Come a Little Bit Closer
Using interiority instead of flashbacks to get memories in organically.
I took a trip to Monterey recently, and every town I drove through on the way north made me think of things and brought back memories. I saw things and smelled things and heard things that made me remember the past. And it struck me that, if I wrote it in third person, my interiority on that drive might serve as an example of how to get thoughts and memories into a story more organically. This is how our minds work as human beings, and this is how our protagonist’s mind should work when we write. In real life, we don’t insert flashbacks randomly into our own interiority to explain our backstories. Thoughts and memories and decisions don’t come out of nowhere. Something external triggers them.
Warning: this isn’t a story. There’s no inciting incident or resolution. There’s no story arc, although there is a tiny callback at the end to tie things up. It’s a rough piece for illustrative purposes, so it’s far from being literature. If I was going to turn this into an essay, I’d spend a lot more time on it: adding a plot and revising it to get more emotion into it, more specific details, more specific memories, and more sensory details—sights, sounds, tastes, smells, etc. But it’s a snapshot of how to get interiority and memories in organically, as the action unfolds, in a way that lets readers inside your character’s head, instead of using a device like a flashback that interrupts the flow of the story. In this case, the sole action is entering a town, and the interiority is what each town causes the protagonist to think about, remember, feel, do, or plan.
By the time Leanne got on the road, it was late afternoon. She’d planned to leave first thing that Thursday morning, but work got in the way. She was tired—she’d been up since three o’clock that morning. But she decided to power through and make the drive—it would be worth it to wake up in Monterey tomorrow morning. Tonight, she’d walk over to Louie Linguini’s and have a quiet dinner on Cannery Row, overlooking the water. It was one of her favorite traditions—eating pasta at a window table after the long drive, her bone-tired exhaustion morphing into the good kind of tired—a relaxed and pleasant fatigue. In the morning, she’d wake up early and walk down to the beach with a paper cup of hot coffee to watch the sun rise over Monterey Bay. Yes, she’d make the drive tonight.
Fourteen towns stood between her and her destination. Counting them down from San Luis Obispo was a way of making the trip go faster. Physically, it was a beautiful drive, just inland from the California coastline, through Central Coast wine country and then the Salinas Valley, but for Leanne, it was a trip that increasingly stirred up the past the farther she traveled north.
Santa Margarita—one town down, thirteen to go. Not many significant memories to speak of here, but she remembered the drive out to take her daughter to her first sleepover after they’d moved here when she was in junior high. And the drive to pick her up the next morning. Lots of wildflowers. A Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at the Pozo Saloon one birthday, on a blazing hot summer day. Antiquing in Santa Margarita proper, which wasn’t much more than a tiny main thoroughfare on the way to the lake.
Atascadero—two towns down, a dozen to go. Atascadero, where she’d moved with her children a lifetime ago to start over after a divorce. Atascadero—the place where the novel Pay It Forward was set. Why did Hollywood decide to set the film in Las Vegas instead? she wondered. Atascadero had been the perfect setting for that story: a small town in the mountains, hot dry summers, the little dive bar on a corner on Traffic Way where the protagonist’s mother worked—it’s called Whiskey and June now. It was to have been a planned utopian colony, then became a tent city, then was incorporated into an actual city less than 50 years ago. “Atascadero” was Spanish for mire, and it was a place where she’d once felt stuck.
Templeton—three down, eleven towns to go.
Paso Robles—four down, ten to go. As she passed the Spring Street exit, she thought of her baby brother. He lived here, a mere thirty miles up the road from where she lived, but she hadn’t seen him in two years. There was no animosity, but they led separate lives and rarely saw one another. Their mother had passed thirty years before, and the distance had begun to grow between them then. After their father died six years later, there wasn’t much holding their family together.
San Miguel—five down, nine to go. Leanne’s grandson had lived there for a year or two. She was glad he didn’t live there anymore—she was sure the town proper was fine, but he’d lived well outside of that. It was so far away from his school and all of his friends. It was a desolate place for a child to live, she thought. Whenever she’d picked him up from there, she’d felt like she was rescuing him and taking him back to civilization. And whenever she’d dropped him off there, she’d felt like she was abandoning him in a sad sort of no-man’s land.
