By Tiffany Colter
Last week, we did a short teaching on Deep Point of View [Deep POV]. If you didn’t read that blog
, stop now and go to this link. We’ll wait for you to come back.
This week, I’m going to take it a step further to show you how you can use this Deep POV to really point your reader to a wrong assumption or to deepen your writing.
Here is what we did last week to refresh your memory:
We were in Susie’s POV and we created the following examples. For the purposes of this exercise we’re in “Susie’s” point of view in this scene:
Susie thought Timmy was very handsome.
Timmy was very handsome.
Then we revised still further to deepen things with some showing.
After eighteen years, Timmy’s voice still made Susie’s stomach tighten and more than once she’d turned her phone on simple to look at his picture on her wallpaper.
Do you see how this has taken us down even deeper and revealed to us a bit on their relationship [at least Susie’s side of it.]? That is the power of Deep POV to your revision process.
This is where it gets fun. As I just said, this is Susie’s POV. This is SUSIE’S perception. Now, imagine this is the opening line of a book:
After eighteen years, Timmy’s voice still made Susie’s stomach tighten and more than once she’d turned her phone on simple to look at his picture on her wallpaper.
What genre do you assume this book to be? Likely it is romance or Women’s Fiction, right? How would it be different if this were a Suspense Thriller…or a Spec Fiction?
What if Susie is the main character of the novel and Timmy had been dead for 4 years? How would that change the reader’s perception of this scene? What if you took this scene and built on it, but in the next scene you see Timmy in some mortal danger with the antagonist?
Now let’s get even creepier. What if SUSIE is the antagonist and in the next scene we see Timmy and his wife, happily married and celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary with friends and kids.
Do you see how using the power of Deep POV you can really open a large number of possibilities in your writing?
You can still use it as part of a romance, but by playing with the genres and pointing the reader in an unexpected direction you can create the kind of writing that keeps a person reading and makes them talk about your book [in a good way].
Practice this on a few lines of your own writing. If you don’t have a current WIP then make some things up and revise them. If you have one of my Teaching Novels then go through a few pages and look for places you can deepen POV.
Final thoughts:
If you’ve found this to be a difficult or confusing exercise then consider working with a writing coach or editor. [I offer these services and have a special offer, but I don’t suggest this to try to get you to buy my stuff. This is what I personally do. I hire others to help me. Critique partners CAN help if they have exceptional skill in this area but I rarely have time to reciprocate so Crit Partners are not an option for me.] The key is to have someone help you identify this in your writing and point it out. You should be the one to change it. That is because you don’t want to lose your unique author voice that makes people want to read your writing.
If you’d like to have a content edit done by Writing Career Coach we charge only a penny per word. We also have a special offer. If you sign up for a critique in the month of December that is 5,000 words or more you’ll get a free pdf copy of either of our Teaching Novels [Silent Danger or A Face in the Shadow]. Just email us through our contact page or email Tiffany at WritingCareerCoach.com and put “Editing special offer” in the subject line. Each of these teaching novels is 400 pages long and offers simple lessons that will drastically improve your writing and revising skills.
Not ready for Edits yet? You have two other options. You can either purchase $50 in products from our resource page and email us the receipt to get your free download OR Contact us now to purchase a Gift Certificate and use in after the holidays when you have time to focus on your writing again. A minimum $50 gift certificate purchase is required for this offer.
Next Week:
Next week, we’ll start preparing for 2013 and there will be NO blog post the week of December 25. If you receive our newsletter, however, you’ll get a link to a special audio training just for those of you reading our newsletter. If you’re not signed up then please sign up using this link and also help us get the word out to other writers. This newsletter is about helping writers. I would like to start 2013 with over 100 of us taking the WCC Challenge.
Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter, The Writing Career Coach
Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at WritingCareerCoach.com.
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