Patrick White's 1973 novel "The Eye of the Storm," by far his longest work, has virtually no plot and no real action: a nearly blind matriarch lies sick in bed slowly dying for 550 uninterrupted pages of absolutely fascinating stream of consciousness writing.
Morphine given to ease her pain stimulates flashbacks of her life. The psychological dimension of the book makes it absolutely great reading, even if readers must keep on their toes to piece her story together.
When her two adult children arrive from abroad to remove her from her beautiful home and secure their inheritance, we enter the son's stream of consciousness to behold his self-absorbed lack of caring. His rare use of the 2nd person draws the reader in:
"If you could remain long enough in this garden of ungoverned fronds, twisting paths, and statues disguising their real attitudes and intentions behind broken extremities and mossy smiles; if you could return upstairs and winkle experience out of the blind eyes and half-gelled responses of the Lilac Oracle, you might eventually present the Lear who had so far evaded almost everybody. But you had come here for a different purpose: short, sharp and material."
But there are some character with whom the stream of consciousness technique is useless, like his sister:
"If only the lid could be lifted from her head to let out the bursting rockets of thoughts alternating with evil smog, she might see more clearly; but clear vision, she suspected, is something you shed with childhood and do not regain unless death is a miracle of light; which she doubted."
https://lauramoreno.substack.com/p/patrick-white-the-1973-nobel-laureate
What exactly is stream of consciousness?
Quite literally, it is just whatever comes to mind; a character's unfiltered thoughts; an attempt to replicate the "streaming" nature of consciousness.
It is an invitation into the mind of the character to attempt to understand what it's like to be that person. It allows room to embrace spontaneity, to dream and write, an opportunity to tap into the eternal.
It can be more honest (or more deceptive) than the traditional narrative voice. It is not constrained by daily life or plot.
The term stream of consciousness is from 19th century psychology and stream of consciousness writing became popular around World War I, but it appears to have first been used by Tolstoy in "Anna Karenina" in 1878 (not Dorothy Richardson).
It can include sentence fragments and run-on sentences that cover more than an entire entertaining page of true-to-life Southern speech, as in Faulkner!
Thomas Mann's "Death In Venice" uses broken language and irregular syntax to portray a slow decent into madness.
Is it the same as interior monologue?
No, not really. Although both delve into a character's innermost thoughts, interior monologue presents the character's thoughts in clear, logical prose fully formed.
Stream of consciousness, in contrast, seeks to present the actual multi-faceted experience of thinking.
Partial list of elements stream of consciousness writing can include:
-associative thoughts (free association)
-emotions, mixed emotions, fluctuating emotions
-emotional release, catharsis
-sensory details (5 senses)
-flashbacks, memories
-shifting perspectives
-tool to defy expectations & deliver surprises
-repetition (for emphasis and meaning)
-unusual syntax
-sentence fragments
-run-on (and on and on) sentences
-observations, insights, rants
-self-reflection, personal growth
-guilt trips, fear, despair
-inner critic, anxieties
-judgementalism, rants, hot button issues
-defense mechanisms, ego violations, ego inflation
-motivations, hidden motivations
-illusions, delusions, doubts, beliefs, disillusionment
-self-soothing, stress reduction
-fantasy, imagined possibilities
-dreams, nightmares
-prayers, wishes, longings, aspirations
-drunken stupors
-psychological states, madness (unreliable narrator)
Partial list of stream of consciousness authors
1870s:
Leo Tolstoy
1910s
Thomas Mann
1920s & 30s:
Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Marcel Proust
1960s:
Ken Kesey, Sylvia Plath
1970s
Patrick White
1980s:
Toni Morrison
21st century writers:
Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Safran Foer, JK Rowling, George Saunders (Substacker)
Excerpt from "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf:
"For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? Over twenty--one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable."
Excerpt from "Beloved" by Toni Morrison:
The character Beloved seems to be the spirit of the Sethe's murdered infant who breathes words outside time and space.
"I am alone I want to be the two of us I want the join I come out of blue water after the bottoms of my feet swim away from me I come up I need to find a place to be the air is heavy I am not dead I am not there is a house there is what she whispered to me I am where she told me I am not dead I sit the sun closes my eyes when I open them I see the face I lost Sethe's is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me"
Writing prompts:
1. Free write - sit down and write whatever comes to mind for at least 10 minutes in one uninterrupted flow.
2. Write about a person or place that has had a profound influence on your or your character's life.
3. Write about one fear you/your character decided to overcome and how it was overcome.
4. What is your/your character's favorite artist and why?
5. Write about your/your character's favorite scene in nature/ landscape/ seascape.
6. Write about the best decision you/your character ever made and how it impacted your/their life.
7. If you/your character knew for certain that society would successfully begin to address our issues to realistically create a fair society for everyone, and that your/your character's efforts would come to fruition, what would you/your character do to contribute to this outcome?
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Realistic animated model of the neighborhood we all inhabit: