Deep POV

“365::115 – write” by Sarah Reid

To recap: As part of the In Your Write Mind Workshop I attended in July at Seton Hill University, I gave an hour-long class on Deep Point of View. I thought I might as well turn the class into a series of blog posts. This is the fourth and last one.

You can also check out:

• Deep Point of View: Point of View, an Overview
• Deep Point of View: More on Third Person
• Deep Point of View: What it is, What it isn’t, and Why First isn’t Deep POV

Deep Point of View: How Do You Do It? When Should You Do it?

I’ve included both of these questions into one post, as the latter is actually fairly easy to explain. But let’s start with some pointers on how to achieve Deep POV.

How Do You Do It?

So how the heck do you achieve a deep limited third POV? Well, the techniques used generally revolve around those of voice and narrator observation.

Don’t just report thoughts and feelings, descend into the character

Rather than report on emotions (i.e., he was angry, he was scared) show them. Yes, it’s the old show don’t tell. But it’s true. Deep POV is the ultimate in showing. Use action, thought, and perception to show emotion and feelings. When you’re annoyed, it colors your whole perception of the world. Everyone on the damn road is too damn slow and every traffic light is out to get you. Show that.

Thoughts and perceptions should be that of the character

Be aware of how the character perceives the world. Someone from Florida will have a very different reaction to being outside on a 50 F day than someone from Alaska. Someone who grew up in the city will see a crowd differently than someone who grew up in a town of 500 people. Try to limit first person italicized thought, if possible. The change in POV and the visual change in the font can jar a reader out of the character’s head. Rather than: It is a good day to die, he thought. Try: It was a good day to die.

Use terminology, phrasing, syntax, grammar that the character uses

The narration, within reason, should use the same voice as the character, meaning that the syntax and word choice should be words the character would use. Consider life experience and age: word usage will differ depending on age, social status, education level, etc. Also, it’s fine to bend grammar rules a bit (i.e., Some amount of sentence fragments are okay, as we don’t talk and think in complete sentences all the time.)

Avoid Filtering

Filtering is just that—filtering the character’s perceptions through the narrator. That is, we’re watching the narrator perceive things rather than perceiving them through the narrator. Filtering is one of those phrases people throw around quite a bit, so I’ve included some examples with and without filtering.

Example with filtering:

She saw the car swerve off the road and head straight for her. She dodged away. “God,” she thought, “I could have been killed!”

Example without filtering:

In a hail of gravel, the car careered off the road and bore down. She threw herself to one side as hot air and metal whooshed passed. God, she could have been killed!

Some phrases that indicate filtering include:

• he noticed
• she felt
• she saw
• he heard
• she remembered
• he knew
• she looked
• he decided
• he thought
• she wondered

Watch for any words that have the reader watching the character have an experience, rather than experiencing it through the character.

Another example of filtering:

When she turned to walk back to the car, she saw Joe leaning against the brick wall. He made her so angry. She knew he’d been such a jerk to Mary at the dance.

And without:

She turned to walk back to the car. Joe, that rotten bastard, lounged against the brick wall as if his stupid practical joke at the dance hadn’t caused Mary to burst into tears in front of the whole school. If only a meteorite would land on his head right now.

When Should You Use Deep POV?

Should you use Deep POV all the time, since it’s so highly sought after?

No.

What! Why not?

Well, it’s grueling to both the reader and the writer to be that deep into a character all the time. And one of the reasons for writing in limited third person is the ability to pull back from the characters. Most books that use limited third person use an in-and-out level of penetration into the character, often pulling back at the beginnings of chapters and scenes to orient the readers. There’s nothing that says you have to write at only one level of penetration when writing third limited. Deep POV is one of the tools of limited third. Don’t forget to use the others, as well.

Remember, there are times in third person when telling (i.e., summarization) is necessary.

Okay, so when should you use Deep POV?

• Moments when you want the reader to be close to a character
• Highly emotional scenes
• The black moment

Basically, you have to use your best judgement as an author and decide when you want the readers riding inside the skin of your character. Good luck!

Comments? Questions?

That’s the end of my very short blog series on Deep POV. I hope you’ve found it helpful.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them! I’ll do my best to answer or address them.

Gothic Writing 2 by Dave Turner

To recap: As part of the In Your Write Mind Workshop I attended in July at Seton Hill University, I gave an hour-long class on Deep Point of View. I thought I might as well turn the class into a series of blog posts. This is the third one.

You can also check out:

• Deep Point of View: Point of View, an Overview
• Deep Point of View: More on Third Person

What Deep POV is, What it isn’t, and Why First isn’t Deep POV

So what the heck is Deep POV? It’s a form of limited third person POV where the narrator takes on the voice of the character and where the reader is deeply immersed in the characters thoughts and feelings. The reader is riding so close to the character, they might be in his or her skin.

Deep POV does not mean that the character bounces between third person limited and first person italicized thought. It does not mean that every single thought and emotion must be voiced. And Deep POV is not achieved by simply replacing “I”  and “my” in a first person narration with “he/she” and “his/hers.”

So the next question is why can’t you just write a first person scene and replace all the pronouns? First person is, after all, a very immersive POV…

Because a first person narrator/character knows that they’re telling a story to the reader. When you’re deep in limited third person, that character/narrator is unaware they are telling a story. The reader is reading the unfiltered thoughts, emotions, and feelings of that character.

