How to Engage Your Readers using Deep Point of View

I'm over at The Kill Zone blog today, where I was a regular contributor (every second Monday) for three years. Here's the beginning of my post there today, with a link at the end to the rest of the tips.

Tips for Deepening the POV in Your Fiction

by Jodie Renner, editor & author

Most of today’s popular fiction is written in first-person POV (I) or third-person limited point of view (he, she), both of which show us the story mainly from inside the character’s head and body. These narrative techniques engage readers much more emotionally than the more distant third-person omniscient, which was popular in previous centuries.

Current popular fiction, although a long way from the old omniscient style, still employs a variety of narrative distances, depending on the genre, the target readership, and the writer’s own comfort level. There is a whole spectrum when it comes to narrative distance, from plot-driven military or action-adventure novels and historical sagas at one end to character-driven romantic suspense and romance at the other.

Today’s post focuses on close or intimate narrative distance – how to engage readers emotionally, bond them with your character, and draw them deep into your story, so they can’t put it down. And how to avoid interrupting as the author, which some readers might even find akin to “mansplaining.” See a great post here on TKZ by bestselling thriller writer, Robert Dugoni, “Hey, Butt Out! I’m Reading Here!”

Most female readers (and apparently females make up about 70% of readers of novels) prefer to identify closely with the main character. The reading experience is more satisfying when we connect emotionally with the protagonist, worrying about them and rooting for them.

What is third-person limited POV? As Dan Brown says, “limited or ‘close’ third point of view (a narrative that adheres to a single character) … gives you the ability to be inside a character’s thoughts, feelings, and sensations, which can give readers a deeper experience of character and scene, and is the most common way to use point of view.”

(For an introduction to point of view in fiction, especially deep point of view or close third-person POV, see my articles here on TKZ: POV 101, POV 102, and POV 103)

From third-person limited, you can decide to go even deeper, into close third person or deep point of view to create an immersive experience where readers are more emotionally invested, feeling like participants rather than observers.

As David Mamet says, “Deep point of view is a way of writing fiction in third-person limited that silences the narrative voice and takes the reader directly into a character’s mind…. Deep POV creates a deeper connection between readers and characters.”

In deep POV, the author writes as the character instead of about him. The character and his world come to life for us as we vicariously share his experiences and feel his struggles, pain, triumphs, and disappointments.

As editor and author Beth Hill says, “deep POV…is a way of pairing third-person POV with a close narrative distance. It’s a way of creating the intimacy of first-person narration with a third-person point of view.” (And without all those I – I – I’s.)

Depending on your personal style, you could decide to write in a deeper, more subjective third-person point of view for a whole novel or story or reserve this closer technique for more critical or intimate scenes.

Assuming you write in third person and want to engage your readers more and immerse them in your story world, here are some tips for getting deeper into the psyche of your character, starting with more general tips and working down to fine-tuning.

~ First, decide whose scene it is. ...

For the rest of this post, go to 

Tips for Deepening the POV in Your Fiction

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, and WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized and edited two anthologies. Website: https://www.jodierenner.com/, Facebook, Amazon Author Page.

Concrete Tips & Examples for "Showing" Rather than "Telling"

by Jodie Renner, editor & author   

"SHOW, DON’T TELL" -- This phrase has been repeated to the point where you might feel it's hackneyed and you can dismiss it--NOT! No matter how many times you've heard it, this concept is still critical to creating fresh fiction that captivates readers and garners great reviews. It's also one of the most difficult concepts for new fiction writers to grasp, along with deep point of view. (The two concepts are inextricably entwined.) Understanding and mastering these two interrelated concepts will make a huge difference in the quality of your stories by engaging readers emotionally and keeping them turning the pages.

Showing instead of telling your story brings your characters and scenes to life. Using this technique will suck your reader into your story world and right inside your protagonist, experiencing her fear along with her, feeling the sweat on her brow and her adrenaline racing, pulse quickening right along with hers, muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

~ Don’t tell us what happened – show us what happened.

To clarify what is meant by “show, don’t tell,” think of it this way: Which would you rather do -- go see an exciting movie in a theatre with a big screen and surround sound (“show”), or hear about the movie from someone else afterward (“tell”)? That’s the difference we’re talking about here.

