Deep POV: 6 Necessities To Begin A Ebook (And Past!)
So you have a fascinating idea for a story and you imagine some of the scenes in your head. You really want to get it down on paper and delight readers. But if you don't ground your readers with deep POV to begin with, you'll have a hard time getting them to care about what happens.
There are specific techniques that master writers use to attract and keep readers busy. In this article, I'm going to teach you about the first and most fundamental – absolutely indispensable – technique that draws readers in and makes them forget they are reading.
So take out your notebook and prepare to expand your author's toolbox. This will be a game changer!
The ten-second audition
Readers have millions of books to choose from. You don't waste a lot of time on a book that doesn't immediately pique your curiosity and make you anticipate future events. We only have seconds to grab them before they move on.
As if this weren't enough of a challenge for a writer, we have to measure ourselves against social media, streaming services, video games, and all sorts of other entertainment options. Our job is tough and requires discipline, commitment and a willingness to keep learning and improving our skills.
But if you have a passion for telling a good story and serving your readers, this is a good place for you!
Notice how I said, "Serve your readers." I think that's what it's about. The reader.
It is important to realize that at the receiving end of your words there is an actual person who has real wants and needs. Great writing – the kind that sells – is about creating the high quality reading experience that a living, breathing person craves.
Often times, first-time authors think that it's all about the story. I was no different.I started writing stories without realizing that the story is just the way to get to the reader. Writing is about connecting with someone and making the slightest or fleeting difference in that person's life.
Readers want to escape into a story, sink under the page so they don't just read anymore – they are immersed in the story. This type of reading gives a sense of immediacy and becomes an experience, a satisfying and lasting way of spending the precious good of time.
As fiction writers, our job is to give our readers what they need so they have what they want, and the essential place for that is on the first pages of the book.
Deep POV: Draw readers deeply into the story
There are three forces that propel a reader through your story – curiosity, surprise, and suspense. I talked about everyone's superpower in my last article: what is tension? Why and how it makes better books.
However, for these forces to work the way they need to, the reader must be firmly embedded in your story. And that has to happen from the first few sentences of your book.
The most powerful technique to achieve this is often referred to as the Deep Point of View (Deep POV).
You may be wondering, "What is a deep view?" I consider it the magic of applied POV. My mentor, Dean Wesley Smith, calls it depth.
It explains depth as what you do to get your reader deeply involved in the story so they can't walk, and keeps them off the surface where they could break out of the story and put the book down.
Writing in a deep perspective is achieved by using certain types of detail and leaving out others.
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Writing in Deep Point of View keeps the reader firmly engaged and anchored in a story. Authors can achieve this depth with six specific details, all of which are covered in this post.
Before we get into that, there is one crucial concept that I need to drill home with as it all really depends on understanding this one key aspect.
Your characters are alive
In the context of your story, your characters have real lives and the reader experiences the story through them. You are the interface. They allow your reader to fit into the story and feel the power it creates.
Every word the story has to come from the perspective of a character, first or third person, if you want to pull the reader off the page and anchor them in the environment of your world. If you let writers in, you run the risk of losing your reader.
In other words, if you look around as a writer and describe the setting from your own point of view, you will never pull the reader into the character and the story. You have to go through your character.
This means you have a filter. Your story can have multiple point of view characters, and even combine the first person POV with the third person point of view, as James Patterson does in his Alex Cross novels.
However, it is important to stick to one point of view per scene, with clear scene breaks in between. When the reader switches from the thoughts of one character to the thoughts of another, he cannot get stuck in the mind of the point of view character and grow.
Worse, it can be confusing and cause a reader to distance themselves from your book.
While it is possible to tell a story in this superficial way, it does not achieve the depth, absorption, and engagement of your reader that we address in this article.
One POV character per scene. One filter. And everything in the story comes to the reader undiluted through that single point of view and filter in your character's voice.
As you write, consider the different types of filter words and the details. You need to pull your reader deep and anchor them in the setting of the story in order for them to want to stay.
There are six types of detail that can be used to achieve Deep POV.
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Your characters are alive. Readers experience a story through your characters, which is why applying Deep POV is so important. This is done with six details
6 key types of details that achieve a deep POV
The goal here is to get your reader involved deeply and instantly in the story by connecting with your point of view character, making it difficult to put your book down. These are the specific types of detail that you will use in the opening lines of your story and at the beginning of each chapter to achieve that deep POV.
