Tag Archives: POV

Deep Point of View

It is said there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and what really happened. Writing in a deep point of view allows your narrator to tell their side. It lets your reader know what the narrative character thinks by filtering events through the lived experience of their backstory. It also uses interior monologue to show how the character interprets plot events.

Deep point of view, also known as limited point of view, comes in two varieties: first and third. This post takes a closer look at what point of view is in general—and specifically limited point of view—and how you can use it to go deep in your narrative.

What is point of view?

Point of view is the filter through which the story is told. Whether it is first-, second-, or third-person, point of view refers to the thoughts, experiences, perspective and opinion of a story’s narrator.

First-person point of view

Told using first-person pronouns, the narrator of a story told in first-person is limited to reporting only on what they can reasonably see, hear, feel, think, and know. In other words, they cannot report on how other characters experience events or what they think because they are limited to what the point-of-view character can perceive.

Third-person point of view

A third-person narrative can be written with an omniscient (know-all, see-all) or a limited narrator. The only difference between third-person limited and first-person limited is that third-person point of view uses third-person pronouns. Similar to first-person limited point of view, the narrator can only report on what the point-of-view character can reasonably see, hear, feel, think, and know.     

How to write in a deep point of view

Put yourself in your narrator’s shoes. When you write, imagine that you are the point of view character. As such, your narrator can use the other characters’ body language and tone of voice to infer what they might feel or think, but they cannot know for sure.

Show instead of tell

Going deep into a character’s point of view also uses showing instead of telling to help describe body language and sensory information so the reader can infer what is happening in a scene. For example, Mabel is the point of view character. Johnny is her friend. The text

Johnny was nervous.

is a prime example of telling instead of showing: the narrator tells the reader that Johnny was nervous instead of showing how Mabel knows this. It is also a good example of what not to do in a limited point of view—how can Mabel know with certainty that Johnny was nervous?

Johnny seemed nervous.

This is a little better when using a deep point of view. Mabel cannot know for certain that Johnny was nervous, but Mabel can infer that Johnny seems nervous. This way, it is clear that it is Mabel’s interpretation that Johnny is nervous.

Johnny cleared his throat. He looked down at his shoes and focused on the cloud of dust kicked up by his shuffling feet. He cleared his throat again.   

This example uses showing to let the reader know what Mabel is seeing. It does not draw conclusions (“Johnny is nervous). Rather, it details Johnny’s body language as Mabel sees it. It also makes good use of showing to describe Johnny’s movements and leaves it up to the reader to infer that Johnny is nervous.

Why use deep point of view?

Deep point of view puts the reader into your narrative character’s head as it telegraphs their experiences, thoughts, and emotions. It allows the reader to know the character’s mind for a greater sense of intimacy. In other words, the reader comes to know and identify with the point of view character, which increases their sense of empathy. This makes it easier for the reader to immerse themselves in the story, feeling as if they are connected to the point-of-view character and experiencing the action in their shoes.    

Key takeaways

Using a deep point of view to write in the persona of your point of view character creates an immersive experience for your reader. Not only will they put themselves in the point of view character’s shoes, but they will walk the miles of your plot in them as if they themselves were the character.

When you write in a limited point of view, you are inside your narrator’s head. Avoid using tags that say “I thought” or “he wondered” when possible. The entire manuscript essentially reflects the narrator’s thoughts.

Avoid using the collective perspective: They saw the fire, and they panicked. Though this can be inferred, your narrator cannot know for certain that the other characters’ experiences are all identical. Ernie might have been looking elsewhere.  Jane might have volunteer firefighter training. All Mabel can say for certain is that she did these things.  

Remember to limit yourself to what your point of view character can reasonably know, see, think, hear, and feel. Try to show instead of tell. Details matter. Describe them through the point of view character’s eyes. Weave in some of their lived experience or backstory, as well as their interpretation of events as they unfold.   

Putting it into practice

Here is a simple exercise you can use to write a brief scene in deep point of view.

  1. Create an outline of your point-of-view character. Take 5-10 minutes to brainstorm their backstory.
  2. Picture the setting of your scene. Take 5-10 minutes to describe it.
  3. Imagine your character in the middle of the scene. What do they see, hear, feel, or smell? Where were they been before the scene begins? Where are they going next? Do they have time before their next destination, or do they feel rushed? Is the space quiet or bustling? What is your character’s mood? Are they dealing with a crisis or something more mundane? Are they alone?

Take 10 minutes to write your character’s interior monologue. Your scene should be brief, covering no more than a minute or two in time.   

Secret Daughter – Critique

When I reached out to the website offering reviews of science fiction by new authors, I hoped to get back something I could use, something that would help me market my eBook. Instead, I got a cursory glance at the first chapter or two of the manuscript and a series of negative comments that, had I not developed a tough skin over the years, would have made me throw in the proverbial writing towel.

