Deep POV: Fast Track to Compelling Character Voice

Note: This is the fourth in a series of articles on demystifying viewpoint. The originals will appear first as posts on my Spontaneous Combustion blog, then be archived on my website as downloadable PDFs.

Deep POV is single viewpoint on steroids.

In the first article of this series, I compared single POV to viewing a scene through the eyeglasses of one particular character. Deep POV takes single POV and intensifies it. It's like putting two tiny cameras with powerful microscopic lenses in those glasses; installing microphones in the character's ears, and sensors in her nose, tongue, and skin; then finally inserting a silicon chip in her brain to channel every single thought, perception, sensation, and emotion directly to readers.

Lars Norgaard, "World's First Cyborg Artist"

 Handling POV like this is a fantastic way to immerse readers in your story. Although I'm not a gamer myself, it seems to me that Deep POV is like turning the protagonist of a novel into an avatar of the reader: the line between fictional character and reader of fiction gets blurred, so that the reader experiences the events of the plot as if they are happening to her. Readers slip so deeply inside the skin of a book's narrator that it's as if the two are fused into one.

I told you Deep POV was intense!

The best way to get a feel for the difference between "regular" single POV and Deep POV is to read it in action. Here is a masterful example from the Okay for Now [Clarion 2001], a Newbery Honor book by the gifted children's writer, Gary D. Schmidt. The novel's narrator is eighth grader Doug Swietek. Here is he speaking about a Yankees baseball cap that his older brother had stolen.

"I guess now it's in a gutter, getting rained on or something. Probably anyone who walks by looks down and thinks it's a piece of junk. 
They're right. That's all it is. Now.
 But once, it was the only thing I ever owned that hadn't belonged to some Swieteck before me."

This is Doug, talking straight to readers. There is absolutely no sense at all of any author sitting there with a pen or a typewriter or a computer making this up. Rather, Schmidt is writing as if he were possessed by Doug, being used by the character to transcribe his words onto the page. Now that's how to create a vivid, authentic, compelling character voice. Schmidt's novel is persuasive testimony of the power of Deep POV. There is no better way to bring a character to life. 



Contrast this with regular single POV, in another wonderful middle grade novel, A Drowned Maiden's Hair [Candlewick Press 2006] by Laura Amy Schlitz.

"Maud had a hazy idea that the Battle Hymn had something to do with with war and slavery. She felt that by singing it she was defying authority and striking a blow against the general awfulness of the day."

Though this is single viewpoint, since it's written from within Maud's head, it is not Deep POV. It's phrases like she felt and Maud had a hazy idea that put readers at a subtle but real distance from the heroine.

The cumulative effect is a slightly more formal, slightly more adult voice. There is nothing wrong with this, but for me at least, it makes the ghost of the author more evident. I'm aware that there is a writer at work here; I don't feel that Maud is speaking directly to me. 



"Duh!" you may  object. "That's because Schlitz was writing in third person, and Schmidt was writing in first person, Nancy, you dolt." But it is possible to write Deep POV in third person. How? 

First, avoid writing anything that distances readers from your POV character in any way. Here's an example.

She jumped when she heard the door slam.



The phrase she heard is a tiny little wedge driven between the narrator and the reader. Do some quick and simple word-surgery, and you've gone a little deeper into your character's head.

             

The door slammed. She jumped, her heart ping-ponging in her chest.


You don't tell readers that she heard the slamming door, you simply show it happening—followed immediately by the character's response. So one way to achieve deeper POV is to follow the same old literary advice you've heard time and time again: show, don't tell.



In a similar vein, avoid distinguishing the narrator's thoughts in any way from the rest of the text. Certainly don't treat them like dialogue and set them aside in quotes, and don't italicize them either. That creates distance between your character and your readers. 

Also, don't apply what I call "thought tags," words such as thought, felt, surmised, guessed, supposed, etc. Again, just write the thought directly. For readers, this creates the sense that they are in the narrator's mind, hearing her thoughts by some kind of literary telepathy.



One of the places that it is easiest to slip up and forget to remain in Deep POV is in descriptive narrative. Writers—myself included—get carried away in describing a scene and start writing lyrical passages that their thirteen-year-old skateboarding hero would never say or think. Writing Deep POV is a humbling experience. With every word, you are trying to make readers forget that you, the author, exist. If you succeed, kids won’t even remember your name. Your goal is to convince them the main character is the one telling them the story, not you. 



So it's definitely possible to write Deep POV in limited third person. But don't assume that you are automatically in Deep POV simply by virtue of writing in first person. I've read many first person narratives that remained aloof from the narrator. I see this mainly in student work, and when it happens, I think it's because the writer gets so caught up in setting down the events of the plot or what other characters are saying and doing that she forgets to let her narrator react to all of it.