1. Character related details
Remember that your point of view character is alive, a functioning person with a background of experience. And every word of the story is filtered through that character's experience.
Have you heard of the Rashomon Effect named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film? It describes how people can experience the same event and give vastly different accounts of what happened. That's because a lot of the things people notice are unique to them.
Is your character a professional chauffeur? What details would one chauffeur notice that others may not notice? Would he pay special attention to the makes and models of cars? The condition of a vehicle's tires? Would he notice a suspect's peculiar tan if he wore driving gloves in a convertible?
Is your character a baker? What details would a baker notice that others might not notice? Would she pay special attention to the quality of the bread served in a restaurant? Another character's kitchen condition? Would she notice a yeast infection appear on a suspect's hands if too much dough is kneaded?
When you step into a character's POV and deliver the scene to the reader through this filter, the character – and the story – come to life.
This soaks the reader deep into the world of the stories and keeps them clinging to a new character or group of characters they like.
A great strategy for writing character related details
In Voice: The Secret Power of Great Writing, James Scott Bell writes, “As a writer, you have to identify yourself so closely with the character that you feel what the character is feeling, you think what the character is thinking. Great actors do that. "
When I work on character development, I come to this character. I take on the physiology of the character, which means that I get up and jump around, energizing myself when I write this type of character. Or I slump in my chair, exhausted, if that suits the state of my character. I take over their body language.
I could complement this by going through some internal dialogue in my character's voice until I sound like he or she sounds. Or pretend I'm picking a menu or dressing for a party like they would. And so on.
This technique came from theater director Michael Chekhov, and the theory behind it is that our physiology affects our psychology. It helps me get into the same state of mind as my character so that I can provide the kind of details that are inherent in that person.
And of course I try to think like a chauffeur or a baker would think.
It is always a smart idea to learn from the masters. I define a Master scribe as an author who has consistently produced bestsellers for the past thirty or forty years.
So let's look at an example of the Masters.
The first paragraph of Michael Connelly's book The Scarecrow is delivered by the point of view character Wesley Carver, chief technology officer of a data security company. Notice the kinds of details he uses to ground the reader in the environment and in his own point of view:
Carver paced the control room, watching over the front forty. The towers were spread out in neat rows in front of him. They hummed softly and efficiently, and for all he knew, Carver had to wonder what technology had worked. So much in so little space. Not electricity, but a fast and hot flow of data that flows from him every day. Growing in front of him in tall steel stalks. All he had to do was reach in, look, and choose. It was like looking for gold.
Carver is a type of computer that is full of data. The details he notices and thinks about relate to the wealth of data and what it can do for him. Like rivers and fields, he can harvest and mine gold. Do you see how these details tell us more about his character and anchor us in his head?
As you open your own book, make sure you are firmly anchored in the head of your point of view character and convey the story from there to your reader. Think about what your character would notice and add fresh, character-related details that will pull the reader next to you.
2. Sensory details
Remember that any information that comes to your reader has to go through your point of view and how we get information, but through our senses?
Again, it is useful to empathize with the character. Feel what your character is feeling; see what they see. Hear, taste and smell what you are experiencing. Whether it's the sticky heat of an Amazon jungle or the screeching of brakes on asphalt, pass it on to your reader.
It's a good idea to use at least four of the five senses in each depth opening for the first third of your book. Another sensory technique that can make you feel overwhelmed is to lavishly focus on a purpose.
For example, if your character is attacked by noise:
The cacophony rose higher and came in screams and great swirls of sound that swelled in a distorted symphony and ripped Joanie's eardrums. When she thought she couldn't take it anymore, a loud manic laugh joined the seditious stew and then a new sound that was above all strange and frightening. It was her own scream.
Or your character can be plunged into absolute darkness:
Inky Black pressed against Paul's eyelids like coins on a dead man's face and soaked him in his grip. The darkness was thick as tar, sticky, suffocating him and sticking somber fingers in his mouth, ears, nostrils until he drowned in them.
Using details that involve the five senses is key to drawing your readers below the surface of your book and keeping them underwater in a good way.
Let's go to some examples from the Masters. Here is the opening of James Lee Burke's story Big Midnight Special:
You know how summer is in the south. It smells of watermelons and distant rain and of cotton poison and flocks of catfish that have built up in a pond that is being drained. It comes to you in a wet light on barbed wire at sunrise. You try to hold on to the coolness of the night, but by noon you stand in your own shadow and chop long rows of black soybeans against the sun.
