Tag Archives: point of view

Technique

Your character’s thoughts—in real time

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This entry is part 5 of 14 in the series Deep POV

So we’ve established that it’s important to get your readers into your character’s head right at the start of the scene, and to convey the character’s voice. Once you’ve got that down, we stay in deep POV by living the character’s perceptions and thoughts—including their thought process—along with them.

Show, don’t tell—for real

The deeper the POV, the more important it is to show instead of tell. In a fairly limited POV, you often get simply the conclusions the character reaches: “She was dowdy.” “He was tall.” In deeper POV, we want to see more of the character’s thoughts that led to these conclusions.

Contrast these two:

Andrea turned around to find a very tall, very angry man looming behind her.

Andrea turned around to find a set of shirt buttons. Shirt buttons? She followed the column of buttons up, her neck arching back to peer at the scowl looming above the crisp collar.

In both passages, we get that the man’s considerably taller than Andrea, and that’s he unhappy. You could take the showing further by describing the scowl. This all depends on the context—if she’s only got enough time to catch a glimpse of him before he robs her/hits her/runs away, you’ll want to skip to the conclusion. If meeting this man is important or you want a specific effect, you can draw it out even more.

This showing requires you to create images that your readers can visualize through specific detail.

Use detail

Detail helps us to sets us in place. Using our characters’ interests and passions as a guide to what they notice and how they talk about it, we can convey a stronger sense of the events, people and places in our story.

Be specific in your detail. Specific images convey much more meaning than vague, generic references. A Beemer gives a very different interpretation than a beater, and both of which are more useful to us as writers than the word “car.”

Then draw the conclusion

The conclusions our characters reach about people, places and events are more powerful when they’re supported by details. But instead of laying out the character’s conclusion and then backing it up with the specific evidence, take things in a logical order to make those conclusions comprehensible and powerful.

So, first we notice the details (through showing, not telling), and then we put those specific details together to come to a conclusion. Here’s another comparison to illustrate the difference:

Jack hid in the corner just before Erica walked in. She was eager to see him. She scanned the room for him.

No true details, conclusion first—this comes off to me as very much “telling” instead of “showing.”

Jack hid in the corner just before Erica walked in. Leaning forward, she cast her eyes about hopefully, eyebrows drawn up as if she silently asked herself where he was. She was eager to see him.

This paints a much more vivid picture—we know what Jack sees, and with the detail, we see it ourselves. In this instance, the detail might be so strong we don’t need the conclusion at all.

Now, everything has its reasonable limits. The amount of detail—or even its use at all—depends, of course, on the specific context. We can skip to conclusions in the middle of a car chase. The hero and heroine meeting for the first time calls for a bit more notice of detail. To keep the thoughts “feeling” like real time, be sure to match the amount of detail—and how you work it in—with the pace.

Next week, we’ll look at the words you should—and shouldn’t—avoid for deep POV!

How do you show your characters’ thought process to help portray the places, events and people in your story?

Photo credits: buttons—Emily Lucima; eyes—Charlie Balch

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Technique

Deep POV: the view from inside your character’s head

This entry is part 4 of 14 in the series Deep POV

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

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Technique

Techniques to establish deep POV

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

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

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Technique

Getting into a character’s head

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

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

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Technique

What is deep POV?

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This entry is part 1 of 14 in the series Deep POV

Welcome to our series for July: taking the plunge into the deep end of point-of-view! (Perfect for the middle of summer, right?).

Ordinarily, a discussion of deep POV looks in-depth at the history of point-of-view in fiction. Feel free to read Alicia Rasley’s article (linked there) if that’s what you want to do. For our purposes, we’re just going to look at what’s most popular now—and this is one trend that we all have to pay attention to. For better or for worse, deep POV is the default mode of storytelling today (other than first person, of course).

So what is deep POV? Interestingly, it’s very like the other major mode of narration today, first person. In first person (“I did this and that.”), we are limited to only what the protagonist/narrator thinks, feels, perceives and guesses. Just like you can’t read others’ thoughts, a first person narrator can’t know what other characters are thinking. Similarly, in deep POV third person (“He did this and that.”), we are limited to the thoughts, feelings, perceptions and guesses of a single narrator per scene.

Of course, that’s just third-person limited mode. What makes a point of view “deep” is how “close” we are to the viewpoint character’s thoughts. In a distant third-person mode, we may be privy to few of the character’s direct thoughts, and those are always related in italics. We may rely more on their actions and speech to characterize and understand them. Often, we’re acutely aware of what the viewpoint character is doing, as if we’re watching them with a tight focus, and every once in a while we get a voiceover of his or her thoughts (mmm, Burn Notice).

In deep POV, the character’s thoughts can form almost a running commentary on the actions of the story. We don’t just get the occasional The problem with blackmail is that it’s like a gun with only one bullet or Yeah, the mob isn’t exactly known for its cushy retirement and severance package. Statements like that—direct thoughts from the viewpoint characters’ heads—are woven into the narration. In very deep POV, those statements might not even be italicized.