A common mistake among aspiring fiction writers is to describe or narrate (or worse, summarize) important events as if they took place at some point in the past, instead of putting the reader right in the middle of the action and showing critical events as they occur, in real time, along with the characters’ actions, reactions, inner thoughts and feelings, and actual words (direct dialogue in quotations).

Bestselling author Janet Evanovich considers “show, don’t tell” to be one of the most important principles of fiction: “Instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you’re trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life.”

~ Cut back on narration, description, and exposition.

Effective, engaging storytelling is definitely not about relating the events after the fact or interpreting for the readers. Keep the story moving and the characters interacting. The author stepping in to describe or explain things to the readers jolts us away from the characters and their plight and can be distracting, boring, and irritating for readers.

~ Don’t get in the way or interpret for us.

We like to experience things for ourselves, not hear about them from someone else. Think about being subjected to photo after photo, or even videos, about your neighbors’ vacation. Yawn. In the same way, readers of popular fiction don’t want to be kept at arm’s length, to be told what’s happening by an intermediary narrator. They want to experience the events firsthand, to see, hear and feel what’s happening. They want to sense the character’s fears, hopes, joys, and worries and draw their own conclusions.

As the late, great Jack Bickham said, “Not only does moment-by-moment development make the scene seem most lifelike, it’s in a scene [with dialogue and action and reaction] where your reader gets most of his excitement. If you summarize, your reader will feel cheated – short-changed of what he reads for – without quite knowing why.”

It’s through characters interacting that a scene comes alive, so be sure to put us right there with the characters, in the middle of the tension and conflict, using “live” action, dialogue, sensory details, thoughts, and emotions.

~ Use deep point of view.

Avoid omniscient point of view, which is distracting and distancing. Use close third-person (or first-person) POV  to put us right into your protagonist’s or other main character’s head and skin. Show us her thoughts, reactions, and plans, his inner fears, hopes, resentments, anger, confusion, tenderness, relief, and joy. Don’t keep the reader at arm’s length by describing your hero or heroine from the outside, using omniscient or distant third-person point of view.

~ Evoke all five senses.

Showing means presenting the story to the reader using sensory information. The reader wants to feel what the character is feeling, experience their fear, joy, anger, determination, and pain, know their inner hopes and thoughts, and also see what’s happening, hear the different voices of the characters and other sounds, smell the smells, feel the tactile sensations, and taste the food and drink along with them. Telling, on the other hand, is summarizing the story for the reader in a way that skips past the life-giving sensory information and just relates the basic actions and events that occurred.

~ Use powerful, evocative phrasing.

Instead of “the miner was tired” (telling), say “the miner trudged home, head bowed,” or “the miner plodded along, his boots like lead weights” or “the miner clomped over the gravel with heavy steps.” Or slogged or tramped or lumbered or dragged or shuffled (all showing).

Do a search for the word “was” – it’s often an indicator of telling instead of showing, as in “she was sad” or “he was angry.” Show their feelings instead by their thoughts, actions, words, tone, and body language.

~ Add in lots of tension and conflict.

Also, the bulk of the scene needs to be about a conflict of some kind between characters. No conflict = no scene. Tension and conflict are what drive fiction forward. As Jack M. Bickham said, the conflict part of the scene “draws readers out through a moment-by-moment drama, extending the scene suspense with pleasurable agony.” If you have a scene where everyone is getting along great, revise it to add more tension.

EXAMPLES OF SHOWING, RATHER THAN TELLING:

Telling: Jake’s words spooked me.

Showing: The hair on my arms rose when I thought about Jake’s words.

Telling: George was disgusted and angry.

Showing: George pounded his fist on the table and swore at her, his lips curling. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Telling: Janie was bored at her Grandma’s.

Showing: Janie wandered from room to room, trying to find something to do. She wished it wasn’t raining outside. She looked through Grandma’s old books but nothing interested her.

~ Also, no need to “tell” after you’ve “shown.”        

Don’t explain after the fact. The words and actions should convey what you're trying to show.

Before:

“You’re late!” the general said. He didn’t like to be kept waiting.

After:

“You’re late!” The general glared at him, hands on hips.

