Alicia Rasley is the other half of the Edittorrent blog, along with Theresa Stevens (who has already graced me with a SGSS post).  If you don't read Edittorrent, you're missing out on some extremely useful and important information about the writing process itself.  Here Alicia gives us all a lesson in her specialty: Point-of-View.

School's in session

To show you what deep POV can be or achieve, well, let me show you the other third-person POVs first. Then I'll show how you can “narrow in” by adding in POV elements.  I sure hope the italics come through this time!

Here's an old-fashioned objective POV:

The houses were dilapidated, in various states of disrepair.  Several storefronts were boarded up.  The whole town looked to be in the middle of a recession.

Okay, notice that we're in no one's mind.  This is an objective view of the town, not one filtered through an actual character.  The "objective" viewpoint is now just generally used in very small doses, perhaps to introduce a setting or character, and many writers don't even use it then.  It's too distancing to use for to narrate most scenes, and reveals nothing about the characters.

Lara pulled her car up to the curb.  When she turned off the engine, silence engulfed her.   It was the middle of the afternoon, but the street around her– what passed for Main Street, she guessed-- was empty of people, movement, and noise.  She rolled down the window and breathed in the stale smell of the garbage left on the sidewalks, waiting to be picked up.  The houses were dilapidated and every car she could see was an older model. No one here had any extra cash, that was clear.  She figured the town was in the middle of a recession.

A lot more sensory detail here, more sense that there's a real body in this place doing the seeing and smelling.

What's missing, however, is Lara... that is, the unique person there in the scene.  This is more than just a place for Lara, presumably.  She wouldn't have driven here just to experience the ambience.  She has some reason for being here, and that reason will make her narration different from someone who had a different purpose.  So let's say Lara works as an investment advisor, and has gotten a call asking for advice on how to invest $10 million.  The account is hers if she's willing to make a house call, because the investor can't travel.  So –

Lara pulled her car up to the curb in front of 858 Main Street.  When she turned off the engine, silence engulfed her.   It was the middle of the afternoon, but the street around her– not much of a Main Street -- was empty of people, movement, and noise.  She rolled down the window and breathed in the stale smell of the garbage can left on the sidewalk a few feet away, waiting to be picked up.  She squinted through the sunlight at the cracked driveway.  The car was a 1980s-era Monte Carlo, on its last legs to judge by the rust around the wheel-wells.  The house behind it was dilapidated, with a single shutter hanging from one nail.  The rest of the windows were bare, and the one over the doorway was cracked.  She mouthed a silent curse.  Some smartass was playing a trick on her, calling her and telling her there was $10 million here waiting to be invested.  No one who had $10 million dollars would live in that house, on this street, in this recession-battered town.

Notice how much more detailed this is, and how much closer the details are.  Not garbage on the sidewalks, but "the garbage can left on the sidewalk a few feet away"-- more focused, more concrete.  Not a vague "every car she could see was an older model," but the much more specific Monte Carlo with rusty wheel-wells.  She's interested not in all the dilapidated houses, but the one at 858 Main, the one with the hanging shutter.  And she doesn't just observe the scene– it has an emotional effect on her... she curses.  And there's a conclusion reached too– that someone faked the call.

But Lara is still mostly an observer.  She's maybe wasted an afternoon, but her being in this place isn't going to change her life.  The more unique you could make her observations, the more powerful it could be.  So consider adding a strong emotional investment here, and see if the voice changes and the perceptions alter... and if the actions might be different too. Let's see how perspective changes when the emotional investment is greater– when this experience really matters.  (Let’s change her profession too, while we’re at it!)

Lara pulled her car up to the curb in front of 858 Main Street. She checked the rusted number over the door once, then twice, then once more.  Impossible. It couldn't be.  It had to be some kind of mistake.  Bristol Fabric Manufacturing Inc couldn't have promoted her to sales manager, then transferred her here, to this recession-battered town, and rented her this– this dump.  She couldn't be expected to live anywhere so dilapidated as this sickly mustard-colored house, with its single green shutter hanging from one nail.  The color combination alone made her nauseous.

She had to look away, down the street, hoping that the real estate improved.  But every house was as bad or worse, all the way down to the next block. Three women came around the corner, walking disspiritedly along the cracked old sidewalk, and automatically Lara assessed their attire– not even K-Mart, probably the Dollar General store, or some polyester thrift outlet.  They didn't even carry real handbags, just plastic sacks... how could she stand it?

She pulled out her cell phone and stabbed out the number of her former boss.  "Terri," she said, her gaze lingering in dread on the garbage can overturned and overflowing on the sidewalk ahead of her. "Okay, you win.  I was wrong.  Way wrong.  I was so wrong.  You were right. That sales manager job isn't for me." She swallowed back the sour taste of panic and hurried on before Terri could protest.  "I'm an idiot and I can't tell silk from nylon.  Can I have my old job back?  I'll give you every single Kate Spade handbag I own.  I'll-- I'll give you my vintage Chanel jacket.  Just-- just let me come home."

