Tag Archives: Deep POV

Technique

When your character’s observing

Having a character act instead of react is generally better in fiction, especially when it comes to our POV characters. So, in general, it’s better to choose a POV character who’s participating in the action of a scene. But sometimes the discoveries that come from a character observing are worth the “reactive” POV character.

Binocular Bonanza

Constructing these scenes with POV characters that are more like narrators is a challenge. It’s easy to let our POV character disappear and simply focus on the action. However, readers can quickly forget about a narrator who never says anything—and when the narrator speaks up again, it can be a bit of a jolt. The action playing out needs to take center stage, but we also need to balance the narrator with that action, especially since the narrator’s reactions are the whole reason we’re in this POV.

Here are three steps to keep your narrator-POV character present in the scene!

Anchor the scene in the character

Have the scene start with the narrator-POV character doing something, some physical action—even something small. Opening with this anchor is a great way to establish the POV.

If we can establish the narrator-POV character well enough by showing them as an acting character, readers are that much closer to the character, and that much more sympathetic to his/her actions and reactions.

Ground the scene in the setting

The narrator-POV character must regularly observe his surroundings. This is more difficult to remember in scenes where the narrator-POV character’s observations are mostly heard, whether they’re hearing something they can’t see, listening to a transmission, or simply watching an argument.

By grounding the scene in the narrator-POV character’s observations of the setting (or the people he’s watching), we not only keep the narrator-POV character on the scene (and present in our readers’ minds), but we also keep the scene the narrator-POV character is observing grounded. Instead of showing talking heads floating in a vacuum, we can present a full scene through our narrator-POV character’s eyes.

However, stating, “Jimmy observed the large crates behind Peter,” is actually counterproductive here. Instead of being in Jimmy’s head, seeing things with him, it’s more like we’ve been kicked outside of Jimmy’s head, watching him watch the scene. Instead, we want to carefully construct the grounding to show instead tell:

A stack of large crates loomed behind Peter. Worry wore at Jimmy’s gut. This wasn’t going to end well.

Which brings us to the most important step to keeping our narrator-POV character present in the scene:

Show the character’s reactions

The point of showing a scene through a narrator-POV character is to show that character’s reactions to the scene as it happens—but sometimes it’s easy to forget to include those reactions! We need to have our narrator-POV character react with thoughts and, if necessary, even visceral reactions.

Once again, this is a balancing act. Unless the scene is very slow paced, we don’t need a reaction from our narrator-POV character every sentence, so save the wry commentary for the best moments, when it carries the most impact. At the other end of the scale, we can’t go too long without the reactions, or we give our readers that kick-me-out-of-the-story jolt when we suddenly remind them of our narrator-POV character.

I’ve found the sweet spot is every few lines of dialogue or every few paragraphs. This is one of those your-mileage-may-vary guidelines, but I like to make sure I have a reaction at least every 3-5 paragraphs (including lines of dialogue). (Some of my other personal guidelines include action/speech tags every three lines and using names every half-page or every third time I use a pronoun for the same character. That’s gold, right there, folks!)

Caveat: make sure it’s necessary

If you’re struggling to come up with reactions from your narrator-POV character, maybe it’s time to reconsider whether it’s truly necessary to show the scene through his/her eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is the action of the scene, consider showing it through one of the actors’ eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is your narrator-POV character’s reaction, then use the narrator-POV character.

Read more about choosing a POV character

An example in my work

1983-JULY-Yosemite2-Fuji-RD100_A_0035For one of my books, the climax of the book revolved around revealing two major secrets: the hero unmasking the murderer, and the hero unwitting revealing that he’s undercover and not who he’s been pretending to be, in front of the observer, the heroine.

Originally, I planned to show this sequence from the hero’s eyes. I planned to have him unmask the murderer, then reveal his true identity to the murderer—and then turn and see the heartbroken heroine there, who’d fallen in love with his false pretenses. Can’t you just imagine the guilt the hero would feel? And the surprise for him (and the readers)!