She left San Luis Obispo County after that, crossed the Monterey County line, and drew closer to the southern mouth of the Salinas Valley—the long valley where most of her life had been centered. This was always where the day-to-day stress of her life in San Luis Obispo began to leave her, but it was also where the memories became more vivid and generally more painful.
Bradley—six down, eight to go. She wondered if she should even count Bradley. It wasn’t really a town, and she didn’t actually pass through it—it was five miles off the highway. The population in the year 2000 was 120. In 2010, it was down to 93. By 2020, it was 69. Over the past twenty years, the non-town had cut itself nearly in half. But she counted it anyway because she was superstitious and didn’t want to count an unlucky thirteen towns between SLO and Monterey.
She doesn’t count Lockwood or Jolon. There were exit signs for both, but she’d lived there, and she knew those towns were a hard half-hour drive up into the Santa Lucia mountains. The towns were remote, and the mountains were full of oak trees and Spanish moss and mostly sad memories of her misspent early twenties. She’d worked at the Jolon Store. Her baby sister had worked down the road at the Lockwood Store. Her sister’s store was a spot for locals to pick up a few things in between trips to town or to have a hamburger at the lunch counter. Hers was a pitstop for tourists to get gas and snacks on the drive through the mountains to get to the coast. Timothy Bottoms from The Last Picture Show had once come into the Jolon store—probably others she didn’t remember—but most of her patrons were nondescript tourists or soldiers from the Army base next door. Fort Hunter Liggett. Her father had worked there in civil service after he retired from the Navy. But it wasn’t all sad. She’d met her children’s father just outside the gate, at the Ruby Mine Saloon. And she remembered the warmth of the sun on her skin when she and her sister had sunbathed together in the front yard on hot summer days, all those years ago. She’d give anything to spend a summer day at that house again.
San Ardo—she’d entered the Salinas Valley. Seven towns down, seven to go, but it wasn’t a true halfway point. She’d only driven about forty-eight miles and had nearly one hundred miles to go.
San Lucas—eight down, six to go. This was also the exit to Highway 198—she’d driven it perhaps a hundred times to and from the San Joaquin Valley, from a life she wished she’d never chose, back home to Monterey County to her parents’ home, the place where she should have stayed, then back again to the life that had been a mistake all around. She committed to never making that drive again, as she did every time she passed this exit.
King City—nine down, five to go. She stopped here for gas. She always stopped here, whether she needed to or not. Perhaps to brace herself because, starting with King City, the memories came hard and fast. To the west was Pine Canyon, where her parents had last lived together. Now, they were buried side-by-side in the cemetery across the street from the gas station. She’d planned to visit them today, but with the late start, she decided to save the visit for the way back. She bought a bag of Peanut M&Ms and got back on the 101 southbound. As she crossed the overpass, she could see the Salinas River, muddy and full. She was getting so close to home.
Greenfield—ten down, four to go. An aunt and uncle and two cousins had lived here. When they were children, their parents had sent them to the Sip & Snack for dinner, to get some time away from kids—she wondered briefly if it was still there, but that was unlikely. She and her cousin V had been so close then. They’d talked about how they would go to high school together someday. But they didn’t live in the same town. Besides, by the end of ninth grade, her cousin’s parents had decided she wasn’t a good influence on V, and they weren’t allowed to be friends anymore. They didn’t know anything about anything, of course. V had been the boy crazy one—she remembered being mad at her when they went to the swimming pool in Coronado one afternoon. V had spent the entire limited time they had together flirting with a boy. Leanne’s biggest sin (at that point in her life, at least) had been a lack of sufficient supervision, but when their parents had come to pick them up, and V’s parents saw her hanging all over the boy in the swimming pool, they’d blamed Leanne. She was still mad at V, she realized. V had never stood up for her. V had never fought for their friendship.
