In a post on Writers in the Storm, Lori Brown helps us define Deep Point of View and crack the code to writing it well.
Deep POV is a method for bringing your reader into your story by showing your narrator’s thoughts and feelings from within. However, when a client asked Brown to help her understand Deep POV, a formal definition proved elusive. Multiple website each had their own definition, sometimes similar, sometimes wildly different. After some trial and error, Brown came up with this equation: third-person limited + inner dialogue = Deeper POV.
“I’d been crediting a literary device (internal dialogue) as the sole alchemy that magically turned one point of view into the gold of another, and mentally equating the two—internal dialogue and Deep POV—as essentially one thing,” Brown explains. “But it was adding the literary device of internal dialogue to an existing point of view that took the reader deeper into experiencing the story.”
Nonetheless, Brown says that Deep POV is fluid, and it’s up to the writer how deep they want their Deep POV and whether they use internal dialogue. First person and present tense can accomplish many of the same functions as Deep POV. “I am increasingly convinced that Deep POV is more a state of mind,” she writes. “When we embrace the mystery that is Deep POV, exploring its depths and testing its limits, we expand our horizons, deepen our writing’s dimensions, and create for our readers an adventure worth getting lost in.”