But as I approached this scene, I realized I wanted to show it from the heroine’s POV, because not only would that convey all the information we’d get in the scene from the hero’s POV, but it would also show her immediate reaction—the shock and the hurt, before we get to the anger that she’d probably be at by the time we got to her POV in the next scene.

So to do this, I made sure to anchor the scene very carefully. It starts off with the heroine arriving at the scene, interacting with people, then settling down, trying to sort through her feelings on the last big event. Then the murderer and the hero arrive, not seeing her, and have their confrontation. In my first draft, I didn’t have enough of the heroine’s reactions, and it created that “oh yeah, we were in her head” jolt I’ve mentioned.

Through a couple drafts and some editorial guidance, focused on her reactions, grounded her in the scene (she was sitting, so I had her turn in the chair, grip the armrests, etc.) and strengthened her visceral reactions to keep her reaction the star of the show.

What do you think? Do you have the occasional scene where the POV character is only observing? How do you handle it?

Photo credits: Binocular bonanza—Laura Gilchrist; photographing the photographer—David Prasad

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Secret sauce: filter words

This entry is part 15 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

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.

Sometimes, however, these head words are absolutely necessary: they can add important shades of meaning. “She realized he was wrong” is different from “she knew he was wrong,” “she thought he was wrong” and “he was wrong.” Use head words when they add necessary shades of meaning, and take them out when they don’t. (One of my biggest pet peeves: “wonder.” I will almost always recommend writing “How would he survive?” instead of “She wondered how he would survive.”)

What do you think? 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

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Handling multiple POVs: first person

3 Comments
This entry is part 12 of 14 in the series Deep POV

Sometimes, using more than one POV in a novel can be tricky. Handling multiple POV styles can be even trickier. Last time, we looked at how to transition effectively between multiple POV characters in third person, and today we’re looking at multiple first person narrators and mixing first and third.

Multiple first-person POV characters

Ooh, now we’re getting tricky! Is that even allowed?

Oh yes. However, you want to be careful in doing this. It’s easy to confuse the reader when both or all of your POV characters call themselves “I.” So here are some quick guidelines on keeping the “I”s dotted straight.

  • Only change POVs at chapter breaks. Absolutely never head hop within a single scene. It might be possible to change first person narrators at a scene break, but it still might be jarring. (One of my books has two first person narrators and I always changed narrators ONLY at chapter breaks—and I didn’t use a chapter break unless I was changing viewpoint characters.)
  • Don’t be afraid of the “idiot light.” Put the viewpoint character’s name at the top of the chapter! (My band director in middle school used this term to describe a dome light that came on when you opened your door, as if you didn’t realize your door was open. He was using it to describe accidentals in music designed to cancel out the previous measure’s accidentals, which are automatically cancelled by a measure bar—just a reminder in case you’re not smart enough to remember those accidentals are no longer in effect.)
  • Make sure your characters have truly distinctive voices. This is important in third person, but critical in first. If they sound too much alike, your POV probably isn’t deep enough—and your readers are going to get confused, no matter what other precautions you take.

Multiple narrators, different persons

Whaaa? Can you even do that?

Yes! You can mix first- and third-person narration. My multiple first-person POVs book I mentioned? It also had some interspersed “scenes” that weren’t “in” chapters—and those were in third person, present tense (vs. past tense for the rest of the book). I needed a more distant POV for the narrator in those sections—and I really couldn’t put his name at the top of his chapters (since it would give away the villain’s identity, a major twist in the novel).

As with everything else we’ve discussed, if you’re going to mix first person and third person, do it on purpose and with purpose. You can even use different persons for the same character (in different scenes)—just be sure you know what effect you’re going for, and make sure it’s working for that effect. Another example would be Heather Gudenkauf’s The Weight of Silence. It has six or more narrators, all in first person except for the character who is an elective mute. But at the end of the novel, <spoiler alert!> the elective mute breaks her silence and concludes the novel in a first-person epilogue.

