Internal Monologue

[Labster]

I came across this story today, about how some people have an internal monologue, and some don't: Today I Learned That Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue And It Has Ruined My Day.  It turns out that some people just think that the internal monologue is only a trope, not a thing real people do; and of course other real people do it.

Since this is a writer's forum, there are a couple questions I'm curious about: Do you have an internal voice?  Can you have a dialogue with yourself without speaking aloud or writing?  Do you tend to start your stories based around dialogue?

Hypothesis: most of us writers have an internal monologue, because we express ourselves through words.

When you write, remember that everyone really, really perceives the world differently.  It's not just different goals and all, characters' experience of reality can be different.  Some women can see an extra shade of green with a fourth cone -- and given all the color disagreements I've had with my mother, she must be one of them.  Some people really don't have a strong sense of taste.  To the extent that when other people talk about their favorite food, they just assume that everyone else is making a fashion choice, not that they like pizza for its taste quale. Aphantasics think that "the mind's eye" is really just a metaphor, and are surprised to learn that most people really can draw visual images in their mind.

I don't have a particularly strong sense of smell, which I think limits my writing.  I really only became aware of it by reading Jitterbug Perfume, which really beat into me (pun intended) that there's a whole world of scent out there that I really don't experience -- that the women at the perfume counter really are discerning between subtle floral scents.  On the other hand, I'm not so scentless that a job in nursing or waste management sounds appealing to me, either.  It really doesn't bother some people.

Oh, and answering my own questions, I do have internal monologues and dialogues.  I usually "hear" what I'm reading (except computer languages), in my brain it "sounds" normal even though it would be too fast for speech.  I quite often start a scene with snippets of dialogue, and start to grow the description around it.

[Star Ranger4]

Can I have a Dialoge with myself without 'speaking aloud'? Shortest form, Labster, is no. The Dialogue *I* percieve you as describing also appears to describe my default writing state, a state I have had trouble accessing for several years now, to my shame.

[Labster]

Before the shame train leaves the station, can I just say that it's okay to be who you are?

[Dartz]

Did you lock that door?
Are you sure that door's locked?
Are you absolutely sure that door's locked?
Can you honestly remember locking the door?
Why don't you go and check?
It'll take 20 minutes to drive there and check?
Just go and check!
Knackers could be looting the office, how will you explain that?

I just want it to shut up.

Because it's always some vein of "What are you doing wrong now?"

[classicdrogn]

Hm, I don't think this is really a binary condition, or at least I don't find it so. I can do the internal monologue thing, to plan what I want to say or comment on things without speaking aloud, but generally think in visual or kinesthetic terms if the subject is not explicitly verbal. I suppose that explains why I have an easier time writing action than dialogue, treating it like transcribing a scene as I watch it, while trying to get characters to talk to each other is unnatural without taking a few passes at it. (Just like actual conversations, hence having learned to plan them internally first ) I used to have a soundtrack in my head like the Phantom of the Opera, but twentyish years of easy constant mp3 player access has largely atrophied that particular delusion.

[Bob Schroeck]

I very definitely have an "inner voice" -- my thoughts are very linguistic, and with a little effort I can shift the language I think in to the extent that I still recall any of the foreign languages I've learned. However, my inner voice seems to have ADHD sometimes, especially the more tired I get, because I will find myself trying to think about a given topic and suddenly the sentence forming inside my head screeches to a halt and a different sentence shoots off in its own direction.

Insofar as writing is concerned, I've always been very good a dialogue. I just know what sounds like a real person talking, and what differentiates the voices of different people. I had that before I knew I wanted to write, and was one of the skills that surprised my professors at college when I entered the Creative Writing program. (I still treasure the moment when one of my instructors told me I wrote more believable women and women's dialogue than some of the girls in the workshop.) There is almost certainly a connection.

At the same time I have a very visual aspect to my thoughts -- again where the writing is concerned, a lot of DW comes out of almost cinematic images that burst forth, fully-formed, in my mind. I've mentioned in several places how I'd had DW2's climax planned out for years before I actually wrote it -- it was based around a very visual image of Doug vs. Quincy in a rain-soaked office, a shattered window to one side, and lightning crackling both inside and out. The climax of DW5 was very much the same, and dates back to before Chris joining me on it -- the seal of Solomon ritual, the pillars of light, the connections spanning between Doug and Marller, all that was a mental image that I merely described (and embellished a bit).

[classicdrogn]

I wonder if it has anything to do with left/right handedness and how much a person might be or have have trained up ambidexterity? Due to circumstances, I've almost always ended up with the mouse on the left side of where I could site a computer (or at least the keyboard) since about the turn of the century and using my left hand more in general has followed from the necessary increase in finesse there, but I was always only a bit better with one than the other.

[Star Ranger4]

whereas for myself it is the opposite, that the spot I had room for my mouse was under my RIGHT hand. Compare, and Contrast, everyone?

[NifT]

I'm not a writer by any means, but I do default to inner dialogue when thinking. I can do visual thinking, though that's usually relegated to daydreaming. Basically the opposite of classicdrogn.

[Bob Schroeck]

<chuckle> There was a moment a couple hours ago where thanks to this thread I was thinking to myself, "I do have an inner monologue! I do, I do, I do!"

[robkelk]

I can do an internal monologue, but I more often have an internal soundtrack (which is annoying when an Ear Worm gets stuck on the playlist) with the music matching my mood at the time.

[Star Ranger4]

I can do an internal monologue, but I more often have an internal soundtrack (which is annoying when an Ear Worm gets stuck on the playlist) with the music matching my mood at the time.

That sounds like my 'Writin muzac' playlist I've compiled on Youtube, Rob.

[Labster]

<chuckle>  There was a moment a couple hours ago where thanks to this thread I was thinking to myself, "I do have an inner monologue!  I do, I do, I do!"

I see you in there, Looney Toons!

Insofar as writing is concerned, I've always been very good a dialogue.  I just know what sounds like a real person talking, and what differentiates the voices of different people.  I had that before I knew I wanted to write, and was one of the skills that surprised my professors at college when I entered the Creative Writing program.  (I still treasure the moment when one of my instructors told me I wrote more believable women and women's dialogue than some of the girls in the workshop.)  There is almost certainly a connection.

For me, it was the time in university when Chelsea, my GM, told me that I was very good at roleplaying a teenage girl.  I laughed, because it was the kind of thing that was intended and accepted as a compliment, but probably also meant that I was realistically annoying in-character.

[Star Ranger4]

Also more than a bit creepy if you were not (then) a teenaged girl. because... um, apparently...

I think I need to let this lie RIGHT THERE.

*walks away*

[firvulag]

I'm not entirely sure if I have a full internal monologue or not.  I think in words, and it feels like I'm talking, just silently when I do.  It's a voice but it doesn't really have a sound, if that makes sense.

Unlike what some people have described, my mother in particular, for the most part it's not something that I can't control.  It's not a narrator describing what I'm doing or thinking, and aside from the occasional Ear Worm I'm more or less in control and can shut it off when I want to not think.

In the vein of the narrator describing your actions, how does that work for other people?  For instance, right now I don't have a voice 'saying' "You're typing at the computer", or "There I was, typing a reply to the DW forums...".  I'm thinking about what I want to write, but not about the act of writing it.

As another example/question, when I'm cooking, I'll ask myself things like, "how much onion did this recipe call for", or "how fine should it be chopped", but my inner voice doesn't say things like "pick up the onion, put it on the cutting board and..."  Those sort of things just happen, because I know I need to do them.  Is that what other people experience?

With regards to writing, I will have dialogs between characters in my head, butI usually start off by drawing something, characters most often, to get an idea of what they look like.  I'll also imagine what the scene will look like; the blocking, the angles and lighting... and maybe scribble out rough sketches of key things or moments.  But weirdly enough I don't always see fully realized images in my head, just, I guess impressions would be the best word to describe it and I often have to draw things to work out what they actually look like... and then know when I haven't gotten it right.  Actual things I have a better time picturing and actually 'seeing' something though.

It's weird, I 'hear' a voice that doesn't have a sound and I picture images that  I often can't 'see'.

[Star Ranger4]

... Yeah. I see where your going here. in a lot of ways, what goes on between my ears is more akin to what one sees in episodes of Star Trek, the Next Generation, where Jean Luc is giving orders to the people who actually make things happen? which, for me, makes the challenge to remember these things, to be... unafraid... to write them down and share them with... *ahem* starfleet? (aka the rest of you here?)