A writing style that mimics the continuous, unfiltered flow of a character's thoughts as they actually occur.
Stream of consciousness is a narrative technique that tries to capture the raw, messy, associative way the human mind actually works. Instead of neatly organized thoughts, you get a flow that jumps between observations, memories, sensations, and half-formed ideas - the way you actually think when you are walking down the street or lying in bed at night. It often bends or breaks conventional grammar and punctuation to reflect the mind's natural rhythms.
This technique puts the reader directly inside a character's head in the most intimate way possible. It is the closest prose can get to telepathy. If you want to capture the real texture of human consciousness - including its contradictions, digressions, and irrational leaps - stream of consciousness is the tool. Even if you never write a full stream-of-consciousness novel, understanding the technique will make your internal monologue richer and more authentic.
The Penelope episode (Molly Bloom's soliloquy) is the most famous example of stream of consciousness in literature - eight uninterrupted sentences over roughly 24,000 words.
Woolf moves fluidly between characters' inner thoughts, using stream of consciousness to explore how different minds experience the same day in London.
Benjy's section is told through the stream of consciousness of a man with an intellectual disability, creating a fragmented, nonlinear account that forces the reader to assemble meaning from sensory fragments.
Even the most seemingly chaotic stream of consciousness is carefully crafted. Every digression and association should serve the story or character. You are creating the illusion of unfiltered thought, not actually writing without a plan.
There is a line between immersive and incomprehensible. If your reader gives up because they genuinely cannot follow the prose, you have gone too far. Use some anchoring details - time, place, a recurring image - to keep the reader oriented.
Unless you are deliberately writing an experimental novel, sustained stream of consciousness is exhausting. Use it for specific moments when you want the reader deep inside a character's mind, then pull back to more conventional narration.
Sit in a public place for five minutes and write down every thought that passes through your mind without editing or organizing. Then take that raw material and craft a 400-word stream of consciousness passage for a fictional character sitting in the same place. Shape the thoughts to reveal something about the character - their obsessions, fears, or desires - while keeping the natural flow of association.