Just in case you’re wondering, as with multiple first person stories, I think it’s helpful to label the chapters with the viewpoint characters’ names, especially if two or more of your POV characters are in first person. (In The Weight of Silence, the chapters were all labeled with the viewpoint character’s name.) You can do this in third person as well, but I find it a lot clumsier than handling multiple third person narrators organically.

What do you think? What’s the most unusual POV or the most unusual POV combination you’ve ever used? How did you handle it? Come join in the conversation!

Photo credits: couple eating—Mr. Thomas; I-Spy badge by Leo Reynolds; Silent—Jennifer Moo

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Handling multiple POVs

2 Comments
This entry is part 13 of 14 in the series Deep POV

Sometimes, using more than one POV in a novel can be tricky. Handling multiple POV styles can be even trickier. Today we’ll look at how to transition effectively between multiple POV characters in third person, and next time we’ll take it to the next level, looking at multiple first person narrators and mixing first and third.

Multiple third-person POV characters

In general, the guideline is that we don’t change POV characters within a scene. I’ve even seen this rule phrased as “you can’t change POV characters within a chapter” but from all that I’ve read and seen, I think that’s far stricter than general publishing guidelines. I’ve also seen some writers state that you can’t change POVs within a chapter, but that’s patently ridiculous, to put it mildly.

When changing between viewpoint characters with all third-person POVs, you will want to use a scene break (denoted by white space or other marks in novels, denoted by centered asterisks or octothorpes in manuscripts) or a chapter break. As with any scene ending, you’ll probably want to give us something to look forward to for the next time we see that character or we get that character’s POV (a hook, if you will).

In the new scene, orient the readers to the new POV character as quickly as you can. You have a number of options of narrative modes to start the scene, but orienting to the POV character can make it a little tougher. Using dialogue can be hit or miss. Thoughts, in general—such as the sequel from the previous scene in this character’s POV—aren’t the best way to switch off the POVs.

I think of opening with thoughts like starting a movie scene with a black screen and a voiceover—without the advantage of recognizing the voice right away. There’s a certain stark effect there, but if you’re not going for that, use the anchor and marble in those thoughts amid the present action.

The easiest way to orient the reader to the new POV character is to begin with a physical action anchor. I do try to avoid falling into a formula, but this beginning is also a good place to orient the reader and character in place and time, include a short sequel from the last scene we saw the POV character in (especially if something important happened and we need their reaction) and state the scene goal (which is often related to the sequel).

Seems like a lot? You can do all that in as little as three sentences.

Another personal rule that I use with multiple POV characters (and this is totally my option, a guideline I gave myself, you don’t have to follow it, but I do) is that any character whose role in the story is important enough to warrant getting their own POV should probably have their POV introduced within the first 3-5 chapters or 30-50 pages.

I find POV characters that jump out of nowhere jarring, especially later in a book (especially if it’s for a single scene—drive-by POV—and most especially if that single scene isn’t needed or didn’t need an additional POV character). They don’t have to come up in a regular rotation, but I try to keep the “minor viewpoint characters” in the loop every few chapters as well.

Multiple third-person POVs within a single scene

Seriously? Didn’t I just say we shouldn’t do this?

All right, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen in published books. At this point, I avoid this (I’m very strict on myself about POV, actually). But if you really, really, really want to do it, here are some tips:

  • Make sure the transition is necessary. Gratuitous changes can feel like indiscriminate head hopping. Limit the number of heads you pop into in a single scene
  • Make sure the transition is obvious (i.e. obviously intentional). The reader needs to feel like we’ve passed the POV baton onto this new character and the character has accepted it, not like “we’re just in this character’s head for a visit, and then we’ll pop back into the real POV character’s head.”
  • Make sure the transition is smooth. (Obvious and smooth? I’m not asking much, right? Maybe this is why this has fallen out of favor.)

This is not quite like omniscient POV, because in omniscient, you don’t have to be quite so strict about transitions. You want to be systematic in omniscient, but once you’ve established your POV expectations (that you can dip into all characters’ thoughts), you can continue to operate in those parameters.

