Deeper POV

[ThinkerX]

Is this not clear? I would never have thought the expression would have been interpreted in another manner.

For what its worth, I also took 'his eyes brightened' as pure 3rd person.

Now, if you'd gone with something along the lines of 'it seemed so clear all of a sudden', it would have been different.

Best way to get into deeper POV is to go 1st person:

'Brocoli feels so slimy. I want to vomit just thinking about it.'

 

[Impatience]

I'm interpreting your comment here as: this is a break from correct POV because he doesn't see his own eyes brightening.

When I read, or, actually, write, "his eyes brighten," I'm not picturing an external viewpoint of someone actually somehow seeing the light level behind his eyes increase. It's an expression that indicates that the world through his eyes seems brighter.

Someone may have already stated this, I haven't made it through ALL the pages of responses yet, but perhaps you mean his vision brightened, not necessarily his eyes. Eyes are going to be taken as a physical attribute, so when they brighten people will think you mean his actual eyes got brighter, instead of his vision which is something he experiences, not a physical part of himself.

Hope that made sense

 

[Ireth]

Someone may have already stated this, I haven't made it through ALL the pages of responses yet, but perhaps you mean his vision brightened, not necessarily his eyes. Eyes are going to be taken as a physical attribute, so when they brighten people will think you mean his actual eyes got brighter, instead of his vision which is something he experiences, not a physical part of himself.

Hope that made sense

I dunno, I think it can go either way. When (spoilers for LOTR!) Theoden lies dying on the Pelennor fields, he says to Eowyn, "My eyes darken." This is usually taken to mean that his vision is darkening as he dies, not that his actual eyes are getting darker.

 

[Jeff Xilon]

Dan and Jeff,

While I appreciate the help, I'm more looking for an understanding of how to get deeper inside the POV than how to better describe this specific scenario.

For your suggestions, why do you think what you wrote is tighter from a POV perspective than what I wrote? That's the question I really need answered.

Thanks!

Brian

Ok, whoops. Sorry about that. Let me see if I can't add something more constructive. I'm going to lay out my thoughts step by step here to try and avoid another misunderstanding. Having read through the large conversation that grew after I think I understand that:

1) I too interpreted your original sentence as an external description of what Xan looked like.
2) In my attempt to write an example of something deeper I took your ideas that his eyes were less dull/clouded/fatigued looking and his enjoyment of puzzles and wrote my version from "inside Xan's skull".

These ideas seem to have been well covered though. It also seems to me that:

3) I don't think there's anything wrong with your original POV, unless it was suddenly more distant that the rest of your writing, but
4) YOU want to write tighter POV, and don't feel like you're really getting there.

Ok, so you want to write tighter and are having trouble with it. I'd like to suggest an experiment that might be totally crazy and not help in anyway, but then again maybe it will. So:

What about taking a scene where you feel you haven't written tight enough POV (or just any scene you want to think about more) and write a new version of it in the tightest of POVs - first person. Now, I'm not saying change your story to first person, this is just a writing exercise/thought experiment. My theory here is that by writing the scene from the POV characters 1st person POV you pretty much will have to be writing tight and limited. Once you've done that you can compare your original scene to the new version. What did you leave in? What did you add? What did you have to take out? Taking your first person scene and using it as a guide for rewriting your third person scene might help you get that tightness you've wanted.

Anyway, that's just my whacky idea.

 

[advait98]

So do you generally write in first person, Brian?

Anyway, I agree with all that has been said before. Writing in a close third person is a lot like writing in first person (correct me if I'm wrong), and perhaps writing with that mindset could help things, like Penpilot said.

You're in that person's mind. You see everything with his eyes, hear everything with his ears, bla bla bla. Doubtless you already have this in mind, but it doesn't hurt to restate.

In ASOIAF, I noticed a lot of times that GRRM made the character's thoughts part of the narration. Everything was filtered through that POV incredibly. Every observation had a part of the character attached to it.

In your thing, maybe you could try something like that- 'She wanted to throttle him for not answering her. It's like I'm not there.' or something like that.

In the end, it always comes down to the most inordinately said and repeated advice. Read and incorporate. Oh well...

 

[BWFoster78]

I've had a pretty major breakthrough, thanks mainly to Ankari, Steerpike, and Devor.

I'm not sure they told me anything I didn't already know, but something just clicked yesterday while writing. Steerpike had told me that I was creating an artificial distance between the reader and the character. I think that the actual problem was that there was too much distance between myself and the character.

Yesterday, I was able to really enter the character's head and produce the kind of material that I wanted. Not to say that it was perfect - it'll need polishing - but the impact of getting closer to the character is definitely there. If I can just continue in this vein for the entire rewrite, I think it's going to be pretty good.

Thank you all Mythic Scribes for your incredible help! If I ever am a successful writer, I'll owe a great debt to this board.

To all those out there who are struggling and discouraged, remember that you never know when your next huge advance in ability will come. It may be just around the corner, and, believe me, it feels pretty awesome when it happens.