See how Burke got his readers to smell the watermelon, the rain, and the fish? Do you see the light and the shadow? Do you feel the searing heat? Did you understand how these details pull us right into the point of view and attitude? If you're reading this, you'll know he's a prisoner on duty in the fields without spooning the information in a boring info dump with backstories. Genius.
Don't forget to use thick, rich sensory detail to open up your story and draw your reader deeply.
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Using details that involve the five senses is key to drawing your readers below the surface of your book and keeping them underwater in a good way.
3. Specific details
Here we are talking about something my mentor calls a wrong detail. You need to understand that the words you write are symbols that represent ideas for the reader. They produce these symbols and the reader interprets them.
If you want the reader to be immersed in your story, you need to be in control of what you are communicating.
That means using certain details that give the reader clear pictures and ideas. We can never get the story in our minds in an undistorted and perfect form into a reader's mind, but we have to get as close as possible to this ideal or risk pushing the reader to the surface.
This is what I mean:
Let's say you mention a dog in your story.
Dog is a very general term, and if the dog is insignificant to the story and not mentioned again, you can probably get away with your readers conjuring up any type of dog they like.
But if you want the dog to play a role or go back into history in some way, simply put yourself in a dangerous position by using such a non-specific term.
Here's why: the reader takes the coded symbols you gave them and formulates a picture in their head of what is going on in the story. You wrote that a dog was running down the street, so he imagines his favorite type of dog, a Great Dane, jumping around with great strides.
Your reader is grounded around the area and things flow smoothly until your story tells how the beagle stopped running and started barking, a tearful, high pitched yipping sound. And – Bam! – You brought your reader to the surface.
Your coded words don't match the picture in his head, reminding him that it's just a story, just words on paper, and he might as well put the book down and go to sleep.
Use specific details whenever possible. And keep these two rules in mind:
- Specify in advance. If you had originally identified the dog as a beagle, your reader would have phrased this image from the start and would not have been torn out of the story when the dog started with its beagle bark. Later you can just say "dog" because the image of a beagle has already been imprinted.
- If you want to describe something, do not name it until you have described it. If you name it first, the reader gets a picture in their head and if your description doesn't match their idea, it rattles and can encourage them to get out of your story.
You never want to do anything that will send a reader to the surface and away from your story.
4. Opinions
Your character wasn't born on page one. Remember, they have a history of life experience that gave them opinions, among other things. Your opinion should color everything they pass on to the reader like a keyboard shortcut into their personality.
These opinions enliven your character and make them real, and this helps pull the reader beneath the surface of your story. Their opinions also set them apart from other characters in the book, allowing them to stand out and be a three-dimensional individual.
Characters are revealed through their behavior and interaction with others. By making sure your character's attitudes and opinions resonate with the reader, you are creating a deeper and more satisfying reading experience.
Elizabeth George demonstrates this well in the opening of her book With No One As Witness. She delivers a paragraph with idiosyncratic details that perfectly match her character and gives us a vivid picture:
Kimmo Thorne liked Dietrich best: the hair, the legs, the cigarette holder, the top hat and the tails. She was what he called the whole blooming package, and to him she was second to none. Oh he could do garland if pressed. Minnelli was easy and he definitely got better with Streisand. But given his choice – and it was given in general, wasn't it? – he went with Dietrich. Sultry Marlene. His number one girl. She could sing the crumbs out of a toaster, Marlene couldn't make a bloody mistake.
These details, oozing with opinions, immediately pull us into Kimmo Thorne's head. We know what he likes and how he feels about it. He loves to pose as female vocal stars and Marlene Dietrich is his favorite. Once we are in his head, we are anchored in the environment and ready to experience the rest of the scene through his perceptions.
When you express your point of view character's opinion, you will awaken your characters and readers deeper into your story world and be ready to follow up as the story progresses.
5. Emotional details
Using details that convey your character's emotions is another important way of pulling the reader below the surface and actively engaging them in your story and sensing some of what your character is feeling.
Since your reader is a real and individual entity with its own life experiences, your character's emotions will arouse your reader's own emotional glow to evoke authentic, personalized feelings.
What a powerful way to draw the reader deep into your story world and invest them in what happens to your character.
