Using “he thought” and “she knew” to reinforce deep POV can actually take our readers out of the story. Eliminate them to let your story shine through.

How do you show a character’s thoughts in deep POV without slowing the story down? Three concrete methods to use in your writing

So how do we know how our characters think? Maybe you completed the character freewrite or interview exercises last week. Maybe you’ve filled out extensive character questionnaires. Maybe you only have a sketchy mental picture of a new character. No matter how well you know your character, you can help to make sure her thoughts—her voice, her feelings—come through in your writing in what she notices, how she talks/thinks about it and how she feels about it.

What they notice

My friend Annette posted the other day about “lenses.” She tells how on a visit to New York with her mother and sisters, they were each drawn to attractions that appealed to their personal interests—things that the rest of the family didn’t even notice.

Personal interests for your characters might arise from simply the need to “round them out” and make them more full, or they can influence the plot (she hates baseball? Fantastic—he’s a semi-pro shortstop.). When you’re just starting to design a character, even one simple interest can help to create deeper characterization.

Does your character have a passion for painting? Collect baseball cards and rare comics? Live for the dance? If not, why not? Everyone has something he loves&hobbies, interests, even their occupation. The architect might admire the layout of the museum while her dabbling-in-interior-decorating sister is more focused on the color scheme. Their wannabe-artist father, of course, is there for the art, while their hobby-egyptologist mother wants to hurry up and get to the mummies.

Our personal interests often filter what we see around us. The father in the above family might be the only one who really notices the paintings, but he barely glances at the dessicated bodies. These interests also influence our perceptions of those things that we do manage to notice.

Character vocabulary

A character’s personal interests, hobbies and especially profession not only filter what they notice, but the words they use to describe it—from the scenery to the events to the other people in the story.

I, for example, can’t tell a sloop from a schooner. But someone who spends every weekend on his sailboat is going to have a full vocabulary for not just every type of ship, but the masts, the rigging, the knots, the . . . other stuff.

Let’s say that character identifies himself, essentially, as a sailor, despite his day job in sales (*snicker*). When he meets a beautiful woman, is he going to think of her using the vocabulary of fashion? He might like the cut of her jib (that’s a sailing term trying to be a play on “fashion” and “cut,” not an innuendo), but unless she’s wearing a spinnaker (another sailing term—a sail. Very Little Mermaid.), I doubt he cares much about her dress.

Instead, he might use more . . . you know, “nautical” terms—the vocabulary of his passion. At this point, I’ve made it fairly obvious that I know nothing about sailing, but for lack of anything better, he might describe how she moves through the clumps of people like a cutter slicing through the waves. She could have eyes the color of the sea, hair the same shade as the burnished mahogany fittings of his cabin. (Okay, this dude is really starting to wax poetic for a guy, but maybe the sea does that to some people.)

The more parallels our character can draw to the things around him and his passions, the more likely he is to like those things.

Character attitudes

The character’s attitude toward the things and people around him is another important aspect of his character—and his voice. Perhaps most importantly, character attitudes are a strong characterization tool. When we see how someone feels about the world around him, we really get to know him. If he recoils at a church and quotes Karl Marx to himself (“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”), we know him more deeply than if the author just told us that “Jimmy hated religion.”

Again, his interests, hobbies and profession can influence this heavily. Our sailor friend might think a man whose only maritime experience was on a ferry to be a troglodyte. Put your character working in an urban environment. Freeway tunnels are the epitome of all that’s wrong with the city—they’re closed in, suffocating, dark, crowded, and most of all, nothing like the freedom of sailing, the open ocean, the wind in your face.

On the other hand, he loves taking his lunch on the observation deck of his building—when the wind is right, you get a breeze from the sea. He has an immediate affinity for people who strike him as sailors. And your Nautica bathroom decor? Well, you decide—he could either love the touch of sailing in your home, or he could think you’re a total poseur.

The slob might not even see the pile of clean (or are they dirty?) socks on the floor, simply walking past. But her neat-freak roommate is sure to notice—and she sees whether they’re clean, dirty, or a mix of the two—and then what does she think of her slovenly roommate? (Hello, Odd Couple!) If the neat-freak is a housekeeper or maybe a professional organizer, does she have a specific term for someone like her roomie?

What other ways can we incorporate and convey our characters’ voices?