Another way of putting that is to say that the POV glasses that the writer sets on her first-person narrator's face have clear lenses, as if the hero were a scientist recording "just the facts, ma'am." And who of us sees and responds to life in such a completely neutral fashion? It's the way a first-person narrator shares plot events and her observations of other characters that reveals to use what kind of person the narrator really is. There is color to the narrator's lenses.

[© Infrared photos by Nancy Butts]

A fine example of this is the Newbery-winning novel Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. Told in first person, we believe that the cutting remarks Louise makes about her twin Caroline are accurate. It isn't until the end of the book that we realize that Louise has been envious of her sister all along, and that her observations have been tainted because she has been looking at her sister through green-colored glasses.


That taint is what you want when writing in first person: that is, if you want to achieve Deep POV. Let every word your narrator says—even if that is about something as ordinary as the weather, the menu in the school cafeteria, or the shoes his sister is wearing—reveal more about your hero than perhaps he'd like to admit.



I've read articles and books that are almost prescriptions or recipes for how to do Deep POV, but I'm not sure that's the most helpful way to look at it. You don't have to go "all in." Such intense identification with a main character can get claustrophobic, especially if she is whiny, depressed,or unpleasant in some way. Not being able to get out of her head for even one moment can turn readers off. So you need to choose your project well. If you've got an anti-hero, or a character who might initially seem unlikeable for one reason or the other [perhaps the point of your book is show their transformation], Deep POV may not be the technique to choose, not exclusively.



Perhaps you could use it only for brief passages, borrowing techniques from Deep POV so we can hear your main viewpoint character's voice loud and proud. To me, and to many editors and readers, the voice of your protagonist is what makes a book stand out. What makes a thousand books about yet another dysfunctional family forgettable, and one book like Okay for Now so memorable that it haunts you for weeks after you finish it? Character voice. And one of the most powerful techniques for creating that is Deep POV. What better reason is there to learn as much as you can about it?


[© 2014 This article is subject to copyright. Please do not use or reproduce without express written permission from the author.]

Next in the series—Power Can Go To Your Head: The Perils of Omniscient POV

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth

I'm recovering from knee surgery six days ago–my third operation in 25 months. I often joke that I should just find those scientists who gave Wolverine his adamantine skeleton and get one myself! And check out what I call my Transformer crutches: much easier to use than the axillary crutches they give you in physical therapy, even if they do make people stop and stare at me when I hobble down the street.

I'm up and limping around, feeling fairly good, all things considered. But surgery takes something out of you, mentally as well as physically, so I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on my writing, teaching, or editing at the moment. As a three-time veteran, I was prepared for that this time. So I'm logging lots of hours on my Kindle, catching up on seventy—yes, seventy—books in my " find time to read someday" pile. It's heaven, but I have to work hard not to feel guilty about "goofing" off this way.

A few days before my surgery I came across this link in the Guardian to a speech that fantasy writer Neil Gaiman gave in London earlier this month. I want to write something profound in response, but I'm reduced to saying, "Oh wow oh wow oh wow." Gaiman plucked every word I might ever think to set down about this glorious craft of fiction writing and said it so much better than I ever could. So please, please–if you love books, either as a reader or a writer, do yourself a favor and read his speech. I'd quote my favorite parts, but by the time I was done, I'd have reproduced the entire thing.

What exploded in my heart most of all was when Gaiman said that fiction writers—especially those of us who write for children—have an obligation to daydream, to entertain, and most of all, to tell the truth. Gaiman didn't mean that writers should teach or moralize: far from it. He specifically lists as one of our obligations that we should avoid preaching at all costs.

So what did he mean? I'll let him explain.

,,,truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are.

To me, that is another way of saying that truth in fiction isn't a simple regurgitation of facts. There is an alchemy that happens when you enter a book, a combustible reaction between word and reader that can forever change the way you see life, the world—even yourself. That I think is what Gaiman meant when he said

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Now if that doesn't get you to read his speech, I don't know what will!

Entertain, enchant, enthrall: the three E's of fiction

 

The irony of the sermon I’m about to give is not lost on me—the teacher preaching the literary commandment, “Thou shalt not teach or preach in your fiction.” And I’ve written about this before on my website.

But it bears repeating. I don’t know what it is, but working in the field of children’s literature for lo these many years, I’ve encountered a lot of didacticism, also known by the more pejorative term preachiness. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that so many people who want to write for children are teachers, who can’t get out of the habit of writing lessons. Many of my writing students and manuscript clients are classroom teachers, either in the public or parochial schools. [Note: by parochial, I mean any religious school, not just Roman Catholic. I’ve had students who taught in evangelical Christian schools, Lutheran schools, Anglican schools, and even Hare Krishna schools. I’ve also had a few preachers as students, as well as students who taught as part-time volunteers in Sunday or Hebrew school. Why, I once had a student who led weekly devotional programs for Wiccan children.]