Focus on describing how it feels for the character to be angry or hurt or insanely happy instead of directly naming the emotions. Show, don't tell.
What are the physical reactions? How do you deal with them? What kind of memories or insecurities do they evoke? Emotions, like opinions, color the details you want to include.
For example, here is the opening of Dean Koontz's book Sole Survivor:
Joe Carpenter woke up in Los Angeles at two-thirty on Saturday morning, hugged a pillow to his chest, and called his lost wife's name in the dark. The tortured and haunted quality of his own voice had roused him from sleep. Dreams did not fall from him all at once, but in trembling veils as attic dust falls from rafters when a house rolls with an earthquake.
When he realized he wasn't holding Michelle in his arms, he still held on to the pillow. He had come out of the dream with the scent of her hair. Now he feared that any movement he made would cause that memory to fade, leaving him with the sour smell of his night sweats.
Notice how Koontz describes the effects of the man's emotions rather than referring to them as sadness and longing. Did you also happen to notice how Koontz included the character related details of a native Californian? And sensory details like sight, sound, touch and smell?
Everything in the first two paragraphs of the book.
Including emotional details creates intimacy and draws a reader into a character, which inspires empathy. It can also trigger a responding emotion in your reader, arriving somewhere deep inside, and creating a real emotional response.
Let's examine one more type of detail that will help create the depth you need to capture your readers and get them deeply involved in your story.
6. Consistent details
Remember, your words are like code to the reader that they decipher to form a picture in their head so that they can join the story as if they were experiencing it for themselves. In this case, do not put the book off unless clearly necessary and you will get back to it as soon as possible.
Unless you remove them from history through an inconsistency.
We've talked about head hopping and fake details before, but your reader can also be torn out of the story if you include a detail that conflicts with the rest of the image you're creating.
Like a well-decorated home, your details can be eclectic and fresh, but they should work together to create a consistent flow and fabric for your story.
Stephen King illustrates this well at the beginning of his novel The Stand:
Hapscombs Texaco was on US 93 north of Arnette, a pissing four-street castle about 110 miles from Houston. The regulars were there tonight, sitting at the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly and watching the bugs fly into the large illuminated sign.
It was Bill Hapscomb's station, so the others pushed back on him, even though he was a complete fool. They would have expected the same delay if they had been gathered in one of their businesses. Except they didn't have any. Times were difficult in Arnette. In 1970 the city had two industries, a factory that made paper products (mainly for picnics and barbecues) and a factory that made electronic calculators. Now the paper mill was closing and the calculator system was down – they could make it a lot cheaper in Taiwan, it turned out, just like those little portable televisions and transistor radios.
Norman Bruett and Tommy Wannamaker, who had both worked in the paper mill, were relieved after running out of unemployment some time ago. Henry Carmichael and Stu Redman both worked in the calculator factory, but rarely got more than 30 hours a week. Victor Palfrey was retired and smoked smelly, self-rolled cigarettes, which were all he could afford.
Do you see how the underlined details work together to create a sharp and consistent picture of the sinking city? I especially like the bugs flying into the big illuminated sign as a metaphor for the death that awaits them all. It suggests that everyone in the scene is just waiting for the zap that sends them to the great light in the sky.
If you use consistent detail in a scene, each one adds a layer to the material of your story, strengthens it, and adds something new, immersing your reader deeper and deeper into your story world.
All six kinds of details will help you engage your reader in your story using Deep POV. However, there are a few more detail writing tips that you should know if you want to improve your writing style and polish up a great story.
Can you give too many details?
When I started writing, I joined the idea that the story should be reduced to the bone, frugal and lean, without too many details. I had great plans (or how I imagined), but I didn't always put a lot of meat on these bones.
As I learned and grew as a writer, I discovered the importance of adding color and substance through details, that a story is more than a series of brilliant plot points.
I remember taking one of the great courses: Building Big Sentences: Exploring the Craft of the Writer. The professor advocated lush, long sentences, using what I found to be a shocking amount of detail, but I began to see how details can be more clear and animated, rather than clutter and darkness.
If you use the right details correctly. As I described in this article –by the point of view of character. And nowhere in your story is it more important to establish this richness and depth than in the scene and chapter openings of the first third of your book. This is what it takes to anchor a reader in your story.
As the book moves into the later stages and the pace accelerates, you don't need as much detail to get your reader caught in the story. Assuming you've done the job to even pull them down.
