The journal is the most distilled form of narration in fiction. In essence a character is jotting down their thoughts as they see fit. They are their only audience and are logging those thoughts for their own benefit. There is no outside influence to alter what they put onto the page. This can lead both to a beautiful open window into the author’s mind or equally so to a plodding slog of pointless observations.
In the ideal case, a journal is an unfiltered repository for the author’s ideas. The focus is on putting down information in as clear an understanding as possible. Information obtained through the five senses are filtered through their mind and jotted down leaving a distinct personal impression on the entry. Unlike traditional narration in fiction, the predominate voice is not that of the author of the work. Here the author writes for a character writing in their journal. You can’t rely on the character’s point of view, cadence, word choice, asides, opinions, interests, etc. to match the author’s, especially if at different points in the same work there’re both the author’s narration and a character’s journal. A twenty-five year old woman can’t sound the same as a forty year old man without breaking the grand illusion.
For the character to have their own voice you need to first develop them (or commit to a story told principally through their narration). Such a task is made easier if the character appears frequently enough before their first journal entry that you have a stronger idea of who they are. It will occur naturally as the character reveals themselves with their actions and especially their dialog. You’ll unearth their personality, where they were raised (important for regional dialect flourishes), age, speech patterns. That is the core of the individuality expressed in the transcription of such inner thoughts. If a story begins with or is primarily told through narration the opening entries should be heavily edited to better reflect the fleshed-out details of the character’s later version. Don’t worry, that’s par for the course.
But what should the content be? When writing a story the focus is on making something entertaining in whatever avenue that comes (laughter, tension, thought provoking, so on) but ostensively a character writing a journal doesn’t care who reads their writings. Dangerously, there’s no desire for them to make it interesting for another reader. As the author this presents a squared challenge. In storytelling you’re meant to lay out the facts in as entertaining a manner as possible without giving off the appearance that that’s what you’re trying to do. It should appear effortless. For an author writing a character writing a journal you should lay out the facts in as entertaining a manner as possible in such a believable way that it would come from the mind of another in such a way where it didn’t appear they were trying to entertain another person while entertaining those very real but non-existent readers without giving off the appearance that’s what they’re trying to do which is what you’re trying to do. You’re plate spinning Russian nesting dolls.
Stick to the basics, the first thing a journal entry should do is answer the five W’s. If your canvas is that curiously shaped you should try painting something simple. “Saturday, May 18th LaGuardia,” Instant, compacted, when and where. It’s a very common approach but for the contrivances of a journal it jives. “Thunderstorms grounded all flights. Everything the airline said, which wasn’t much, said we are going to be stuck in this miserable place overnight.” A basic recitation of the facts giving who, what, why, and establishing the central conflict/inciting incident. Also, we get the first glimpses of the character’s personality in a few ways. Here they gripe over the lack of communication from the airline rather than the individual receptionists and reps who likely gave that trickle of information. They specify “we” were stuck and not “I” giving a sense of compassion in shared misery and a larger picture of the issue at hand. Clearly they don’t like LaGuardia and possibly New York as a whole. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they’re still stuck at the airport while writing indicating they’ve been there for a while but yet to turn in for the night. Importantly it doesn’t come off as the person punching up their experience to place it on the extremes rather describing the, relatable, scene for what it is.
There’s a lot to mine with how the character deals with the challenge both logistically and psychologically. Maybe they decide to go to the bar and wait out their confinement. What do they order? Who do they meet there? What do they talk about? You can open up the story in a relatively short time but get the basics down first as a launching pad. Don’t start the story with an en medias res journal entry then jump to the character’s ancestral tree. Let the character vet what to talk about (what’s interesting to them should be entertaining for most people) and use that to propel the narrative forward. What impacts them has weight in the narrative.
Applying some basic logic, the character should have no questions over what events happened previously (they were there) but may recall them to investigate a deeper meaning or missing information from their imperfect sensory perception. If you’re going for an unreliable narrator, start with the character admitting to not knowing something or getting something wrong initially like how much they paid for lunch or how long they’ve been stuck at the airport.
Also, note the two uses of said before and after the aside in the LaGuardia piece. That is a slightly tripping way to get the point across but can be justified by the conceit of fallibility. With written word thoughts are generally more organized so the perfectionism found in the edit should be greater than that found in dialog but less than that in a normal third person narrative. Mind this exists on a sliding scale factoring the character and methodology. If they’re an English professor it might perfectly adhere to all writing rules and have strong word choice variance. If the journal is a transcription of an audio log there’s more room for imperfections, on the fly revisions, second guessing, and a few umms and uhhs (not a lot, they can get annoying fast, but on occasion for flavor).
Any type of meta narration be it a journal, letter, email, text, or sticky note should adhere to the central conceit that a “real” person is writing that part of the story. Strangely the fictional character is more easily envisioned than the actual author. When they speak it should feel like they’re speaking and when they write it’s the same. It may be an effect of modernity but you get a lot more practice with dialog than characters writing down what they think. If you want that experience you’re going to have to make it for yourself. Even if it won’t find the first draft in any respect, write a few journal entries from your character’s point of view just to get used to how they would do it. Like any muscle it takes repeated effort to build.
Colin Klawans 