How "Just Stab Me Now" Helped Me Tap Into Interiority In My Own Writing

Interiority is something I've struggled with as a writer for a long, long time. I'm sure it goes back to all those years in academic settings, being instructed to take myself out of my writing. Several of the creative writing classes I took in college advised against authorial intrusions with the same strict vivacity of a parent telling their kid to not pull the fire alarm, lest you distract your reader with being too voicey and personable in your narration.

It's why so many of my earliest blog posts are stodgy, and why my earlier fiction projects are a slog to get through.

Interiority in fiction refers to your character's "inner landscape." Their thoughts, feelings, backstories, and how they perceive the world around them and the events unfolding. It creates an intimacy between your reader and the character they're experiencing the story through or alongside.

But between my being told to keep the personable tones out of my narration and how I was taught show, don't tell, interiority has been largely absent from my writing. I'm sure you can imagine my confusion and surprise when beta readers and the gals in my writing group told me I needed more interiority!

Despite my best efforts, I just couldn't tap into interiority in my fiction. It always felt like telling, or that I was deviating too far from the plot for these reflective moments.

That is, until I came across Just Stab Me Now.

I learned about this one from a reel by Elisabeth Wheatly (who, I ought to mention, was my introduction to snoods). I bought the eBook pretty soon after, but it sat on my TBR until a few weeks ago.

Just Stab Me Now is a fantasy novel within a novel. It follows a fantasy writer navigating her frustrating day job while trying to write her next book and includes the fantasy novel she is writing.

A desperate mother. A dubious escort. And a deranged author who won’t leave them alone.

Caroline Lindley is determined that her new romance novel will be her best one yet. Fantasy! Formal gowns! Fencing! And, of course, a twentysomething heroine to star in an enemies-to-lovers plot with all of Caroline’s favourite tropes.

But Lady Rosamund Hawkhurst is a thirty-six-year-old widow with two children, her sole focus is facilitating a peace treaty between her adopted nation and her homeland, and she flatly refuses to take the correct approach to there being Only One Bed.

What’s an author to do?

Based on her popular Fantasy Heroine YouTube Shorts series, Jill Bearup’s debut novel brings us the best of worlds both meta and medieval-inspired. Terry Pratchett aficionados will enjoy the political intrigue paired with convivial, tongue-in-cheek satire. And then there's the slow-burn, fade-to-black romance too...

If you loved Stranger Than Fiction and The Princess Bride, you will soon find yourself cheering on enemies-to-BFFs Rosamund and Caroline as together they learn what it means to be the hero of your own story.

via Goodreads

Just Stab Me Now feels like a book written for writers, in a way that doesn't feel too heavy-handed. Quite often, books written about writers or book lovers can feel schmaltzy, gushing about their love for reading in a way that feels pandering to the reader; like, "you're reading this book, therefore you must looooove books, yeah?" That wasn't the case with Just Stab Me Now, and it was honestly refreshing.

Caroline is incredibly relatable. In a lot of fiction, writers are depicted as best-selling authors living their best lives or struggling artists whose work goes unnoticed. It was nice to have a character in the middle. Caroline has a few books out, but the latest aren't being received as well as she'd hoped. She's also navigating a frustrating day job and is only able to write whenever she has a spare moment, and that's something that I think a lot of writers know pretty well. Her comments about Rosamund and Leo straying from her outline were especially a "ha, same" moment.

For context, I've given up on outlining A Tided Love and I'm just letting Caroline and Thomas drag me along—which has actually been working out a lot better than what I originally had in mind for them.

In a lot of ways, I felt seen by Just Stab Me Now.

It also helped me get a better grasp on interiority.

Throughout the novel, Caroline steps into her current WIP and has full-on conversations with her characters. This often occurs when she is trying to chart a new course after things have gone in an unexpected direction, in the form of one-on-one chats, allowing her to gain insight about what her characters are thinking and feeling in that moment. It's a new take on the interview questionnaires some writers use as they develop their characters. It's more casual, which I think works better for my Pantser tendencies.

I've been applying this to my own writing over the past couple of weeks, creating a sort of writing exercise for myself. Giving myself permission to have that presence in my writing and digging deeper into the heart of it.

I'm drafting this post shortly after rewriting what is currently Chapter Five in A Tided Love. Like Caroline in Just Stab Me Now, I've been imagining one-on-one conversations with Thomas throughout this scene to get a feel of his thoughts and hesitations.

And, friends? It works. It actually works.

It feels like a door has been opened in my writer's brain. Like there's a bunch of neurons that have been connected. There is still plenty of work to do, but the groundwork is being laid, and I'm not only eager to see what comes from these imaginary one-on-one conversations in future chapters, but to go back and apply this idea to chapters I've already written.

Overall, Just Stab Me Now is such a great time and got a 4-star rating from me. I highly recommend giving it a read if you're a fellow writer, a lover of fantasy and romantasy, or just looking for your next fun read.