If you don't, you won't have to worry about the level of detail in later stages because your reader probably won't make it that far.
Can you open with action?
You might think the most exciting stories start with a big bang of action, but if you go back and analyze the work of master writers – the ones that have consistently been best-sellers for a decade or more – you will find that the author was quick to substantiate that Readers with sensory details, opinions, and emotions either before the plot began or as the plot unfolded.
Here is an example from the opening sentences of Jeffery Deaver's book The Twelfth Card:
His face is wet with sweat and full of tears, the man is running for freedom, he is running for his life.
"There! There he goes!"
The former slave doesn't know exactly where the voice comes from. Behind him? Right or left? From one of the shabby tenement houses along the dirty cobblestone streets here?
In the midst of the July air, hot and thick as liquid paraffin, the slim man jumps over a pile of horse manure. The street sweepers don't come here to this part of town. Charles Singleton stops next to a pallet stacked with barrels and tries to catch his breath.
Do you see how Deaver interwoven sensory, emotional, and character-related details in those few sentences to draw the reader into the environment? In the following sections, he has stepped up the use of details to complete the job.
If you are concerned that your opening will be postponed without immediate action, make sure you are using living language and active voice instead of passive language. And deliver each word by your point of view character, draw your readers in and show them through your character's fresh eyes.
Before moving on to the plot points and actions, open your story 300 to 400 words deep, expressed by the point of view character in the details we discussed. If the reader doesn't interface with the story and has no way of joining in on details conveyed through the viewpoint character, they don't care what happens and you lose them.
First connect to the reader, then take action and plot.
A better foundation draws your reader into the story
Whether you're starting your first novel or your fifty-ninth novel, it's imperative to lay a solid foundation for your reader to experience and enjoy your story. If you missed it on your first draft, make this your number one revision.
In dieser Serie haben wir bisher die Elemente der Spannung diskutiert und wie Spannung eine treibende Kraft in jeder Art von Geschichte ist. Wir haben diskutiert, was Spannung ist und wie sie zusammen mit Neugier und Überraschung funktioniert, um einen Leser durch eine Geschichte zu führen.
In diesem Artikel haben wir die Arten von Details besprochen, die Sie benötigen, um Ihren Leser unter die Oberfläche Ihrer Geschichte zu ziehen, damit er Ihr Buch nicht ablegt.
Aber es gibt noch einen weiteren Teil der Grundlage, den Sie aufbauen müssen, damit Ihr Leser in die Geschichte investieren und die Seiten bis zum Ende umblättern kann.
Dieses fehlende Stück stellt sicher, dass sich Ihr Leser um Ihre Hauptfigur kümmert.
Wir werden im nächsten Artikel einige leistungsstarke Möglichkeiten beschreiben, um dies zu erreichen. Bleiben Sie also auf dem Laufenden!
Wie ist es mit Ihnen? Sehen Sie, wie die Verwendung dieser spezifischen Details einen Leser in eine Geschichte hineinzieht? Erzählen Sie uns davon in den Kommentaren.
TRAINIEREN
Nehmen Sie heute Ihre Story-Idee und schreiben Sie die ersten 300 bis 400 Wörter Ihrer Eröffnungsszene für fünfzehn Minuten, wobei Sie die im Artikel beschriebenen Details verwenden: charakterbezogen, sensorisch, spezifisch, eigensinnig, emotional und konsistent.
Denken Sie daran, dass jedes Wort der Geschichte durch Ihren Standpunktcharakter kommen sollte, gefärbt durch ihre Meinungen und Emotionen, geliefert durch ihre Sinne. Das Ziel dieser Übung ist es, Ihren Leser in der Umgebung und im Standpunkt zu verankern, bevor Sie in Aktion treten und Punkte zeichnen. Konzentrieren Sie sich also auf dieses Ziel.
Sie haben keine Idee für eine Geschichte? Kehren Sie zum Anfang dieser Serie zurück und kreieren Sie eine Idee für Ihren eigenen spannenden Roman. Oder üben Sie jetzt mit diesem:
Ein Koch aus New York City ist in eine kleine Stadt in Oklahoma gezogen, um ein scheiterndes Abendessen zu übernehmen.
Wenn Sie mit dem Schreiben fertig sind, veröffentlichen Sie Ihre Absätze in den Kommentaren und geben Sie Ihren Mitautoren Feedback!
