When you see a building under construction, your eyes are naturally drawn not to the building, but to the latticework of metal encasing its facade. In writing, the same attention to certain words and phrases—in this case “head words”—creates the same effect.
Sometimes we use phrases like “he thought” or “she knew” to reinforce the POV character’s connection with the thoughts in narration. But instead of drawing our readers’ attention to the character’s thoughts, too many of these phrases can draw attention to that scaffolding—the words that encase the character’s thoughts. Remember the example we used early on of watching a character looking out the window versus seeing the view ourselves?
This passage from the otherwise excellent Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham exemplifies the thinking behind this problem:
Failure to use constructions that show viewpoint is quite common, and, we can be thankful easy to fix. . . .
Consider the following statements:
The cold wind blew harder.
A gunshot rang out.
It was terrifying.These are fine observations, but in none of them do we know where the viewpoint is. Ordinarily you should recast such statements to emphasize the viewpoint, thus:
She felt the cold wind blow harder.
He heard a gunshot ring out.
It was terrifying, she thought. Or:
Terror crept through her.(89)
I can’t say whether it’s just publishing trends or the version of deep POV that’s au courant, but today, publishing trends have moved far, far away from his “fixes” (other than the last one, of course). Today, such “scaffold fixes” smack of telling instead of showing.
Showing versus telling
By emphasizing the viewpoint character in these sentences, we are doing exactly what Bickham wants us to—show the viewpoint. However, we’re telling what that character is seeing/feeling/hearing.
The question readers should be asking upon reading a sentence like Bickham’s first examples isn’t “Who’s seeing/feeling/hearing this?” It’s “What’s next?”
Naturally, these examples are pretty much begging for this kind of scaffolding—because they’re in isolation. If you start your scene with a sentence like any of these (without a clear POV, that is), then yes, readers could be confused whose POV you’re in. You must establish the viewpoint character early on—but not by telling.
The cold wind blew harder and Jack flipped up the collar of his coat. He hated the winter.
A gunshot rang out. Maria flung herself under the nearest car before the terror could even register.
If you establish the POV at the beginning of the scene, and continue to show your character’s thoughts throughout the scene, simple declarations and observations of the world around him don’t require you, the author, to tell us that the POV character is the one seeing/feeling/tasting, etc. Cutting back the unnecessary scaffolding lets the elegant architecture of the sights and senses of your story shine through.
For Thursday, we’ll look at when you should use “head words” and how to not “eject” your readers from the characters’ point of view.
What do you think? Don’t you want to wish me a happy fifth wedding anniversary? Do you notice “scaffolding” or head words when you’re reading? Do you try to avoid them while writing? Or do you see them as a useful tool to establish viewpoint?
Photo credits: scaffolding—Paula Navarro; Colosseum—Hannah Di Yanni
From the comments, I met 
Ninja in Airwalks (or more generically, Sneakers)
Jack hid in the corner just before Erica walked in. She was eager to see him. She scanned the room for him.
My friend Annette posted the other day about “
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. 
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.
But now I have another problem: it’s right around 101,000 words. In seven or eight rounds of revisions, I’ve added 12,000 words. So my next goal is to trim it back to 95,000 words, max.
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 
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: