Comments on: Deep POV

By: Tom Flood

Tom Flood — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:55:18 +0000

Gotta say I far prefer your first example to the deep third version. It’s more concise, dynamic, realistic, and allows the reader to enter the scene without the character’s thoughts getting in the way. Deep third can be very effective (I’ve used it on occasion myself) but mostly it appears to be an apology for sloppy writing, for clogging up the narrative drive and distracting the reader from the scene at hand.
For me, and many editors, deep third is better as a cricket position than a grammatical POV. I see a lot of it’s misuse in mss. It regularly creates both formatting (use of italics) and grammatical difficulties (usually tense) for writers, and on top of that, in the hands of novices, it often is insulting to the reader, trying to over-direct their response.
I find over-explanation to be the principle use of this technique and would recommend writers be very sparing in its use, unless your intent is to annoy your readers. If you want to put them off a character, fine. Working motivation into regular 3rd or 1st person without beating the reader over the head with a character directing us how to think is part of the skill of good writing. Reasonable delineation, so that it doesn’t clog the storyline (in fact it’s usually invisible to the reader) but does let us know who is speaking/thinking etc, is also a skill worth learning. What does clog the pace of the story, and it’s becoming particularly prevalent in self-published e-books, is constantly being told what a character is thinking i.e. how the reader should be thinking/responding. I’m not saying deep third should never be used, just be careful where it may take you and don’t neglect the traditional skills.

By: Erica

Erica — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:57:42 +0000

I can think of some authors I enjoy who often write in this mode. C.J. Cherryh (a SFF writer) comes to mind. It seems that it would give the writer some of the advantages of first person, such as immediacy and immersion in the character, while allowing him/her to have more than one POV character in a story.

The disadvantage would be the difficulty in providing background or extraneous information that the character wouldn’t be thinking about at a given time but still may be important for the reader to know. Do you suggest staying in deep POV for an entire novel or would pulling out of it be appropriate for transitional scenes and so forth? I guess I’ll need to re-read some books by authors who use this mode and see how they do it.

By: Meia Pipa

Meia Pipa — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:30:37 +0000

I never noticed before now, but I’ve been writing in ‘Deep POV’ for a while… Except limited to two characters instead of only one. But only the two.
I also prefer first person, but sometimes it’s refreshing to write in third person

By: Chels

Chels — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:27:54 +0000

I love writing first person because I can really get in the story & the characters. When I tried third person it just felt flat. I couldn’t really get into the writing because it felt to impersonal.

But I think I get it now (:

Its my new goal to write in Deep POV!

By: TeresaD

TeresaD — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:41:06 +0000

I write everything in deep pov. When I first started I wrote only 3rd person, and my first editor gave me a few tips. Before I knew it I had absorbed more than she probably intended in that tiny lesson and delved into a world I now know is deep POV. I didn’t even know it had a name. I just wrote what I felt.

It’s exciting to know that for at least this one thing, I have what the publishers are looking for. Now if only NY would look for the TYPE of material I write, that would be even better.

But you are correct – the author must put themselves in the position of the character which is exciting and fun, but when you write borderline horror, like I do, that can be quite nerve wracking. We won’t even whisper about the # of nightmares I’ve had after writing a really rough scene.