Diving into Deep POV

Alessandra Torre, NYTimes Bestselling author and Inkers Con co-founder

I’d written over 20 novels before I was introduced to the concept of Deep POV. As it turned out, I had been writing in deep point of view and hadn’t realized it. So what is deep point of view and how should it be executed?

What is Deep POV?

Deep POV, or Deep Point of View is an improvement on third-person subjective.

Okay… you might be saying. What the heck is third-person subjective?

FIRST-PERSON VERSUS THIRD PERSON POINT OF VIEW

With first-person pov, you ARE the character and tell the story in that fashion. As an example: I walked into the meeting fifteen minutes late.

With third person pov, you are describing what the character is doing. As an example: Charlie walked into the meeting fifteen minutes late.

Third-person point of view can be subjective or objective. Deep POV is subjective.

OBJECTIVE VERSUS SUBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW

Objective is when you are a fly on the wall. You can watch the characters and see and hear them, but you don’t know what they are thinking or feeling, you can only guess based on their mannerisms, dialogue, and actions/reactions.

Subjective is when you are a fly inside their head (sorry for that graphic visual). You can hear their thoughts and understand their feelings, backstory, and motivations. You know everything that they know and can communicate that to the reader.

So, third-person subjective is when you refer to your characters by he/she/them or their names AND you know what’s going on in their head.

Deep POV is an improvement in the delivery of that third-person subjective and is a stylistic choice that has gained popularity in the last 20 years. With Deep POV, you take a step deeper into the subjective arena, and you do this by…

1. Sharing more. Your characters’ inner dialogue, history, and emotions take more of a center stage in Deep POV. You want the reader to feel immersed in this character and connected to them. You can dive deeper by sharing inner dialogue (when they talk to themselves silently), using slang or references that show that character’s personality and culture, and their opinions and impressions of others.
2. Stripping away narrative labels and phrases. Deep POV does away with “he thought, she wondered, John felt”. If a character thinks or feels something, it doesn’t need an explanatory crutch. Of course, it’s John feeling it. We’re inside his head! Who else would it be?
   • example of non-Deep POV: Elizabeth strode into the meeting fifteen minutes late and felt a twinge of nausea at the sight of her boss, sitting at the head of the table. Diane never attended these meetings, she thought. What was she doing here?
   • rewritten in Deep POV: Elizabeth strode into the meeting fifteen minutes late. A twinge of nausea hit at the sight of her boss, sitting at the head of the table. Diane never attended these meetings. What was she doing here? *As you can see in the second version, I’ve stripped out the “he thought” and “felt” indicators. Here’s another example…
   • example of non-Deep POV: Elizabeth saw Dean hand the waitress a note, and wondered what it could be. The girl was pretty, she thought. Maybe it was his phone number. As she watched, he smiled at the girl.
   • now let’s convert that to Deep POV: Dean handed the waitress a note. What could that be? She leaned forward, trying to see more. The girl was pretty, maybe it was his phone number. Dean smiled at the girl. * In the second version, I stripped out “Elizabeth saw”, “and wondered”, “she thought”, and “As she watched”. With both of these sets of examples, the reader understands that we are ‘deeply’ in Elizabeth’s point of view, so we don’t have to continually tell them that Elizabeth is watching something (we just tell them what Elizabeth sees) or that Elizabeth is thinking something (we just tell them what she thinks).

If Deep POV sounds appealing to you, but you’re having trouble grasping the concept, or want to learn more ways to use and explore this point of view, I urge you to read this excellent article by The Editor’s Blog, which takes a deeper (pun intended) dive into Deep POV and how to best use it in your novel.

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