Don’t confuse your interests and experiences with your fictitious character’s
When we observe something new, our subconscious mind compares it with previous experiences and either ignores it or flags it as noteworthy.
Your fictional characters’ mind works this way, too.
To create a deep POV experience, you need to know which observations reach his conscious mind.
Inexperienced authors apply the wrong filter, using their own interests and experiences. You may need to make the mental switch and apply the characters’ interests instead.
How to filter the difference
Let’s say your character enters a neighbor’s kitchen, and you want to describe it in a couple of sentences. In your first draft, you describe the way you would experience it, showing and emphasizing whatever you find noteworthy.
But your character’s attention goes to different things than, say, yours.
Because of his employment, what is he accustomed to noticing?
If you are a butcher by profession, your eyes will immediately go to the block of knives, and you’ll notice their brand and quality.
A house cleaner, however, will notice the linoleum floor, the grime on the cupboard handles, the big grease stain on the rug, and the unwashed cups in the sink.
If an interior designer sees the same scene, they’ll immediately notice the flaking paint on the window frame, the 1980s wallpaper pattern, and the orange-colored crockery clashing with the painted walls.
They notice these details even when they’re not on the job because it’s so ingrained in their nature to see those things, they can’t help it.
Hobbies
Our minds latch on to anything related to our favorite pastimes.
What are your POV character hobbies that affect what he sees?
Does he enjoy cooking? Then he will notice the hob, the oven, the block of knives, and the collection of Asian cookery books on the shelf.
Is she passionate about gardening? They’ll notice the bunch of daffodils in the vase, and the neglected spider plants on the windowsill.
A cat lover will observe the sketching post in the corner, and then their attention will drift to the feeding bowl and water dish on the ground.
Childhood and education
Your experiences will create filters, too. Our upbringing and education have an enormous influence on what we see.
If the character grew up in a household with the motto ‘cleanliness is next to godliness,’ he’ll notice the dirty cups in the sink. Whether cleanliness is of importance to him now.
This technique applies to anything that POV character experiences and not just places, situations, objects, and people.
Establish the POV
As soon as possible, perhaps in the first paragraph, revealed the following:
- Through whose POV are we experiencing the story?
- What kind of person is the POV character?
- Where and in what situation is the POV character?
This allows the reader to enter the character’s mind from the start and experience the story through your character’s senses.
Which character is the POV?
Let the reader know as soon as possible, through which character’s mind are they going to experience the journey of your story.
Here are several examples of different emotions and situations:
Fear
- Her stomach clenched like a fist.
- Cold sweat beaded along her spine.
- Her breath hitched, shallow and fast.
Anger
- Heat flared in her chest.
- Her jaw locked tight.
- Fists curled without thinking.
Nervousness
- A tremor ticked in her hands.
- Her mouth went dry.
- Her knee bounced under the table.
Sadness
- Her throat thickened.
- Eyes burned, but no tears came.
- Her limbs felt heavy, as if weighed down from inside.
Attraction
- Her skin tingled where he touched her.
- A warm flutter stirred low in her belly.
- Her pulse skipped, then surged.
Pain
- A sharp sting shot through her side.
- Every breath dragged like sandpaper.
- Her muscles screamed with each step.
.
Nobody else but Mary would experience those details, so it’s clear that she’s the one.
This is especially important when your story opens with the scene in which two or more characters interact.
Your reader needs to know from the start with whom to identify.
In my novel, When Love Ends, Lies Begin, it opens with –
Not hungry for a spoonful of guilt, Vanessa silenced her mother’s call.
The client her employer had ordered her to interview ran twenty minutes late, and with each ticking second, her anxiety coiled tighter. He stayed the prime suspect in his wife’s murder.
Working as a paralegal at a prestigious law firm had its challenges. A large majority of their clients believed they were above the law and money could buy them out of any legal situation.
Her phone rang again. She silenced it.
Now was not the time for a lecture on punctuality.