Other no-no examples of telling after showing:

In each case below, take out the unnecessary sentence at the end:

She moped around the house and wouldn’t answer the phone. Even TV didn’t interest her. She was depressed.

“You crack me up,” she said, laughing hysterically. Joel could be so funny.

RECAP – TIPS FOR SHOWING INSTEAD OF TELLING:

~ Show the characters’ actions as they’re occurring, in real time.

~ Use deep point of view to get right into the skin, head, and heart of your character.

~ Show us your viewpoint character’s reactions, feelings, emotions, and thoughts.

~ Add in sensory information. What are they seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, feeling?

~ Include lots of spirited, to-the-point dialogue. 

~ Look for “was” or “were” and rephrase the sentence, replacing the adjective with a compelling verb or verbal phrase.

~ Cut way back on narrative description, exposition, and lengthy explanations of the character’s past or motivations.

~ Keep flashbacks short, and show them in real time, with action and dialogue.

~ Throw in plenty of conflict and tension. 

~ Avoid telling after you’ve shown.

Of course, you can’t show everything, or your book would be way too long, and it would tire your readers out – or worse, end up boring them. You don’t want to show every move your characters make at down times, or when going from one place to the other. That’s where you summarize or “tell,” to get them to the next important scene quickly, without a lot of boring detail. 

The main thing to keep in mind is to never tell the reader, after the fact (or have a character telling another character), about a critical scene. Instead, dramatize it in the here and now, with dialogue, action, and lots of sensory details to bring it to life for the reader.

And check out these articles on Point of View on this blog:

POV 101 -- Get Into Your Protagonist's Head, 

POV 102 -- How to Avoid Head-Hopping, and 

POV 103 -- Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View. 

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICKCLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

POV 102 -- How to Avoid Head-Hopping

by Jodie Renner, editor & author    

In "POV 101 – Get into your protagonist’s head and stay there," I discussed the effectiveness of starting out your story in your protagonist’s point of view and staying there for most of the novel.

But what if you want to show how other people are feeling? If they’re important characters, like the villain, a romantic interest, or a close friend or family member, you can and should give them their own POV scenes, where you get into their heads and we see their thoughts, emotions, goals, aspirations and fears. This way we, the readers, find out things the main character doesn't know. Great for adding suspense and intrigue!

If another character is in the same scene as your main character, you show their thoughts, feelings and attitude only through what your protagonist can perceive—their attitude, words, tone of voice, facial expressions, body language and actions. 

Say you’re writing a romantic suspense or mystery, and you’re in the heroine’s point of view, showing her thoughts, perceptions and reactions. The hero, whom she’s just met under unfortunate circumstances, is angry. You’ll show his thoughts and reactions, not from inside him at that point (What the hell is going on here? he thought. What’s she trying to pull off, anyway?), but by what the heroine is seeing and hearing—his tense posture, hunched shoulders, clenched fists, furrowed brows, set mouth, clipped tone of voice, angry words, etc.

The general rule of thumb is “one scene, one viewpoint.” 

Or even better, wait for a new chapter to change the point of view to someone else’s. If you change the viewpoint within a scene, it’s best to do it only once, and leave a blank space before you start the next person’s point of view. Don't go back and forth within a paragraph or go into another character's thoughts for only a sentence or two. At the minimum, give the other person a paragraph or two. Ping-ponging back and forth can be jarring and confusing to the reader. This is what’s referred to as “head-hopping.” Some writers go so far as to leave three asterisks (* * *) and spaces above and below to indicate a switch in viewpoint within a scene, but I think that’s too jarring and disruptive to the flow of action, since we’re still in the same scene. Three asterisks, centered, are best reserved to indicate a shift in place and time -- in other words, a new scene.

So why is it so important to avoid switching viewpoints (head-hopping) within scenes?

First of all, in order to become emotionally engaged in a story, readers want to identify with and bond with one main character -- your protagonist or hero/heroine. 

They want to follow that character vicariously, know their thoughts and hopes and fears, almost be that character for most of the novel. So it's natural to be privy to that character's thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. But if the author suddenly jolts them out of that character and into the thoughts of another character, it feels unnatural and reminds us that we're reading a book. It's like the author is too heavy-handed, too intrusive. It can be subliminally confusing and annoying. Do that often enough and readers might put the book down and find another or write a less-than-satisfactory review. 