I am a high school English teacher. For the past few years I have been blessed with counting Writer’s Craft among the courses I teach. The first third of the course is about “showing, not telling”. When you show, you engage the reader’s senses. “Pink cheeks” is telling; “rosy bloom” is showing. “Putrid smell” is telling; “rotten boiled cabbage” is showing. I pride myself on trying to incorporate showing and not telling in my writing. The review I received told me my writing tended toward exposition and I needed to show more.

I finished reading Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s novel, Secret Daughter this week, the story of two families, the Merchants and the Thakkars. Kavita and Jasu Merchant live in poverty in India. Jasu’s cousin kills their first child, a girl, because she is not a boy and the family will not be able to afford her dowry when she is grown. Unable to live with the same potential fate for her second daughter, Kavita travels with her cousin to give the baby to an orphanage. Their third child is a boy who, when he grows, helps his family climb from poverty with the proceeds of a drug trafficking business. Kavita never forgets her other two children. Upon what may be her death bed over twenty years later, Jasu finds out about their “secret daughter” and goes to the orphanage to find she was adopted by a family and taken to America. Somer and Krishnan are a mixed-race American couple who cannot have children. They travel to India to adopt Asha, a year old child, and bring her back to raise her in America. When she grows, she travels back to India to stay with Kris’s family and search out her birth parents. She finds their previous and current homes, but not them. In the process she learns how lucky she was to have been adopted by her parents.

Gowda’s writing style is mostly exposition with little dialogue (a good showing technique). In order to cover a span of more than twenty years in a single novel, I suppose one would have to tell—which can take the narrative far in a short amount of time—rather than show—which slows the narrative down or brings it to a halt while the reader lives in the moment, so to speak. Though the story she tells is touching, I found it hard to identify with any one character because they seemed flat. Somer, disappointed that she cannot have her own children is not excited about Asha’s adoption, which only drives home the fact that she and her husband are more different than alike. Rather than embrace and enjoy the child, Somer detaches herself from her family. While this makes an interesting dichotomy in that one mother loved her child enough to save her while the other remains distant and one father would have ended his child’s life while the other is the loving parent, I would have liked to have known more about Somer’s thoughts and feelings, more about her relationship with her daughter and how she can remain believing herself an outsider in her own family when there is a young child that is relying on her nurturing and support.

Point of view is another issue. Gowda’s novel is written in third person limited present tense, a point of view I don’t think I’ve ever seen in anything I’ve ever read. In general, present tense demands a sense of urgency, an interesting voice that has an interesting perspective on the events that take place. By contrast, third person limited, while containing the thoughts and observations of the main character, is filtered through the narrator’s eyes, which is why, I assume, it is almost always past tense, with the narrator reporting on something as if it has already happened. The third person limited present tense point of view did not work for me. I found the present tense awkward, and the limited more objective,  than I would have liked. At nearly 600 ePages, the point of view made the novel seem much longer than it was. As I was at a loss to identify with any one character, there was nothing motivating me to continue to read, other than a desire to see Asha reunited with her birth mother, which never happens.

My reading tastes are eclectic. I write mainly science fiction, but I dabble in detective fiction. I prefer reading literary fiction to mainstream. I love the language and will often read a book if the story isn’t interesting, but the narrative voice is entertaining (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is case in point—brilliant narrative, less than interesting story). So why didn’t I like Secret Daughter? I wasn’t adopted, nor have I ever adopted a child, but I do have a family member that was adopted. I watched the anguish of her family as she found her birth mother and all but abandoned the family that raised her in favour of the woman who gave her up more than thirty years prior. I am a mother. Maybe this is why I can identify with Kavita’s motivations, yet question Somer’s. My bachelor’s degree is in Cultural Anthropology, so I was intrigued by Asha’s story as she learns about the children of the slums and their mothers and, in doing so, learns about the life she could have lived, had she not been given up for adoption, had she been allowed to live at all.

While I admire Gowda for publishing this, her first novel, in spite of breaking all the rules, I can’t help but feel a pang of contempt for all those “professionals” in whom I placed absolute trust to honestly critique my work. To all those people who told me I don’t show enough, I shouldn’t change points of view, I should consider changing from present to past tense, don’t have too many narrative voices, and make me feel like there is something wrong with my writing and that if I just do as they say I will get published, point taken; if you stray too far from the mould people may not read it because it is different from mainstream fiction. After reading Secret Daughter, hailed as a successful piece of literature, and rightly so, I have to wonder why new authors are criticized for being different. I chose to ignore the critique from that site, by the way. One thing I’ve learned in this process is that I can’t be a Charlaine Harris or a Kathy Reichs or a Margaret Atwood. I’d rather be true to my voice and my process and do right by my characters instead.

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