Desmond Drops: Tunneling Into POV and Perspective
By Desmond Hall | March 15, 2023 |
Welcome to a new edition of Desmond’s Drops!
This month, enjoy three drops focused on one topic–pacing–each packed with great examples.
- Point of View
- First Person: Pros and Cons
- Perspective
Email subscribers, please click directly to staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud to view, or visit all of Demond’s Drops on YouTube.
Look for more of Desmond’s Drops in May!
Have your own bit of wisdom to share? Drop it in comments.
Desmond Hall, author of YOUR CORNER DARK, was born in Jamaica, West Indies and then moved to Jamaica, Queens. His second novel, BETTER MUST COME, a fiercely evocative, action-packed YA thriller that examines that darker side of light-filled Jamaica, released in May, 2024. He’s worked as both a high school biology teacher and English teacher, counseled at-risk teens, and served as Spike Lee’s creative director at SpikeDDB. He’s also written and directed the HBO movie, A DAY IN BLACK AND WHITE, which was nominated for the Gordon Parks Award. He’s written and directed the theater play, STOCKHOLM, BROOKLYN, which won the audience award at the Downtown Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Theater. He’s also served on the board of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, and was a judge for the Addys, and the Downtown Urban Arts Film Festival. Named one of Variety Magazine’s 50 creatives to watch.
Thanks, Desmond. Always enjoy your posts. This is a great review for new writers…and it would have been helpful when I was teaching high school, you know, when three ideas demands too much concentration to pack into one hour!
Thanks Elizabeth! And bless you for having taught high school! One of the noblest professions!
Hello Desmond!
Thank you for a very informative post.
I have a question regarding 3rd person deep POV and my own WIP, a historical mystery which has 4 POV characters.
Do I have to stay in deep immersion throughout, or can I move around in terms of depth of POV?
Let me explain:
From Chapter 10 of Alicia Rasley’s great book, “The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life”, I learned about depth of POV.
Going from superficial to deep there are 6 levels:
Camera-eye/ objective
Action
Perception
Thought
Emotion
Deep immersion/ voice
I find it quite convenient to start a scene with camera-eye/ objective and then move into the scene itself and deeper POV.
Is that a bad idea?
Does genre play a role here?
What do you think?
Best wishes,
Val
Hi Val,
Thanks for the great response!
As I understand it, “deep POV” is another way to treat Third Person limited. We remove words that filter the experience to help the reader “sink into the story.” They’ll have a deeper experience so to speak, and really get into the character’s head—even more than Third Person limited. For example, a sentence in third person limited like — He looked at the airplane racing across the sky. Can be written in third person deep POV as –- The airplane raced across the sky. You just remove the – He looked – in order to make the experience more personal for the reader. One should also lose the filter for dialogue and a character’s interiority.
With that as a base, here are my thoughts about your question—I wonder if toggling in and out of deep POV within paragraphs, or within chapters might break up the connection your reader has with the character? We do the deep POV to get that very connection, but I worry that changing around might become distracting because in a way, you bring back the writer’s voice when you bring back the filters, and the reader might notice that and wonder about it—which again, would “break up the connection.” (As the late great Prince once wrote)
You say you’re working with 4 POV characters (awesome) — Because you are, I’m wondering if the most important thing might be maintaining the connection (choice of POV) and allow the reader to know the character by the specific POV you chose. Now, this is not to say that going in and out of deep POV can’t be done, and well. It just seems difficult and dangerous in that you might break up the connection.
• Also, the notion of starting your chapters in deep POV to create setting can be a totally immersive experience. I never thought of doing that as a go-to technique. (cool) Again, I just worry about the going back and forth because it could come across like “head jumping” in a certain respect.
Thanks again. Let me know.
Desmond
Thanks for your latest batch of drops, Desmond. I’ve notice more and more that writers are using shifting points of view from two or more main characters. It solves some of the problems you mentioned, and can enrich the story, especially in playing with timelines. It’s more work for the author, of course, it requires that the author write essentially two different novels. It pays off, if handled skillfully.
Hi Christine!
Agreed. It’s about the skill and commitment.
I’d tried this with an early draft of my first book but was dissuaded when I heard that manuscripts from first timers that used this technique tended to get rejected. Maybe I’ll try again down the road.
Btw, have you checked out Jonathan Escoffery’s book “If I Survive You” – He plays around with POV nicely.
Which books would you recco?
Best,
Desmond
Can’t think of any books offhand, but I’ve read Escoffery’s. It’s gripping, even chilling. The stories are so bold and unvarnished, and the writing, needless to say, is top-notch.