Deep POV Tips Part 4: Of Sneaks and Shallow POV

The Worst Advice On Prologues What is Needed Pt. 4

Deep POV Tips Part 4: Of Sneaks and Shallow POV

Editing for Deep POV

Last month I attended a webinar the subject of which was deep third person POV and I then started this series. Part 1 (including links to other deep POV resources), Part 2 & Part 3 of this series are available if you want to catch-up on the topic. As promised, here are more tips gleaned from the presentation that you may find helpful as I know they will be for me.

Sam: What are you up to? Sneaking off, are we?

Gollum: Sneaking? Sneaking? Fat Hobbit is always so polite. Smeagol shows them secret ways that nobody else could find, and they say “sneak!” Sneak? Very nice friend. Oh, yes, my precious. Very nice, very nice.

Sam: All right, all right! You just startled me is all. What were you doing?

Gollum: Sneaking.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

There’s often a sneak creeping through writing that hurts deep POV. It’s pervasive and slowly sucks the life, excitement and tension from a book like Gollum with a filched egg.

Gollum: [singing] The rock and pool, is nice and cool, so juicy sweet. Our only wish,

[he whacks the fish on the rock]

Gollum: to catch a fish,

[another whack]

Gollum: so juicy sweet.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Before you know it, the sneak is stealing all the fish in your writing and singing about it while you go blithely along with the story.

Be careful of the sneak! Don’t let him follow you from that log in the river! Beware lest you find your work rife with all kinds of sneaky, thieving, well you know…

So what’s so sneaky in deep POV and how can it be fixed? Prepositions. But not just any old prepositions, just the sneaky ones. Preposition are necessary except for those that express emotion.

Here are some shallow/deep examples our presenter, Delia Latham, used in her presentation, “Demystifying Deep POV”:

Sneaky Prepostion Examples

See the sneaks and how they work little bits of mischief in the narrative? Yet in the deeper examples there’s more lively, creative expression.

Have you got sneaks in your writing? Share how you root them out in by leaving a comment.

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PHS