In this last example, there's much more emotion, – we get a real sense of what matters to her and what her taste is like and what her values are.  We hear more of her internal thoughts. We also get her big change– her decision to grovel to her old boss and get her old job back.

Notice the closer we get, the longer the passage gets!  That's one hazard of focusing POV– but the passage is much more interesting and purposeful once we "channel" the scene through the character.Let's try a final passage, this time as much in the character voice as we can within a third-person (she) narration.  This should sound a lot like first-person with third-person pronouns:

No way. No way! No way. This simply couldn't be her new assignment. Not here. Not in the middle of this – this—well. She couldn't call it a town. This post-apocalyptic film set, maybe? This third-world refugee camp?  Couldn't be.  Her GPS must be faulty. Yeah. That was it—

So she yanked the memo out of her purse and ran her finger down the lines as she searched for the details. Tungsten Hills. Okay, right, over there across the street, the rickety sign it said "Tungsten Hills Motel." (Well, actually it said, "T ng ten H ll M tel.") 858 Main.  No. Come on. This couldn't be Main Street. Wasn't Main Street supposed to be, you know, main? And even if this was Main Street, Tungsten Hills, this baby-shit yellow house with the peeling baby-puke green shutters couldn't be 858. Couldn't be.

No way. No way.

She had to force herself to look up at the mottled plastic numbers over the door.

8.

5.

Shit.

8.

Notice that this makes use of all sorts of conversation techniques (repeating "no way," self-interruptions (this—this—well), and even some punctuation devices that mimic the rhythm of her thoughts. (8. 5. Shit. 8.  And do NOT overdo this. It can get annoying fast. Use it only when it's a great addition to the experience.  Less is more.  The less you do it, the more impact it will have when you do do it.) Do notice how this makes greater use of punctuation to recreate the rhythm of thought.  That is, we don't think in punctuation, but punctuation used within a written passage can be manipulated to give some sense of what the thought would feel like. This is NOT about discarding punctuation rules. Far from it. It's about deconstructing punctuation, understanding intuitively what signal it sends the reader, and using it to create a new experience. The period means, as the Brits would say, "full stop." So using it after each number makes the reader stop for a second, recreating the experience Lara is going through, of perhaps blinking between each numeral, forcing herself to move on to the next, dreading what she knows she's going to see.  That is, you have to understand how punctuation is supposed to work to do this well. :)  Be Picasso with Cubism here, not your toddler with Fingerpaints—know the meaning behind the symbols and conventions, and then use them to create a new meaning.

But you can see the tradeoffs here.  In being IN her, we lose a lot of the detail and information that we get from even a slightly more distant perspective.  Always keep in mind that deep POV is quite restrictive. It liberates you to write from within, in a voice not your own. But the information you convey is limited then not just to what the character CAN perceive and know, but also to what the character notices. (You can, of course, have the character notice whatever you want—just present that in the character's own way, as we had Lara above notice the motel across the street.) 

But even channeling her voice, we can find reasons to revise. For example, I had trouble deciding whether she would say-think (that's my new term for "the process of the mental voice within deep POV") "couldn't" or "could not":

This simply couldn't be her new assignment.

This simply could not be her new assignment.

I thought maybe she'd say-think "could not" for greater emphasis. But I went with "couldn't" because I thought the contraction version would call less attention to itself. I still don't really know if that's right. I'd probably think of revising it the next time I read it over.  And yes, that sort of choice really, really matters when you're "in voice." :)

You’ll notice this is very much a process of revision. Most writers feel comfortable in one "depth" and tend to draft a scene from that depth.  Certainly some writers can identify so immediately and deeply with a character that they need no reminders to channel the POV.  But just keep in mind that you are in charge here.  If you want to add or subtract, you can. You're not stuck with the passage you wrote first off!

This is another myth— that deep POV is about the writer's experience, that it must be presented as it came to/from the writer. In fact, it's about the READER'S experience, and you might need to add bits of sensory detail here, thoughts there, an emotion or two, revise the passage to give the reader the experience and depth we want. 

EXERCISE:

1. Think about the POV character you're working with.  Note down what you think of as this character's  "hallmarks of POV", jotting down notes about the character's temperament, values, perceptive strengths and weaknesses, anything that might affect narration.

2. Choose one point in your story where this character has to make a decision or take an action‑‑ important or trivial.  Write two paragraphs deep in viewpoint, trying to show the uniqueness of this person's perspective.  Keep it simple‑‑ you don't need to overdo it‑‑ but make it distinctly this character.

3. Then write a paragraph or two of analysis of this‑‑ how did it feel to write that way? Reading it over, do you feel that it captured this character, revealed this character?  If you were going to take this passage and put it into your story, what would you change or keep?  What about his/her POV will you use in other scenes?

Alicia Rasley is a nationally known writing workshop leader.  She teaches writing at two state colleges, and is a fiction instructor in an MFA program.  Her writing articles are archived at www.rasley.com.  She blogs about writing and editing at www.edittorrent.blogspot.com.