Soledad—eleven down, three to go. This is where both sets of grandparents had lived. One of her uncles had owned a beauty salon here. Main Street was visible from the highway, and she strained to see the salon—it had a unique arch. She’d liked that uncle. He was kind and soft-spoken and always a little sad—his wife had left him and taken their twin daughters with her, and for so many years, he didn’t know where they were. Leanne had hated being a redhead as a child, but her uncle had told her once that, if he could bottle her hair color, he’d be rich. That made her hate her hair just a little less. He died when she was nineteen. She was in San Diego when she got the news. She’d come home immediately.
Gonzales—twelve down, two to go. This she remembers as the town where her father had given up on school in favor of working for his family. Moving from town to town as migrant farm laborers had been hard on him. He didn’t like changing schools. And he had to work. So he dropped out of Gonzales High School in the ninth grade. He went back to night school after he retired from the Navy and got his high school diploma. He was so smart. He didn’t need a diploma—he’d taught advanced math and aviation electronics in the Navy. So the diploma was a piece of paper, but it meant so much to him to earn it, and that was something she understood.
Chualar—thirteen down, one to go. She’d never stopped in Chualar. Not once.
Salinas—the last town between her and Monterey. There are so many memories here. Too many memories. It was always the bad ones that came to the forefront. Dropping out of high school. Assorted other bad decisions. An abusive marriage at a too-young age. Her parents’ own marriage falling apart for a time and then piecing itself back together, so much stronger in all the broken places. She pushed the bad memories out of her mind and tried to remember the good times, but every song that came on the radio frustrated her efforts: “Breakdown” by Tom Petty reminded her of a time she chose the wrong guy for a boyfriend. A song by Bad Company reminded her of the guy she should have picked. “Round and Round” by RATT reminded her that she’d had a second chance with the right guy—she’d blown it that time, too.
She drove along the southern outskirts of Salinas and headed west on Highway 68. On the right as she exited Salinas, she saw Gino’s restaurant. She’d never been inside, not that she could remember, but her friend David had loved that place. He was the only friend she’d kept in touch with from high school—they’d been theater kids together. He’d gone on to become a beloved special effects makeup artist for Hollywood—he’d done Gwyneth Paltrow’s makeup for Shallow Hal, crafted Neve Campbell’s burn makeup for The Craft, and sculpted the life-sized waving alligator at the end of Happy Gilmore. But he most loved designing special effects for horror films and Disneyland. Leanne and David met for lunch whenever he was traveling through SLO on his way home to visit family and friends in Salinas, or whenever she was in LA. But he’d passed a few years before, way too soon. Seeing Gino’s always made her think of him. She remembered him doing her makeup for the junior class play. She remembered how kind he always was. They’d been two kids with dreams back then, only he’d made his come true.
After she passed Gino’s, this was where she left the bad memories behind, on this seventeen-mile stretch of road that she loved. Toro Park Estates on the right: in her twenties, she’d planned to live there someday. Corral de Tierra on the left: she’d tutored a kid from Belgium at an elementary school there. His family had relocated to the United States so his father could take a job as a pastry chef at a fancy hotel in Monterey. He wasn’t happy about it, and he took it out on her by making fun of her French.
Then there was the place where she’d attend the K-Mart Christmas party when she was nineteen. The DJ had played “Ladies’ Night,” and she remembered dancing with her co-workers, among them, her mom. Her mom had worked in the office upstairs, so Leanne never saw her when they were working. She’d worked on the floor downstairs, folding and refolding the ladies underwear after the customers went through them and tossed them all about—it had been a full-time job. But that night, she and her mom were together as co-workers, and they were celebrating, and they had fun. That was a night she’d do again, if she could.
As she passed the Laguna Seca Raceway, she remembered spending a day there with her baby brother, the one who lived in Paso Robles. They’d both been going through bad breakups, and someone had given them tickets to the races. Her brother was kind, they’d laughed so much, and spending the day with him had healed her broken heart a little. She remembered then that this hadn’t been the only time he’d been there for her. Once, when she was so depressed she couldn’t get out of bed, he’d come to her from nearly 100 miles away. “Get up and take a shower,” he’d said. And after she had, he said, “There, that took thirty years off your life,” and made her laugh. Then he’d settled in with her to eat takeout and watch a marathon of The Real World all weekend. He didn’t leave her until she was her old self again.