Many children’s writers come to their desks with a passion to convey either information or life lessons to their young readers—and let me stress that there is nothing wrong with that. All writers write because they are burning to share something that is important and meaningful to them.

However, when it comes to crafting fiction, anyone who is a teacher or preacher needs to set that particular hat down outside the door. Forget about writing those sermons or lesson plans that feel like second nature to you. You need to remember that when it comes to writing fiction you are first, last, and always a storyteller—which is an ancient and noble discipline with strong traditions of its own.

One of those traditions involves a prohibition against the three E’s. Fiction is most emphatically not about educating, exhorting, or even empowering readers. [See what Harry Potter’s US editor Arthur K. Levine has to say about empowerment in the companion article on my website.]

If there is some topic about which you want to either teach or preach, you can do that in non-fiction. But if you choose fiction as your genre, then it is all about another trinity of E’s. At every moment, what we as fiction writers must do is  entertain, enchant, and enthrall. That’s the goal in every line, every scene, every chapter. Along the way our readers may pick up some information that they didn’t have before, but if so, that’s simply a bonus. And if they are inspired, well, that’s even better.

But if you sit down to write your novel with the express purpose of informing readers, you will bore them. And if you sit down with the express purpose of inspiring them, I can almost guarantee you will fail.

Your task as a storyteller, a writer of fiction, is singular, if not simple. It is to make your story world so real, so compelling, that readers want to crawl inside and experience it right alongside your characters. And then you need to stand back and allow readers to discover for themselves any meaning that there is to be found. You can’t force feed them your passions; you can only cook the food, lay the table, and hope that they like what you've given them to eat.

Think of a novel that inspired you—and then read it again, to see how the author managed that. I’ll wager that he or she didn’t try to inspire you, not directly. One book that springs to mind is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a book which I’ve clutched like a life preserver as an Ohio Buckeye struggling to keep my head above the backwaters in the rural Georgia town where I have made my home for years. Though Lee’s novel has many strong themes about racial equality, sexual violence, and standing up for what is right, even when it’s unpopular or dangerous, she doesn’t try to teach a history lesson or preach a sermon about any of that. Instead, she lets us experience all this through Scout and her father Atticus Finch as they struggle through their day-to-day lives in a 1930’s Alabama town.


It’s true that there are many novels for young people that do impart information along the way. Take historical fiction; I’m dating myself here, but how many of us learned about the American Revolution by reading Johnny Tremaine in school?

To take a more contemporary example, look at any one of the many wonderful historical novels written by two-time Newbery medalist Karen Cushman. The author has often been praised for her well-researched, authentic historical detail, so kids can certainly learn a lot about time periods from the Middle Ages to the McCarthy Era from her books. But not a single page in any of her novels reads like a lesson from a history textbook. Instead, Cushman brings the time period to life through lively writing in chapters where her characters don’t act like they know they’re living in the past, because to them, they’re not! This is just ordinary life for them, so any history readers pick up is almost by osmosis, as they are caught up in Cushman’s plots.

Inspiration doesn’t always come in the form you expect either. Look at the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. [SPOILER ALERT: do not read further if you haven’t finished all seven books.]

When these books first came out, they were a lightning rod for debate in the Bible Belt where I live because they center around magic. However, I think there are also strong religious elements in the books, especially in the final installment. Rowling wasn’t trying to preach or to teach in the closing chapters of the seventh novel, The Deathly Hallows. Her primary purpose at the end was to tell a gripping, emotionally-charged story in the scene where Harry walks to his death—a death he freely though painfully chooses, in order to defeat Voldemort and save Harry’s family, his friends, Hogwarts, and indeed, the entire world, Muggle and magic alike. Rowling didn’t try to explicitly teach a message here on the power of love and sacrifice, though that is implicit in every line. She could even have quoted John 15:13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (NRSV translation)

But Rowling left the teaching of ethics and the quoting of scripture to others whose job that is. She is a novelist, and her charge is different. Her task—and that of all of us who write fiction—is to put our characters in situations where they are forced to make often impossible choices and then deal with the consequences. It is up to readers to decide what to glean from those consequences. Are they "just" messy, funny, sobering, joyous, or heart-breaking? Or is there any redemptive, transformative meaning to be found therein?

Our job as writers is only this: tell a damn good story. Beyond that, we must trust readers to get the rest.