Unless you’re already published, you have to prove you know what you’re doing with POV, so tread carefully here.

What do you think? What “person” do you typically use? How many viewpoint characters do you typically have? What is the most you’ve ever juggled? Come join in the conversation!

Photo credits: couple eating—Mr. Thomas;
anchor & compass (Falkland Islands War Memorial)—Ambernectar 13; leap frog (for head hopping)—TRiver

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Getting close to your characters

One of my many (many) pet peeves in writing is being pushed out of a character’s head while I’m reading. We read to experience life from others’ eyes, and I’m very sensitive to being “ejected” from the story. Here are some of the main offenders that pull me out of the story.

Emotional reportage
Does it suddenly sound like the character is summarizing her feelings, like she would in talking about the experience later in a journal or letter or conversation? We’re reading to live vicariously through the characters, to experience these events alongside the characters. When a character starts telling us what she was feeling instead of describing her emotional reaction as she experienced it, it’s that much harder for us to live through her.

Think about it: which gives us a better experience: “I felt sad,” “I was devastated,” or “My heart felt like it had gone hollow, then caved in”? Writing emotions isn’t easy, but it can really bring your story and characters to life instead of leaving them flat.

Jumping to conclusions
When we’re in someone’s point of view, seeing their thoughts right alongside them, obviously we don’t need to see every piece of mental input they receive. But skipping too many logical steps, necessary processing information or even just observations and facts makes it harder for readers to follow.

“He’s great. I like him a lot,” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. But enumerating a love interest’s good qualities—including little details, and unique interpretations/spin on actions—shows us not only that a character is enamored, but how and why. Jumping to conclusions doesn’t let us follow along—it just tells us what to think.

Head words/ “scaffolding”: done all wrong
“Head words” are the narration verbs that remind us that the narration we’re reading is the character’s thoughts. But while using these words might look like a great way to “ground” us in the character’s POV, it can often have the opposite effect by constantly reminding the reader that we are reading about a character instead of being fully immersed in them, putting up a scaffolding around the story instead of letting the story shine through.

Sometimes, however, these head words are absolutely necessary: they can add important shades of meaning. “She realized he was wrong” is different from “she knew he was wrong,” “she thought he was wrong” and “he was wrong.” Use head words when they add necessary shades of meaning, and take them out when they don’t. (One of my biggest pet peeves: “wonder.” I will almost always recommend writing “How would he survive?” instead of “She wondered how he would survive.”)

Not using deep POV
It’s been years, but once upon a time, I did a series on deep POV, focusing on some easy-to-apply tips including using the kind of language your character would use, seeing the world as he’d see it, and anchoring in a character’s POV and head early on in a scene and more.

Slavish adherence to “rules” without regard for readability
One example here: we’re told again and again to avoid the past progressive tense (which is NOT the same as the passive voice!!). In general, it’s a good idea: past progressive is wordier and does carry some aspects of passivity. However, those reasons aren’t enough to eliminate it entirely: sometimes past progressive is absolutely necessary for a sentence to make sense.

Reading is a linear kind of thing. We read one past tense verb, then another, and we think they’re sequential when they’re supposed to be overlapping. Compare “He walked in and she leaned against the wall” and “He walked in and she was leaning against the wall.” To me, the first sentence sounds like two sequential actions: he walks in and then she leans on the wall. The second is clear: she was already leaning when he walked in.

When I come across a sentence in a book where one of the actions may or may not be intended to be ongoing, I have to stop and think about the words, instead of continuing to enjoy the characters.

Response, stimulus
In our world, we drop something, and then it falls. Someone surprises us and then we jump. We see a picture of yummy food, we feel hungry, and then we go get something to eat. We have stimuli, and then responses.

The fictional world acts the same way. We have to see the stimulus first, not the response. When I read that someone ducks without seeing a low-hanging branch or something hurtling through the air first, it pulls me out of the story. (Unless, I guess, they have psychic powers.)

Authorial intrusion
There are also lots of ways more subtle ways we can unwittingly popup in our own stories. Roni Loren has a great list of 12 common authorial intrusion pitfalls. Several of them involve putting words in the character’s mouth (or head) that they wouldn’t say or think—“as you know, Bob,” dialogue, things they couldn’t or wouldn’t see, notice or know (yet),

Okay, I admit that as a writer, I’m a sensitive reader. How about you? What pulls you out of a story?

Photo credits: frown—Jacob Earl; scaffolding—James F. Clay

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

How to write a foreign language character

11 Comments

I love languages. I have a Bachelor’s in Linguistics, which entailed a minor in Spanish. For my last MS, I’ve taken Irish lessons online. In my current WIP, I have a Russian Soviet trilingual heroine who doesn’t want our American monolingual hero to know she speaks English. Oh, and it’s set in Paris. Hooray! (For some reason, it’s always my heroines that are the polyglots.)

It’s only natural that I run into language issues. (And/or give myself language issues.) So when Theresa Stevens posted about using foreign languages in English works today, I started to comment. . . . Halfway through my novella comment, I decided it might be better just to blog about it myself.

I think Theresa has some great guidelines for foreign language usage:

  • Length. Shorter bits are easier to absorb than longer ones.
  • Frequency. A once-in-a-while [words] will go down easier than long dialogue exchanges.
  • Familiarity. Some foreign words are just better known that others. If an Italian guy says, “Salut,” we probably all know what that means. But how many of you can parse a Polish guy saying, “Dziekuje”?
  • Common roots. Some words appear similar to their English counterparts because of shared linguistic roots. . . . So when Edith Piaf belts out, “Je ne regrette rien,” a mindful reader will see “regrette” and recognize it as a fancified version of “regret.”

I tend to think that dialogue and narration use slightly different solutions for the same issue. Here’s what I think is working for me (but I’m sure my CPs will have their own opinions when I let them read my WIP!).

Dialogue
In my WIP when I’m in his POV, I figure the foreign language is pretty much incomprehensible to him (and my readers), I don’t write out the full Russian or French. I have been making exceptions like the above: if it’s very, very short (Eto Lissa), common (oui), or homophonic (téléphone). I figure anything longer/less common is just a wall-o-sound to him—he can’t distinguish the words or even phonemes. (Think about what it’s like to tune in to a Spanish channel. I speak Spanish and it still takes me a minute to “code switch,” as we call it in linguistics.)

I tend to summarize the foreign language dialogue in his POV. It’s a bit harder in her POV, since she’d understand any of the three languages. Here, I do another thing Theresa mentions: trying to make it obvious from the context. For example:

[They’ve just gotten out of a car.]

“Mademoiselle?” the driver called. I turned back. He stood by the still-open car door, holding my father’/s brown leather briefcase aloft. “Votre mallette?”

Of course, if both characters are speaking Russian (and no one else is around), I just write it in English. I do take a look at the syntax and vocabulary of Russian, but I wouldn’t change either of those aspects to make the English weird or unintelligible.

Narration
In internal monologue, I use English as well, of course, and again, wouldn’t change the syntax or vocabulary too drastically. I actually think this can actually be more loyal to the character’s voice, and I’ve commented on why before (but I’ll repeat it here).

I think it’s entirely possible to stay true to a character’s voice without actually phrasing things the exact way their thoughts might translate. A “character’s voice” is already an artificial construct. Most people actually think in pictures, not words. And if my character is a native-born Russian, she probably thinks in Russian. Russian pictures != marketable English-language novel. Translating thoughts into words and Russian words into English ones is, I think, a bigger change than rephrasing said thoughts in English.

For example, in Russian, the stressed element of a sentence is at the beginning (“To the store I went” isn’t odd, just emphatic), but that wouldn’t convey the meaning well in English. Or, for example, if the Russian character thought “nose has not grown,” a Russian idiom, the English reader would be just as confused as we all are now. (No idea what it means.)

It’s more loyal to the character’s voice to make sure that their thoughts are as eloquently expressed (or not) in English as they would have been in their native language—and that’s pretty much always going to require some rephrasing.

What do you think? How would you convey a foreign language in narration and dialogue?

Photo by Eric Andresen

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Language and narration

3 Comments

I heart languages. I majored in Linguistics in college, and as part of that I studied two foreign languages. I’m super excited that my library offers free online language courses (and am frustrated that they don’t use more technical terminology. I want to conjugate, darn it!). I transcribe things into the International Phonetic Alphabet. For fun.

But it wasn’t on a conscious level that I began using characters who spoke other languages in my works. I started with a native English speaker—but a native Irish English speaker.

This might actually be trickier than using a foreign language, because it’s easy to forget all the subtle differences between American and Commonwealth English. I mean, I speak English, how hard could it be, right? (Not as easy as you think.)

I think my next project will feature a character who speaks Russian as her native language. This will have more challenges for me because I want to learn all I can about the language to make her voice (in English) more authentic.

For example, in Russian, you can reorder the phrases of a sentence without changing the meaning. “To the store I went” and “I went to the store” are both perfectly acceptable. Moving a phrase to the beginning of the sentence adds emphasis. (So “To the store I went” is like saying “[No,] I went to the store.”)

Which brings me to a dilemma: in English (or just in “good writing”), we tend place emphasis on things at the end of sentences. So what do you think? Should I use the Russian emphasis pattern to stay truer to the way my character would think, or should I conform to the writing standards of English?

And if you have any questions about any of your foreign (or not-so-foreign) characters’ use of language, feel free to ask me!

More fun facts about language and meaning this week from Livia Blackburne

Photo by Eric Andresen

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Tapping into your character’s senses

5 Comments
This entry is part 7 of 10 in the series Writing the senses

Yesterday (and throughout this series), I mentioned that we have to focus on our characters and what they perceive when we detail the sensory information. We’ve talked about how to get into a character’s head (waaay back when), but sometimes seeing with our character’s eyes (or using their other senses) is a bit more challenging than just understanding what they’re thinking.

One thing that I’ve done to work on this (can you tell this is actually what I’m working on now?) is to go through each scene and write down all five senses for that character in that setting. As I do this, I ask myself questions about the character in the setting:

  • Which of my character’s emotions or experiences would color this setting? Does the sandy desert remind her of her grandmother’s house, or him of Desert Storm? (Or make up new experiences, if you feel like it.) If you need a setting to have an impact, sensory data could trigger strong memories for your character. Or if you just want your character to have a strong emotional experience, sensory data from the setting might be the way to go. Emotional
  • Is this a new setting for the character? If so, keep in mind your character’s personality and purpose there. Someone accustomed to danger might scan for the best escape route first. (And she won’t sit with her back to the door. Don’t even ask.) But if she’s there to meet a friend, looking for that friend will be a close second priority.
  • Conversely, is this setting very familiar to the character? If, for example, it’s their home or workplace, they may not “experience” it anymore. So if you need to be in that character’s POV in that setting, focus only on what stands out. Most of us don’t know what our own house smells like (unless we’re the ones buying the air fresheners!), but we’ll notice the overripe garbage.
  • In a familiar setting, can I have other people interact with the set? The other characters’ interactions with the POV/owner character’s furniture may suddenly draw her attention to the ratty patch on the arm of the couch where her cat sharpens its claws—or maybe the cat does that itself.
  • Do we remain grounded in the setting? Do we go too long without referencing something concrete in the “real world” of the story, devolving into people talking in space? (That’s one of my big things to work on.) Note: we don’t have to redescribe the drywall, but even interacting with a prop keeps us from floating off into space.
  • Do we remain grounded in the character? Kind of the opposite phenomenon—do we spend too much time on the description so that we kind of lose track of what the character is doing/thinking/feeling? (And thanks to Andrew for bringing this to mind in the comments!)

What do you think? How do you get into your characters’ senses?

Tomorrow, we’ll have more about picking which senses to focus on for your character!

Photo by Vestman

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!