In my work as an editor, there is one comment that I
write on manuscripts more than any other. That comment
is, “deepen point of view.” Many authors do not under-
stand what deep point of view is and are even more
stymied when it comes to actually using deep point of view
to construct their stories.

Deep point of view is kind of an umbrella term for a
collection of techniques that fiction authors use to make
their characters and their stories real for their readers.

 When most authors hear the term point of view they think
about whose viewpoint a story is told from, is it told from
first person, third person, or omniscient?

Which viewpoint to use is a crucial question with numerous
implications and is a decision that should be made before
applying the specific techniques that deepen point of view once
a point of view is established.

Understanding deep point of view and mastering the
techniques associated with using it is important for
fiction authors because when a reader picks up the latest
romance, suspense, or erotic romance novel they want to
be swept away. They want to, for a time, exist in an
alternate reality. They want to imagine they are a character in
another time, in another place, with different concerns
than they have in their real lives. As authors vicarious
experience is what we sell. The vicarious experience is
what the reader seeks when they pick up a book and
thumb through its pages.

 Many authors write using shallow point of view. The
experience for the reader when reading those books is
similar to the experience of listening to a friend telling about
a roller coaster ride she went on. If the friend is a good
storyteller, she will tell about the long ride to the top of
the hill and the adrenaline-ridden rush to the bottom. As a
listener or a reader we would draw on our own
experiences to know what it feels like as we crawl to the top of
the track and then plunge down.

The goal of deep point of view is to create a reality for
the reader that is much more real and much more
immediate than we get when we listen to someone talk about
an experience they have had. As authors we don‘t want
our readers to be a bystander in our story, we want them
to experience the story. Deep point of view transports the
reader into the viewpoint character merging the reader
and viewpoint character so that when the character hears
the clank of the safety bar slapping closed on the roller
coaster car the reader hears it too.

Because the goal of writing in deep point of view is to
give the reader a vicarious experience the author must
in essence create a very real, very multi-sensory
adventure for the character. The reader will experience only
what the character experiences so it is important to
make sure that the character‘s experience is a strong
one. Authors do this by imagining the scene in which
they envision their character and then pulling out the
strongest details and describing them as the character
would experience them.

In deep point of view everything, every thought, every
nuance, every detail is processed through the viewpoint
character. If the viewpoint character is a crotchety 90
year old man shaking his gun at the 20 something
granddaughter coming to cart him back to the nursing
home then the things he sees, the things he hears, the
things he feels need to be described according to his
perceptions…not the author‘s, not the bystanders, and
not the granddaughter‘s.

By knowing their characters on a very deep level and
by processing everything that happens in a story
through the viewpoint character an author can greatly
deepen the point of view. Not only will the resulting
story be much more attractive to an editor but it will
give the author‘s readers the vicarious experiences they
crave, ensuring many more book sales to follow.