Often times when I'm providing feedback to another writer, I inevitably encounter at least one whose short story reads exactly like a screenplay: detailed physical descriptions of characters doing things, saying things, moving around in space. Lots of dialogue. Plenty of action. And precisely zero access to what anyone is actually thinking.

When I point this out, I can picture them looking at me like I've grown a second head.

"But isn't that what a story is supposed to be? Characters doing stuff?"

And I get it! We live in an overwhelmingly visual culture. We consume hours of Netflix and TikToks and YouTube videos every day. Our brains are wired to think in visual sequences. So when these writers sit down to craft a story, they're essentially transcribing the movie they see playing in their head.

But if you're writing a short story that's just a movie on paper, you're leaving your most powerful storytelling weapon on the table.

Last week, I caught myself doing the same thing. I was 1,400 words into a new story and realized I hadn't once dipped into my protagonist's thoughts. The entire thing could have been filmed exactly as written. No wonder it felt flat! I'd been so busy making sure the reader could "see" everything that I forgot to let them feel anything.

Here's what films can't do (or at least, can't do nearly as well as fiction): they can't take us directly inside someone else's consciousness.

Sure, they can use voice-over, but let's be honest—most films avoid it like the plague because it often feels clunky and artificial. Good screenwriters know that film is a visual medium, and they work within those constraints brilliantly.

But you, my short-fiction-writing friend, have no such constraints. Your medium is consciousness itself. And that's where you make your magic.

Our brains are gloriously chaotic. We don't think in tidy sentences or logical progressions. We contradict ourselves. We have fleeting impressions that never fully form. We experience emotional reactions we don't understand. We lie to ourselves constantly.

"Our own inner thoughts are often chaotic, we don't think in full sentences, often argue with ourselves and question our own thoughts," as literary critic Emma-Claire Wilson points out.

A film can show an actor looking pensive, but it can't show the seventeen different thoughts ricocheting around inside their head in that moment—not without stopping the story dead to deliver a monologue.

But in fiction? You can do this:

Sarah stared at the broken mug on the floor. Mom's favorite. The one with the faded cardinals. Why did everything she touched fall apart? No, that wasn't fair. She wasn't always this clumsy. Only when she was tired. Only when Dad was hovering. Only when the entire universe seemed engineered to make her fail. She could fix this. Superglue? No, the handle had shattered into dust. Maybe if she found an identical mug online. As if. It was probably from some craft fair in 1986. Maybe if she just... disappeared? If she packed a bag tonight and—God, she was being ridiculous. It was just a mug.

Try putting THAT in a film without it feeling like an art house experiment.

Another edge fiction has over film: you can manipulate time like you're Doctor Strange on steroids.

Movies generally unfold in something approximating real time. Yes, they can use montages, flashbacks, and quick cuts—but these techniques stand out precisely because they're deviations from the norm.

In fiction, especially short fiction, time manipulation isn't just a special technique; it's the default setting. You can write:

For the next three years, he checked the mailbox every day.

Three years in eleven words.

Or you can stretch a single moment across pages, exploring every facet of a character's thoughts during the split second before they make a life-altering decision.

I remember reading a story where a writer devoted six pages to a character's mental journey during the time it took them to decide whether to answer a phone call. In a movie, that would be unwatchable. In fiction, it was riveting.

Here's another thing fiction does better than film: unreliable narration.

Sure, films can try. Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, Memento—all brilliant examples of unreliable narration in cinema. But they're the exceptions that prove the rule, and they have to work incredibly hard to achieve what fiction does naturally.

In fiction, we can spend an entire story inside someone's head as they convince themselves (and us) of something that isn't true. We can experience their distortions, their self-justifications, their blind spots as our own.

I tried to write a screenplay once with an unreliable narrator. The feedback I got from every beta reader was the same: "But how do we show that he's misinterpreting everything?" In a film, you need some external reality check. 

In fiction, you can let readers fully inhabit a distorted worldview, then pull the rug out from under them with devastating effect.

Let's talk about language.

In film, language serves primarily as a vehicle for information. Even the most beautifully written dialogue is ultimately in service to the story being told.

In fiction, language is the medium itself. The texture of your prose, the rhythm of your sentences, the specific words you choose—these aren't just delivering the story; they are the story.

I once had a story rejected with a note saying, "The plot is compelling, but the language feels functional rather than alive." That was a wake-up call. I'd been so focused on making things happen that I'd forgotten the sensory experience of reading itself.

Here's a revision exercise I now use religiously: I read my drafts aloud and ask, "Does this language have flavor? Would I enjoy reading this even if I didn't care about what happens next?"

We're living in a time where attention spans are supposedly shrinking and visual media dominates, and so you might be wondering if these unique powers of fiction still matter.

They matter more than ever.

We are drowning in content that shows us what things look like from the outside. What we're starving for is the experience of what things feel like from the inside.

That's why Sally Rooney novels sell millions of copies despite being "just" about people thinking and feeling. That's why "quiet" short stories still go viral. That's why fiction continues to thrive despite every death knell that's been rung for it.

When I finally grasped this—that fiction's greatest strength is interiority—my writing completely transformed. I stopped competing with film on its own turf and started playing in the spaces only short fiction can reach.

I attended a workshop last year where one of the facilitators asked a simple question:

"Why are you writing fiction instead of screenplays?"

I had no good answer of my own. Someone mumbled something about liking books.

He pressed harder: "What can your stories do that a film adaptation of them couldn't?"

That question sat in my brain for months. It forced me to reckon with what I was actually trying to accomplish as a writer. Was I just describing a movie I wished someone would make? Or was I creating an experience that could only exist through words on a page?

I challenge you to ask yourself the same question. If your story could be directly filmed as written with nothing lost, you might be neglecting the unique powers of your chosen medium.

Getting Practical: Making Interiority Work

So how do you actually do this? How do you harness the superpower of interiority without writing stories that are just 5,000 words of navel-gazing?

Here are some approaches that have worked for me:

1. Contrast external and internal realities. Some of the most powerful moments in fiction come from the gap between what a character says or does and what they're actually thinking or feeling.
2. Show thought processes, not just thoughts. Don't just tell us what your character thinks—show us how they think. Let us see their mind making connections, jumping tracks, avoiding painful truths.
3. Use interiority to create suspense. A character who's actively hiding something—from others, from themselves, or from the reader—creates tension that keeps pages turning.
4. Let language reflect consciousness. When you're in a character's head, let your prose take on the qualities of their thinking—are they analytical and precise? Emotional and scattered? The language itself should embody their mental experience.
5. Break "rules" when it serves interiority. Those creative writing maxims about "show don't tell" and "avoid adverbs"? They're useful training wheels, but sometimes telling is exactly what you need to do when portraying a character's interior life.

A Final Thought

The most important stories in my life haven't been the ones with the most exciting plots or the most beautiful descriptions. They've been the ones that made me feel less alone in my own head—the ones that showed me other consciousnesses that resonated with my own in some essential way.

That's the thing no other creative outlet can do quite as well as fiction. It lets one consciousness touch another directly, without intermediaries.

So the next time you sit down to write, remember that you're not just recording the movie in your head. You're creating an experience that can only exist in this medium, using tools no filmmaker has access to.

Your characters have rich, complicated inner lives. Don't keep that a secret from your readers.

What stories have you read or written recently that really nails interiority in a way that would be impossible to film?

PS: If you enjoyed this post, consider checking out my Short Story Feedback Service as you start implementing some of these techniques. Having a skilled second reader can be hugely beneficial as you take your writing upmarket!