In a post on Writers in the Storm, Lisa Hall-Wilson shares a checklist for learning how to use Deep POV and ensuring that it works effectively in your story.
- Author Voice. Even within deep POV, the writer generally needs to include a bit of telling – to orient the reader, provide background information, or drive home an emotional point. “You have to cheat [Deep POV] simply to keep the story moving, avoid unnecessary navel gazing, and on-the-nose pace-killing,” Hall-Wilson says. “But know why you’re cheating Deep POV in every instance and know how Deep POV wants you to write.”
- Immediacy. Deep POV helps your readers feel like they are in the story, experiencing it with your protagonist. Immediacy controls what your character is thinking about in each moment.
- Incorporating Senses. Building setting and atmosphere means focusing on what your character would notice and experience, not simply what you want to write.
- Characterization. Deep POV focuses on what’s important to your character and their priorities for every scene, including goals, observations, biases, and fears. How do you convey that? “You lean on internal sensations (how things FEEL), internal dialogue, spoken dialogue, and actions,” Hall-Wilson writers.
- Character Voice. The deeper your POV, the more you must focus on your character’s unique voice, including figures of speech, tone, cadence, gestures, and facial expressions.
- Emotions And Emotional Arcs. Conveying emotions is a key challenge of deep POV. Your character shouldn’t expressly state “I’m angry” or “I feel scared.” Instead, you need techniques to show their emotions through action and thought.
- Answering The Why. Instead of using narrative to explain why your character feels or acts as they do, you need to show your hero in action. “This includes building in emotional reactions, using emotional layering, using compelling backstory that doesn’t slow the pace, and tracking shifting goals and priorities,” Hall-Wilson notes.
- Setting And Description. Deep POV can bring your character into the scene as you show what your protagonist is seeing and experience in the moment, with vivid, precise details.
- Go big! Hall-Wilson urges writers to lean into melodrama, at least in their first draft. Go big with emotions and cut back during the editing stage if you need to.
- Subtext. Nonverbal exchanges convey thoughts as strongly as speech, and can reveal what’s hidden or what we might not admit willingly. Use physical action to underscore what’s said or unsaid in a scene.
- Beats. “Complex beats not only attribute dialogue, but also show character emotion, priorities, or stakes,” Hall-Wilson writes. “Make each beat move the story ahead in some way rather than just attribute speech.”
- Literary Devices. Repetition, metaphors, personification, and foreshadowing can give your readers clues to your protagonist’s observations and state of mind without coming right out to explain them.
