Mrs DallowayVirginia Woolf
Thoughts pass between characters through shared objects and sounds.
Woolf uses the technique to make a city feel like one mind, then breaks it apart again.
← The devices guide
Stream of consciousness
Writing that follows the movement of thought rather than the logic of a sentence — associations, interruptions, unfinished ideas. It aims at the texture of experience, not its summary.
How to spot it
Look for sentences that change subject mid-clause, and for time that shifts without warning.
Why writers use it
Because a life is not experienced in paragraphs with topic sentences.
In the texts
The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockT. S. Eliot
In the room the women come and go
The refrain loops because Prufrock cannot get past it. Form imitates paralysis.
To the LighthouseVirginia Woolf
Time Passes, with brackets around the deaths.
Consciousness is withdrawn entirely for one section, and the effect is more devastating than any deathbed scene.
Common misread
Stream of consciousness is not randomness. It is selected and shaped — usually more carefully than conventional prose.