Photo credits: 3D glasses—Harry Fodor; Sailboat—Horton Group; Anchor print—mckenna71

When we’re writing in deep POV, as writers, we have to get deep into our characters’ heads. We have to know what they’re seeing, feeling and thinking. But how do we get our readers into our characters’ heads, too (I mean, isn’t it getting a little crowded in here?).

Open in that point of view

Start the scene in the POV character’s head as opposed to, say, using someone else’s (or possibly even the POV character’s) dialogue. While an interesting line of dialogue may make a good hook, it can also make it harder to figure out whose head we’re in, and how we should interpret that line. This is especially important in the very first scene (an example of this from Edittorrent).

When we begin a scene in the character—talking about what they’re seeing, doing, feeling, perceiving—it gives our readers a clearer idea of what’s happening and just whose thoughts they’ll be privy to for at least this scene. You’re not required to make sure the first character named in the scene is the POV character, but it can help orient your readers if you’re using multiple viewpoint characters, and especially if you have more than one of them in the scene (another Edittorrent example).

Open with an anchor

Sometimes I get so into opening inside a character’s head that I make the mistake of opening scenes right inside their thoughts. For example, opening a scene like this:

Why was this her cross to bear? Why did it have to happen this way?

And on for several more lines. Say this is from the middle of a story and we only have one female POV character. The reader can figure out pretty quickly who’s thinking this—but let’s not make the reader work to figure out what’s going on.

When we open in a POV character’s head, we usually need some sort of anchor to let us know who, when and where we are:

Jessica flipped through the pages of her father’s journal in disbelief. Why was this her cross to bear? Why did it have to happen this way?

Note that this is totally, completely my opinion, but it’s an opinion I’ve arrived at from inspecting my own work closely.

Next week, we’ll look at even more techniques for deep POV, to make sure your readers stay in your characters’ heads, as well as how to convey your characters’ voice deep POV.

How do you establish POV in your scenes? What techniques do you use early on to make sure we know whose head we’re in?

Photo credits: door—Vinicio Capossela; anchor—Andrea Kratzenberg

As we discussed last week, writing in deep POV means being very close to our characters’ thoughts, feelings and perceptions. One of the most basic things we have to do to write in deep POV is to understand what our characters are thinking and feeling.

But since our characters are individuals who are at least somewhat distinct from us authors, this can be a challenge. How can we ever hope to understand the thoughts and emotions of people who aren’t us? After all, we can’t experience the thoughts and emotions of our parents, spouses or friends—we can never truly understand exactly what they feel.

My favorite trick for this was inspired by How to Write a Damn Good Mystery by James N. Frey. He explains that the kernel of any mystery is found in the villain, so that’s the first character he recommends designing. Once you’ve determined the physical, psychological and sociological aspects of the character, he recommends interviewing the character.

I’ll admit it sounds a little hokey to me. So instead of directly interviewing the character, I do a slightly different exercise: I write something short in that character. Sometimes I’ll pick a specific point in the story to “set” this character journal, usually either right before or right after the beginning.

To help get into the character’s head, first I’ve already come to know the character well—I’ve at least contemplated the life events that have brought him here, his attitudes, his interpersonal relationships. If it’s the villain, I know what he’s capable of (though sometimes I use the journal technique to figure out his motive).

While I’m not a fan of drawn-out character questionnaires, I do find it much easier to write if I have at least a vague idea of the characters—and writing the character journal helps to firm up my vague ideas and make them concrete. At least once, I wrote a journal and a scene when I was well into revisions, and it still helped me to discover things about my protagonist, who’d carried probably 60-70% of my manuscript.

But I think the biggest thing that helped was to write in first person, if only for this little section. As you write (and yes, I know this also sounds hokey), act: pretend to be that person, experiencing these feelings, thoughts and events. How do you feel about what has happened?

You could also try rewriting scenes from your story in first person. As you write, again, act, pretend. Close your eyes and visualize what happens in the scene, but not as someone else might see it—from the character’s vantage point. What do you notice? How does that make you feel? What do you think about?

When I’ve done this, like I said, it helps me get to know my characters better, even if I’ve already worked with them for a hundred thousand words. In fact, I often do this long-hand, and I’ve even seen my handwriting change as I delve more deeply into someone else’s thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

What do you do to really come to know your characters? How do you come to understand how your characters would think, speak and act (and react)?

If you feel comfortable, feel free to post a short excerpt from your character journals here! On Thursday we’ll look at some specific techniques for anchoring our readers on this same level of intimate knowledge of our characters.

Photo credits: plunge—Konrad Mostert; head scan—Max Brown