Scene changes or new chapters are the best and least disruptive places to go into another character's viewpoint. And most scenes should be in the POV of your protagonist.

Here’s an example of a viewpoint gaffe, which I made up:

Our heroine, Carole, is stirring the spaghetti sauce on the stove and talking to her husband on the phone. They’re discussing the fact that their son, Colton, is grounded. Suddenly, the author jumps into her son’s head and tells us about Colton sneaking by behind her back (his rap music is playing loudly in his room), and out the front door, then jumping on his bike and racing off. Back to Carole, who continues to stir the spaghetti and talk on the phone.

What’s wrong here? We were in Carole’s POV, and she had her back turned so she wouldn’t know Colton was sneaking past, especially with all that noise coming from his room. And how would she know he’s riding away on his bike? Another jarring POV shift in the same scene would be if we suddenly started seeing her husband waving his secretary away because he’s in an important conversation. We’re in Carole’s POV in this scene, and she can’t see what her husband is doing at his office.

Here’s another example of ping-ponging point of view, where we the readers jump back and forth over miles, within seconds.

We start out in Steve’s point of view, who’s in trouble and has just picked up the phone and called his wife, Grace:

“Grace, thank god you’re home. This is all too much for me. My life is crumbling around me and I can’t seem to do anything about it,” Steve said, closing his eyes and rubbing his face.

The sadness and despair in his voice brought tears to Grace’s eyes.

“I have to think.” There was long pause before Steve continued. “Luckily, George is right here. I’ll ask if he knows a good attorney who can help with this.”   

“That sounds good.” She felt some relief.   

“I’ll call you later,” Steve said, then hung up and slumped back in his chair.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said softly. The call ended before she could say I love you.

What’s wrong with how this scene is written? It's disjointed and confusing. Also unnatural. In reality, we would be one of those people and would have to infer how the other one is feeling or what they're doing by what they say, their inflection, background noises, etc.

Choose either Steve or Grace and play the scene from his or her POV. Show us only what he or she can see, hear, and perceive.

A quick way to check whose POV you’re in is to get out the highlighters or colored pens and choose a different color for each of your main characters. Pick your protagonist’s color, then start highlighting or underlining sentences that describe scenes, people, perceptions, and emotions strictly from his or her POV. Do the same for other characters, with their color. When you’re done, you should have paragraphs, and preferably scenes, of only one color. If you have another color creeping into that scene, see if you can rewrite those sentences from the dominating character’s POV. If you have a number of colors within one scene, you’ve got some revisions to do. And as Stephen King says, “Writing is rewriting.”

By the way, my third book, Captivate Your Readers, gets into a lot of detail on engaging your readers and bringing your story and characters to life by using deep point of view, showing instead of telling, and stepping back as the author to let the characters tell the story in their own voice.

Also, see "POV 103 – Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View."

 

And click here for some quick tips on avoiding viewpoint gaffes. 

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

POV 101: Get into Your Protagonist’s Head and Stay There (for most of your story)

by Jodie Renner, editor & author    

I’ve been editing fiction for years, and the most difficult concept for many of my aspiring author clients who write in third-person point of view (the most common POV in novels) is to portray their story world through the viewpoint / eyes / head of one character at a time, rather than hovering above them (omniscient POV) or ping-ponging back and forth between different characters’ viewpoints within a paragraph or scene (“head-hopping”). 

Except for omniscient POV (the author talking directly to the readers), point of view or POV simply refers to the character through whose perspective the story events are told. Most of today’s novels are written in third-person POV, with the main character referred to as “he” or “she,” even though we’re seeing their world through their eyes. First-person POV, where the main character is telling their own story, using “I” and “me” is used occasionally and is very common in YA (young adult) fiction, often paired with present tense.

This post is about using close third person or deep point of view to bring your main character to life for the readers. Ideally, we should only see, hear, smell, feel, and experience events as that character would – with no additional information provided “from above” by the author. This closeness helps your readers get to know your viewpoint character intimately, which makes them start worrying about him or her – and that keeps them turning the pages!

