Following on from last week’s post on POV and Head-hopping
(which you can find here) I’m going to make an attempt to explain something I
don’t have a firm grasp on. Hopefully this doesn’t become a complete mess!
In times past, if we wanted the reader to be close to the
character, the standard advice was ‘use 1st person POV’. Deep third
is like first, in that sense, but it’s... well... third. So it’s a way of
bringing the reader closer to the viewpoint character, and removing that sense
of the author being in the scene, and still avoiding (if you’re like me) ‘dreaded
first’. And I am sure keen to avoid first, because one of the most definitive
pieces of advice to come out of my writer’s group on Saturday was ‘Don’t use
first. Just don’t.’ Yeah, OK, so I suck a little at first.
So that’s the explanation of deep third, but it doesn’t
really tell you how to write deep third, or how it’s different from third
limited. It’s difficult to explain the differences, so I’ve aimed instead to
illustrate how to achieve deep third using some examples of what to do – and what
not to do - when trying to create deep third.
Use he and she sparingly - Personal pronouns should
appear in action, but not in description or opinion. So we say ‘He opened the
door’ (action) but we don’t say ‘He smelled the bread baking’ (description).
Instead we might say ‘The air smelled of baking bread’. Notice the protagonist doesn’t
appear in this sentence? And if you remember, this was something I said about
first as well – we don’t need to use the pronoun because we know it’s
the viewpoint character smelling it.
Similarly with opinion – ‘Did he really think because she smiled
at him she was interested?’ This is an opinion in deep third – it is the
character making a judgement about what another character thinks. We could have
said ‘She wondered if he really thought she was interested because she smiled
at him’ but then we are distancing the reader again. Using ‘he’ and ‘she’ in
description and judgements is a sign you are filtering through the author,
which is something you don’t want in deep third. You want the reader to come closer...
closer... closer... OK, we’re touching noses, that’s good! All right, maybe back off a
teensy bit.
Get deep in the
emotion - Last week I noted that when using third limited the reader can
only know what the viewpoint character knows, and only see what the viewpoint
character sees. This is true in deep third as well, but we go a little deeper.
When something is described to us, the character has just noticed it – and an
emotional reaction of some kind should follow. An assassin might see a second
door, and recognise an escape route. A carpenter might see the same door, and
admire the fancy carving. This helps to bring us closer to the character than
we might otherwise be in third limited. It’s also an aid to characterisation.
Voice - Of course, when you write deep third, you
should always write in the character’s voice. So my protagonist, Astarl, once
observes that somewhere is as dark as the inside of a horse’s arse. Because,
you know, she’s an assassin, she spends a lot of time with men, and she tends
to be blunt. A duchess probably wouldn’t make the same observation...
Word choice - There are some words we can use to
better remove the author from the reading experience. These are words that
better reflect how we process our observations and thoughts to ourselves. We
tend to think of ourselves as the centre, and you need to write the character
this way as well to capture deep third. Some of these words include:
- ‘This’ instead of ‘It’ – as in ‘This was what he wanted’ or more simply ‘This was it’, instead of ‘It was what he wanted’. ‘It’ isn’t something we think to ourselves and it distances the reader;
- Relative time – Use last night and tomorrow instead of ‘the night before' or ‘the next day’. Do you think ‘the night before' to yourself? Didn’t think so...
- Relative position – describe movement relative to the viewpoint character, for example, ‘The monster came closer’ or the ‘The monster shied away’. If we say ‘the monster moved across the room’ or ‘the monster stepped closer to him’ then in both cases we are removing the central focus on the viewpoint character and distancing the reader.In particular, in deep third there is no need to say 'to him' for the same reason we don't need to say 'he thought' or 'we smelled'. this is assumed, and spelling it out reminds the reader of the author's presence.
Note, also, the difference between using ‘the’ and ‘a’. If
the viewpoint character sees ‘a door’ it’s just a door the character has
recognised as present. ‘The door’ signifies it as the exact door the character is
looking for. So ‘the’ is important for denoting significance to the viewpoint
character in deep third because we are relying on the character for all the
descriptions and observations.
Correct use of syntax
- For example always make your viewpoint character the subject and not the
object of a sentence i.e. the actor, and not the thing being acted upon. The exception
is judgements, in which there need be no subject. The subject (the viewpoint
character) is assumed because we know we are in their viewpoint and therefore
it is their judgement. This relates back to my examples of ‘Did he really think
because she smiled at him she was interested?’ versus ‘She wondered if he
really thought she was interested because she smiled at him’. There is no
subject (no actor) in the first, but only in the second, denoted by ‘she
wondered’. Similarly, don’t place the subject in the subordinate clause –
because that’s not where the emphasis is!
So that was more an explanation by way of demonstration, but
I usually find that to be more effective. There are other techniques you can
use, but I haven’t made an exhaustive list here, and I tend to think some of
them overlap anyway.
I hope it’s helped you to understand the difference, even if
it may not have helped you to achieve it. I know I still struggle to create
deep third, even though I know how it should work.
So are we all traumatised now? A few people were already
scarred after last week’s clash with POV.
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