is why so many movie scripts get revised. I’d like to think that they make additions and spend more money to make the movie better as well. Big moments are exciting in books and movies. 

Please do not limit your imagination. 

Remember:

• First drafts need imagination
• Editing needs a little doubt
• Good writing happens when both are balanced.

If your writing looks too much like a strict parent or a teenager who wants to describe every detail over a three-hour phone call with her friends, you need to work on balance. 

The Doubt and Imagination Team Interact

Doubt immediately shows fear. It asks questions, does not want to take chances, and wants to stay inside. Imagination is like a puppy that wants to play in the mud and see what happens. Negotiation may look like this: “I will give you X if you give me Y.”

Doubt works!

• It protects by predicting pain
• It conserves energy by preventing risk
• It borrows authority from past voices and past hurts

Imagination helps!

• It is a rehearsal without consequences
• It lets you try on outcomes, practice courage 
• It helps create evidence for possibilities

If our team of Doubt and Imagination can work in tandem in our minds, then we should find it interesting to share the fun with our friends or family. 

Note: I recommend using the Imagination version for this random sharing of ideas. 

If you have a writing group, they can be your best allies for rehearsals. For example, in my group, we were writing short stories for an anthology, and someone used her grandfather’s story about his service in World War II for inspiration. 

She wanted a grand ending to the romance, but struggled to find it because her grandfather had been a French interpreter in the war. While brainstorming with a group member, she was asked, “Why couldn’t he be a pilot who flies his plane to his girlfriend’s farm after the war?” 

It was a sweet ending, and it worked. 

Final Thoughts

The Doubt-Imagination team works if you allow yourself to see both sides and the benefits that each provides. You are the creator. You are the doubter. You are the “Imaginator.” Let yourself explore the possibilities and negotiate boundaries. Build the house in different ways, let the puppy play in the mud, put the hero in the airplane, and get the teenage girl off the phone.

Doubt will thank you, too.

 What ideas come to mind when you consider the doubt - imagination balance? 

About Michelle

Michelle Johnson, B.A., M.S., MBA, is a mom, wife, retired English teacher, academic with lots of letters behind her name, traveler, and lifelong learner.

This is her first time blogging for writersinthestormblog.com.

"Louisiana life is ripe with stories, great food, loyal friends, and family. Y’all are welcome, anytime!"

Featured photo by Pixabay