From the first line, you know you’re reading the story through Vanessa’s eyes.
What kind of person is the POV character?
To get mentally into the character’s role, your reader needs some basic information.
Is your main character male or female, old or young? The more information you can reveal early on, the better.
But the critical word here is ‘reveal’. Don’t tell the reader about the person! Instead, use subtle clues into the narrative.
In When Love Ends, Lies Begin, we learn right away that our main character is female and young. Her mother controls Vanessa’s life and needs reminding about things.
Let the reader experience what it’s like to be a woman in her early twenties, where her mother doesn’t consider her as a responsible grown up.
The gender is easy to establish if you’ve chosen third person for your story.
Just using the character’s name often achieves this. The pronouns he – his – him or she – her – her’s caused no doubt.
In what place and situation is the POV character?
Identify with the POV, the reader needs a clue about where the character is when the story begins.
The best way to do this is to show how the character experiences the place and situation.
Let’s say your story begins with a downpour.
Without POV, you might write it like this:
With her hood string framing her face, Mary hurried towards the village. The sodden jeans clung to her thighs, and her boots squelched with water with every step.
Careless motorists plowed their cars through the deepening puddles. Mary dodged the sloshing sprays as best she could.
Now the reader knows Mary is outside on foot, that says walking along the road to the village, and that she’s wet.
How much information do you need to give?
Establishing the place and situation is important not just at the beginning of the novel, but at the start of every scene.
Give some clues about where the character is and why. You don’t need to cram as many hints as possible into the first paragraph. That would not flow well. But mention a few things. A couple of sentences, or perhaps a dozen words sprinkled across the first paragraph, are enough.
In outdoor scenes, consider the weather and how the POV experiences it. A few words about how the icy wind stings Mary’s cheeks, or how the warm breeze ruffles her skirt are enough to show that she’s outdoors, and simultaneously it hints at the climate of the season.
For indoor scenes, a brief interaction with furniture serves well. Perhaps Mary sinks into or arises from her favorite armchair.
You can also help the reader by establishing the time of the day.
Outdoors, show the passage of time through light and shadow:
The sun might stand high overhead, cast momentary shadows, or lengthen them as afternoon stretches on. Warm light may gild rooftops in late afternoon, the horizon flaring orange beneath a sinking sun. At night, clouds could drift across a gibbous moon, softening its glow.
Indoors, light creates mood and contrast:
Sunlight may pour through a crack in the curtains, painting lines across the floor, or people might draw the curtains against the evening chill and switch on the ceiling lamp.
It won’t take much to make the reader feel anchored in the time and place, but you need to give the reader something.
Character thoughts
When writing Deep POV, don’t tell the reader that the character is thinking something. Simply state the thought. It will feel natural.
Character thoughts in shallow and Deep POV
The way you present a character’s inner thoughts can shift the reader’s emotional distance.
In shallow point of view (POV), the narrator tells us what the character is thinking.
In deep POV, we experience the character’s thoughts directly, as if we’re inside their head.
Shallow POV Examples
- Samantha wondered if Jake was still angry with her.
(The narrator tells us what Samantha is thinking from the outside.) - David realized he had made a mistake and hoped no one had noticed.
(The thoughts are filtered through narration rather than felt directly.)
Deep POV Examples
- Was Jake still mad? She hadn’t meant to snap like that. Not really.
(The narration disappears—we’re inside Samantha’s mind.) - Crap. That was stupid. They probably all saw it.
(Raw, unfiltered thoughts show David’s reaction in real time.)
Barrier words
Watch out for the following verbs in your fiction. If they tell that the POV character is thinking those thoughts, you can delete them.
You may need to tweak the syntax a little, but you won’t lose anything and gain a lot.
- Think
- Ponder
- Wonder
- Realize
- Know
- Understand
- Reflect
- Consider
- Muse
- Deliberate
- Contemplate
- Ask himself/herself/myself
Each time you use one of these words, you push a barrier between the reader and the experience. Remove them.
Happy Writing!