A quote from Alicia Rasley’s The Power of Point of View states this far better than I can:

“This [deep third] is the most intense and intimate POV level, more intimate, in fact, then first-person narration. Why? Because an effective first-person narrator can and probably will lie. In deep-immersion third person, the reader can assume that what’s reported is the deepest of personal truth, at least as far as the character knows.”

For me, this was the single biggest a-ha moment I had when studying Deep POV: First person narrators can be unreliable. They can leave out information, minimize it. They can lie to the reader.

Deep third person narrators cannot lie to the reader. They can lie to themselves, yes… but the reader should and will see through those lies, if the author is truly writing in Deep POV.

Think about how you experience an event. Now think about how you tell someone about that event… do you tell them everything exactly as it occurred? Or do you choose to leave out somethings, maybe change others? If you were terrified, but don’t want your friend to know… you leave those emotions out.

That’s the difference. In First person, the narrator is telling the reader about an event as it happens. In Deep Third, the reader is experiencing the event through the narrator.

I’m going to stop here and let that thought gel for a bit.

Up next: How do you do it?

As part of the In Your Write Mind Workshop I attended a few weeks ago at Seton Hill University, I gave an hour-long class on Deep Point of View.

A number of people wanted a handout, which I didn’t make. And then my writing mentor, who gave a three-hour long class on Point of View to the Writing Popular Fiction MFA students upstairs, sent those students in my direction for more information on Deep Point of View. And me without a handout. Lesson learned. Next time, make a handout.

In the meantime, I thought I might as well turn the class into a series of blog posts. This is the first one.

Point of View, an Overview

Just what is point of view, anyway? Well, it a narrative mode used to convey the plot of the story to the reader. It’s the way the reader travels through the story, and the perspective through which the reader experiences the events in the story. It’s also how the author controls the reader.

Oh yes, authors manipulate. We dole out bits, toss out story problems, make readers question, then slowly, slowly, give them what we set them up to want. Point of View is just one tool in the kit.

We often think of Point of View as the “person” of the story–First, Second, or Third. All three narrative modes have a certain depth, or closeness they bring the reader to the character.

• First person (I ran from the room.) is one of the closer points of view. The reader rides along with the narrator, who is also a character in the story. That character, more or less, tells the story to the reader. Observations are filtered through the character, the reader experiences the characters thoughts, voice, and bias.

• Second person (You ran from the room.) is also one of the closer points of view, as the reader essentially becomes one of the characters in the story. Again, observations are filtered through what the reader/character experiences in the prose as well as  the thoughts and voice the reader is given. However, second person can be off-putting to many readers who do not want to be that actively or noticeably involved in a story. Some readers will have a difficult time suspending their disbelief when they read something like “You climb the stairs.” Especially when they’re sitting on a couch.

• Third person (He/she ran from the room.) is the point of view that has various levels of reader immersion into the story and characters. An author can set the reader up as a distant observer or drop them down under the skin of one character at a time. Or the reader can end up somewhere in between those extremes. Third person is also the point of view where an author can tinker with the level of reader immersion. It does not–and probably will not–stay the same throughout the novel.

So that’s a basic overview of point of view.

I’ll make a quick note about tense–tense isn’t so much about how close the reader is to the character but how close the reader is to the events in the story. Present tense often has more of a sense of immediacy and tension that past tense may not have. Future tense, like second person, can be off-putting, since we don’t normally think of telling whole stories in terms of what will happen.

For my next post, I’ll talk a bit more about Third Person and levels of reader immersion.

I’ve spent part of this weekend creating slides for a workshop I’m giving on Deep Point of view at the annual In Your Write Mind Workshop (which is sponsored and run by the Alumni of the Writing Popular Fiction graduate program at Seton Hill).

I have seen folks mention that they don’t like deep limited third because they feel that if you’re getting that close to a character, why not write in first? That first person places the reader just as close to the character as deep limited third. That is, there’s no functional difference between first person and deep limited third person.

They are different. I know they’re different. Having written both, there is a certain feel to close limited third that is different than first… and it’s not just because of the pronouns. There’s still distance in first person, though it’s pretty much always the same distance. But I couldn’t articulate why…

And yes, you can have distance in limited third. One of the great aspects of third person is that you can vary the distance between the reader and the character dropping in deep or rising up to give some distance. But there’s less distance between the reader and the character in deep third person than in first person. But again, I couldn’t articulate why.

Then, while combing through my craft books, I ran across this quote from The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley about Deep limited third:

This is the most intense and intimate POV level, more intimate, in fact, then first-person narration. Why? Because an effective first-person narrator can and probably will lie. In deep-immersion third person, the reader can assume that what’s reported is the deepest of personal truth, at least as far as the character knows.

And there it is–what I couldn’t articulate. The difference is that a first person narrator can lie to the reader, that is, they can be unreliable.

If there is falsehood in a deep third person POV, it’s not because the character is deliberately misleading the reader, but because the character has deluded him or herself. What you see in deep third is the personal truth of the character. The inner truth. Not the “truth” the character wishes to present to the outside world.

Deep third certainly isn’t just first with a change in pronouns.