4 Ways to Sharpen Your Scene’s POV

POV, or point of view, can be difficult for writers. Here’s four ways to sharpen POV in a scene.

1. Choose the POV that works best. While this seems to go without saying, it’s important to choose the right POV for a scene. This is done when we’re intentional about whose POV to use. Take some time to decide whose point of view would work best for the scene and who has the most to lose. If you’re still not sure, write the scene from different points of view and see which on works the best.

2. Establish whose POV the scene is written in early. Even multi-published authors tend to make the mistake of being clever in the beginning of a scene instead of establishing POV. If you can do both great, but always make sure your reader knows whose POV it is by the end of the first paragraph. If you leave the readers confused about who’s frame of reference they are in until half way through the scene, they might stop reading.

3. Deepen the POV by eliminating filters such as she felt, he saw, or she heard. While you can’t eliminate all filters, deleting as many as you can will sharpen your writing and cause your POV to deepen.

4. Resist the urge to head hop. Go over the scene and make sure that everything written can be seen, felt, or known by the POV character. If you have to convey information not known by the POV character in the scene, you have the wrong POV character.