It had been two years since she’d seen her baby brother. He’d been there at some of the most difficult times in her life. He’d never given up on her, even when the rest of the world had. Maybe she’d give him a call when she was back home.
“Nothing trains you better to write fiction than being
really good at writing about your own interiority.”
—Emily Gould
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
CENTRAL COAST WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference, September 26th & 27th, in sunny San Luis Obispo, California! I’ll be speaking on a panel about finding your writing tribe on Friday and presenting two sessions on Saturday, one on the who, what, where, when, and how of publishing short pieces and one on funding your writing career with grants, fellowships, and residencies.
GOLDEN QUILL WRITING CONTEST
The Golden Quill Writing Contest is now open for entries in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This year’s judges are Juliet McDaniel, whose debut novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie is the book upon which the hit Apple TV+ series Palm Royale is based; Deanne Stillman, author of many nonfiction books, including Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave; and SLO County Poet Laureate Caleb Nichols, author of Teems///\Recedes.
“We don’t think in generics. We think in specifics and futurization, which is a type of interiority. It is us anticipating, planning, envisioning, hoping, whatever it could be about the future. That’s really, really important that it happens in specifics because it makes a protagonist’s psyche feel real. It makes them feel like a real person.”
—CeCe Lyra
MY FRIENDS WRITE BOOKS!
Retreat (out now!)
My friend Lindsay Jamieson collaborated with Krysten Ritter on her New York Times bestselling novel Retreat! A beautiful con artist insinuates herself into a wealthy socialite’s life … with deadly consequences, in this serpentine thriller about identity and obsession, from actress, director and bestselling author Krysten Ritter.
Ten Sleep (coming 6/24/2025)
This is the second novel by my friend Nicholas Belardes, author of The Deading. Here’s a little blurb from bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones: “Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it’s not just the cattle and the work that are challenging—here there be monsters, too.”
Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror (coming 9/16/2025)
This anthology includes my friend Trey Burnette’s piece “A Rather Tender Subject.” The essays in Absolute Pleasure … explore … [the] complicated legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with queer and trans joy, sexuality, family, generational understandings of queerness, and what we do with our problematic faves.
Vicious Cycle: A Thriller (Corey in Los Angeles) (coming 10/21/2025)
The debut novel by my friend Jaime Parker Stickle. A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.
Sing the Night (coming 10/28/25)
The debut novel by my friend Megan Jauregui Eccles. Magic. Music. Madness. Discovery a fantastical retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Erin Morgenstern.
Only Way Out (coming 11/04/25)
A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by New York Times bestselling author (and my MFA thesis advisor) Tod Goldberg.
“[Life in a small town] forces you to write about interiority—there’s
so much less to do, so there’s so much more time where I’m
on my own, or it’s just me and my wife, or just me and my dog.”
—Nathan Dragon
SOME THINGS FOR READERS
How to Love a Widower
(flash creative nonfiction by Melanie Faranello for Electric Literature)
Impersonation Nation: A Very Scammy Reading List
Five stories that demonstrate we’re living in the golden age of the personal hoax.
(Peter Rubin for Longreads)
Revisiting a Short Story Made for Twitter’s Golden Era
Our days on X are over, but Rick Moody’s “Some Contemporary Characters” is forever.
(Rick Moody for Electric Literature, originally serialized on Twitter in 180-character segments from November 30, 2009, through December 2, 2009)
“That’s the hardest thing to do—to stay with a sentence until it has said what
it should say, and then to know when that has been accomplished.”
—Vivian Gornick
SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS
The Importance of Interiority in Novels and Memoirs
(Mary Kole for Jane Friedman)
The Goldilocks Principle of Interiority
(Susan DeFreitas on Medium)
How to Reveal Your Character’s Inner Life on the Page
(Savannah Gilbo for SavannahGilbo.com)
Indirection of Image: Revealing the Interiority of Characters
(John Thornton Williams for Electric Literature)
“When you write in the third person, you get to imagine other people’s interiority.”
—Emily Gould
Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
leannephillips.com
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Brilliant! You made it look easy. Thanks.
Loved this article, Leanne. It really took me back toy Central Coast days.