Please help.

I'm working on a story that's giving me trouble. It's meant to be long-ish -- by my standards, anyhow, which means around 5000 words -- and I'm writing from the POV of a character who is a bit hard to really figure out. So I thought that was my problem.

But I just realised that the real issue is that the main conflict in this story is internal to the POV character, not between him and someone else. And that's not something I can recall tackling before at any real length.

It makes me wonder if I can sustain an interesting story. Certainly, there's not nearly so much chance for dialogue that advances the story, which is what I usually do. I find that I'm writing dialogue just to have some, not because it's strictly necessary.

Add to that that I don't think my POV character is really all that reflective and I'm wondering if this will really fly. I do have something of a plot planned out -- this isn't 5000 words of angsty instrospective soliloquizing (is that a word?). I just have to figure out how to keep things interesting while I move the plot along.

Have you been in a similar situation? How did you make the story effective? Any tips for me?