A hundred years ago, novels were often told from a distant authorial point of view, hovering over everything. That omniscient POV is no longer popular today (except for historical sagas), and for good reason: Readers want to experience the events of the story vicariously through the viewpoint character, to immerse themselves in her world, and they can only do that if they’re “inside her skin,” so to speak. They know/feel her inner thoughts, insecurities, hopes, and fears, so they bond with her quickly and are eager to find out what’s going to happen to her next and how she’s going to handle it.

As the late, great Jack M. Bickham said, “You’ll never have problems with the technique of viewpoint again if you simply follow this advice:

“Figure out whose story it is. Get inside that character—and stay there.”

It’s especially important to open your book in your protagonist’s point of view, and stay there for at least the first chapter. This gives the reader a chance to figure out quickly whose story this is, and get to know him fast and start identifying with him and rooting for him.

Years ago I edited a novel in which a 15-year-old girl is riding in a car with her mother, who’s driving, and her 11-year-old brother in the backseat. (I’ve changed the details a bit.) The book starts out in the point of view of the mom, who is worried about uprooting her two kids and moving across the country, away from their friends. So we start empathizing with the mother, thinking it’s her story.

Then suddenly we’re in the head of the teenage girl beside her, who is deeply resentful at her mom for tearing her away from her friends and is agonizing over what lies ahead. Then, all within the first page, we switch to the head of the 11-year-old boy, who’s excited about the new adventure and wishes his sister would lighten up and quit hassling the mom. We’re also in his visual POV – he looks at his sister’s ponytail and considers yanking it. Now we’re confused. Whose story is this, anyway? Who are we supposed to be most identifying with and bonding with? Readers want to know this right away, so they can sit back and relax and enjoy the ride.

It’s essential to start out the story in your protagonist’s POV, but it’s also smart to tell most of your story from your main character’s viewpoint – at least 70 percent of it. That gets the reader deeper and deeper into that person’s psyche, so they get more and more invested in what’s happening to her.

As Bickham explains, 

“I’m sure you realize why fiction is told from a viewpoint, a character inside the story. It’s because each of us lives our real life from a single viewpoint – our own – and none other, ever.”

Successful fiction writers want their story to be as convincing and lifelike as possible, so they write it like we experience real life: from one viewpoint (at a time) inside the action. 

So if you want your lead character to come alive and matter to the reader, and your story to be compelling, it’s best to show most of the action from inside the head and heart of your protagonist. 

Of course, thrillers often jump to the POV of the villain, to add suspense, worry, intrigue, and dimension. But give the bad guy his own scene, and make sure he’s not onstage more than the protagonist is! 

And many romances have two main protagonists, the hero and heroine, but one usually predominates – most often the heroine, so the largely female readership can identify with her. But it's usually best not to be inside the head of both characters within the same scene. This can be confusing, even unsettling, to the readers and is difficult to pull off effectively. Nora Roberts is one of the few authors who seems to be able to manage this seamlessly.

Also, if there’s a scene with your protagonist and a minor character, don’t show the scene from the POV of the minor character, unless there’s a very good reason for it – it’s just too unnatural and jarring.

In POV 102, I discuss “head-hopping,” which many new fiction writers do without realizing it and which is jarring and distracting to today's readers. 

In POV 103, I get into more detail on deep point of view, or close third-person POV.

 

Also, here are some Quick Tips on Avoiding Viewpoint Gaffes.

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

LET YOUR CHARACTERS TELL THE STORY

by Jodie Renner, editor & author  

With all the high-quality, exciting fiction being published these days, it’s absolutely critical to captivate readers right away and keep them eagerly turning the pages of your story.

 The most effective way to really engage readers emotionally and bond them to your character is by using deep point of view to get up close and personal with your character, and at the same time, creating an authentic, compelling voice for your story, a fresh, original tone and style.

How do you do that?  First, create a strong, charismatic main character, then let that character share his or her story directly with us, with no intermediary -- or as little other narration as possible. 

The best way to create a compelling "voice" for your story is through the words, thoughts, attitudes, and reactions of your main character.   

Try to become your character(s) for the story. Make a conscious effort not to intrude as the author (or a neutral narrator) to tell readers anything or explain or describe things.  