Sometimes, you can get so deep into POV that we don’t “hear” the “author’s” voice in narration, but the character’s. (And that can be awesome.) Everything we, the readers, get is as if we were seeing it through that character’s eyes (or brain, since we get a lot of his/her processing, too). We don’t just watch this character and his or her actions—we don’t see the character looking out the window. We see what s/he sees through the window. We seem to live the character’s experiences ourselves.

That’s a powerful narration mode—and that’s why deep POV has become so popular.

In pure deep POV, “head hopping,” or peeking into the thoughts of other characters within a single scene, is never allowed. Of course, a number of well-known, multi-published authors do this, but in general, new authors have to show that they truly understand point-of-view (oh, and sell books) before they can flout its conventions. In deep POV, you can have more than one viewpoint character, but to change between them, you have to insert a scene break. No matter how smooth or lovely you think your POV change is (and really, it might be masterful), it destroys the illusion of seeing the world through one character’s eyes and throws readers off.

Coming up this month, we’ll be looking at deep POV in detail. We’ll draw lessons from awesome articles around the web on how to show our character’s perceptions and worldviews. I’ll be reading from Alicia Rasley’s book, The Power Of Point Of View (as soon as it arrives; shipped yesterday!). And I already have some ideas for fun practice exercises for getting into our characters’ heads and seeing the world from their perspective.

What would you like to learn about deep POV? What do you like or dislike about the most popular narration mode today?

Photo credits: plunge—Konrad Mostert; man looking out window—Ben Husmann; city view—Mihai Estatiu

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Mechanics, Technique, Publishing

What Will Get You Rejected: Mistakes Not to Make by Janette Rallison, LDStorymakers

Presented by Janette Rallison (blog)

There are six basic types of problems that will get you rejected: point-of-view problems, tag-line problems, motivation problems, story question problems, goal and conflict problems and sentence structure problems.

POV problems—avoid head hopping or authorial insertions. [The trend these days is deep POV in 3rd person—we’re seeing the character’s inmost thoughts, but using 3rd person pronouns. So use your character’s thoughts and vocabulary for . . . well, everything! Never put in something that character can’t know and add a scene break if you’re changing POV characters. Janette probably said all of this, but I missed the beginning of her presentation because I had to run home to feed my baby!]

Tag lines—”90% of the time, tag line should be ‘said.'” Also acceptable, when situation calls for: ask, answer/reply. [But the trend these days is to not use dialogue tags most of the time, instead using action beats to identify speakers.]

Rarely use others—if the dialogue itself can’t show how the words are said, maybe it needs to be revised. Janette gave an example of when one of her characters said something that wasn’t true, but the reader wouldn’t know that, so the line went: “I can dance ballet,” I lied. [Personally, I think it’s acceptable when you have to call attention to the manner in which it was said—specifically whispering, since there really isn’t a way to choose your words to make it read like a whisper.]

Instead of using adverbs or specialized dialogue tags, let the dialogue speak for itself and translate it into actions [those action beats I was telling you about earlier!]. These show so much more powerfully! Janette’s example:

DON’T: “I never want to see your cheating face again,” he yelled angrily.

DO: He ripped the alimony check out of the checkbook with numb hands. He’d written checks a thousand times—for piano lessons, Girl Scout cookies, every elementary school fundraiser that came along. This time it felt as though the ink had come from his own veins. “I never want to see your cheating face again.”

Again, the exception is to use adverbs when the dialogue contradicts tone/facts (like when someone says something cutting in a sweet tone or vice versa).

Motivation problems—Put as little backstory in first chapter as you can. In chapter one, the main character should have a problem and there should be action.

Is your main character an idiot? [We have an acronym for this: TSTL—it means does your character do things that, say, if you saw them in a movie, you would be screaming at the television, “No! Don’t go into that dark attic!”? (Exception: law enforcement officers, who willingly run into danger for us every day. But even they don’t go looking for it if they don’t have to!)]

Story question problems
Your story should have:

  1. Character
  2. Problem—start story on the day your character’s life changed.
  3. Goal—the character has to be proactive, to have direction in life, instead of merely reacting
  4. Obstacles—don’t use coincidence to get people past their obstacles—use it to get people into trouble, but not out!
  5. Antagonist—someone or something that opposes main character’s goals: man v. man, man v. nature, man v. self. The stronger the antagonist, the more intense and exciting the story will be.
  6. Consequences of failure—there has to be a reason why they can’t just give up (this can be the antagonist)

“Fiction is a very dangerous neighborhood to live in.”

You can put these all together into a story question from Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain:

When [MC] finds herself in [situation], she [goal]. But will [antagonist and obstacle] make her [consequences of failure]?

This story question should be answered at the climax.

Goal and conflict problems—Don’t let your characters wander through your books without goals. Somebody has to have a goal in every scene. [Even better—all major characters have goals in a scene and they conflict!]

No goals or conflict in a scene? Throw in obstacles, highlight the consequences of failure, hearken back to the antagonist [or give other characters in the scene conflicting goals].

Sentence structure problems—Watch for repeated backward sentences—too many get awkward. [Always vary your sentence structures. Reading aloud is the best way to find repetition like this!]

About the conference: LDStorymakers is a writing contest geared to LDS writers. The conference covers both the niche, regional publishers that cater to the LDS market as well as national publishers.

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