Let the POV character for the scene show the setting, reveal other characters, and build the story world in his or her own unique voice, with attitude, using words and phrasing that are natural to their own personality and mood and their personal reaction to the situation at that moment.

Rather than writing neutral narration, take a tip from first-person POV and keep not only the dialogue, but all of the narration (observations and explanations) for each scene firmly in the viewpoint of the main character for that scene, colored by his or her background, personality, attitudes, and current feelings (emotional and physical).

Here are some concrete tips for engaging readers and creating a strong voice in third-person point of view (“he” or “she” instead of “I”):  

~ Start with a compelling character that readers will identify with and root for.

Your main character needs to be charismatic and sympathetic enough to carry the whole novel, so it’s critical to take the time to first create a protagonist who’s intriguing and multi-dimensional, with lots of personality and openness; fairly strong views; and some baggage, secrets, vulnerability, and inner conflict. Then be sure to show his world and the events unfolding around him through his eyes, ears, and feelings, not the author’s, or that of an omniscient narrator.

~ Make sure the dialogue and thoughts are unique to that character.

Read your dialogue out loud to make sure it sounds like that character would actually talk, given their personality, upbringing, education, and social standing, as well as the current situation, how they feel about it, and who they’re conversing with. (We usually speak differently in a formal situation or to a professional than to a close friend or family member.)

~ Write the narration from the character’s point of view, too.

Take it one step further and stay in your character’s POV for the observations, descriptions, and explanations, too, not just the dialogue and any inner thoughts and reactions. It’s your character who’s moving through that world, reacting to what’s around him. Don’t describe the surroundings and what’s going on from a distant, neutral, authorial point of view – show the character’s world directly through her observations, colored by her personality, mood, and comfort level.

~ Don’t intrude as the author to explain things to the readers.

Even technical and other explanations should be presented (briefly) through the characters, perhaps in a sparky dialogue with disagreement and attitude.

Be on the lookout for where you step in as the author to blandly and dispassionately explain things to the readers, as if it’s nonfiction. Besides being a less engaging read, that approach yanks us out of the character’s mindset and world – and out of the fictive dream.    

Remember – show, don’t tell!

TIPS FOR KEEPING NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION IN THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER'S VOICE:

Here are a few little techniques for livening up information-sharing and imparting it with attitude, from the viewpoint of the POV character involved.

~ Use stream-of-consciousness journaling.

To bring out the character’s personality in the parts where he’s thinking or planning or worrying or ruminating, not just when he is interacting with others, do some stream-of-consciousness journaling by him. Have him ranting in a personal diary about the people around him, what’s going on, etc. Also show his deepest fears here. Then use this wording to show his personality more in the scenes.

~ Write the scene in first-person first, then switch it back.

Write a whole scene, or even a chapter or two, in first-person narration/POV (“I”) to get the rhythm and flow of that person’s language patterns and attitudes, then switch it to third-person.

~ Write with attitude!

To bring the setting, scene, and characters to life, deliver those details through the viewpoint of the main character for that scene, in their voice and wording, with strong views and a controversial mindset that projects their current mood, physical and emotional reactions, and general attitude.

~ Impart info through lively dialogue.

Rather than intruding as the author to explain something to the readers, have characters arguing about it, or use a spirited question-and-answer dialogue exchange to inform the readers naturally, through character interaction.

~ Role-play.    

Read your dialogue and narration out loud to make sure it sounds natural and authentic to your characters’ backgrounds and personalities.

To summarize, for an engaging “voice” in third-person, be sure to use deep point of view and stay in the POV character’s head in the narration, too. In a nutshell, bring your fiction to life by stepping back as the author and letting the characters tell the story.   

Readers - feel free to share in the comment section below a passage from a story you've read -- or written -- depicting a scene shown through the eyes, ears, attitude, and current mood of the character.

For more detail on getting readers up close and personal with your protagonist, see my articles on point of view, here on this blog: POV 101, POV 102, POV 103, and Quick Tips for Avoiding Viewpoint Gaffes.

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For more techniques and examples for bringing your fiction to life and engaging your readers, see Jodie’s book, Captivate Your Readers – An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook.