How POV Affects Character Inner Life

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin.

Much of the available advice for conveying inner life in story involves allowing readers more deeply and intimately into what’s going on inside your characters: Eliminate “filter words” like thought or decided or saw; immerse the reader in the character’s perspective; express the character’s thoughts in their voice.

That’s helpful when you’re writing in one of the direct POVs: first-person, deep third, or even the relatively uncommon second person. But what if you’re not?

When using indirect POVs—limited third and omniscient (also objective, though it’s rarely used in modern fiction)—the challenge is often exploring interiority while not breaking the boundaries of these narrative perspectives.

Knowing how to effectively give readers insight into your characters requires being aware of these differences and how to adapt the techniques for conveying inner life no matter your story’s POV.

What is inner life?

Before we explore it, let’s define it: Too often “letting readers in” to the characters’ inner landscape can result in stilted reams of italicized direct thought, a thesaurus’s worth of emotional labels, or a series of physical and physiological reactions that rival any DSM list of symptoms.

Inner life—or interiority, as some refer to it—is simply refracting the events of the story through the lens of the characters experiencing them: their emotions and thoughts, yes, and how they react to what’s happening, but also what they make of those events, filtered through their own background and biases and traits; how the characters process what’s happening; how they are affected by it in a way that then influences their subsequent actions, behavior, and attitudes.

Inner life isn’t simply window dressing or stage business thrown in to break up the action. And it’s not only for “feely” stories like romance or women’s fiction. It’s essential to creating effective, compelling, impactful stories in every genre.

Inner life gives readers insight into the characters as they navigate their journey.

Inner life and POV

How does the type of POV you choose affect the way you give readers access to your characters’ inner lives?

With direct POVs, for example, filter words are often extraneous because the entire narrative is understood to be in the perspective of the point-of-view character. Everything we see is by default their thoughts, decisions, viewpoint, etc., so using filter words adds an unnecessary layer of remove between character and reader.

Indirect points of view presume a narrative voice that’s separate from the character voice, so the “filter words” may be needed for clarity; otherwise readers may feel disoriented or unsure of the narrative perspective.

Direct POVs have firsthand access to characters’ inner lives: As readers we experience their thoughts, emotions, and reactions, as if they are our own.

But in indirect POVs the narrative perspective can only eavesdrop and report on characters’ inner world, not directly experience it. (That way lies the dreaded head-hopping—looking squarely at you, Kevin Kwan.) But used ineffectively, that restriction can create in readers an unintentional impression of distance or opacity. [Read more: Choosing Story Perspective: Direct versus Indirect POV]

Let’s take a single example and compare the differences and limitations between both categories of POV.

Direct POV

The sleazy lieutenant drilled her with wolf eyes that shot ice through her gut. Dammit, who tipped him to Dad’s secret new will? Panic sucked the air from her lungs—could he hear her heart trying to tear out of her chest? Stop it. Chill. Maybe it wasn’t too late to pull her own ass out of the wringer. The calm smile she managed to push onto her face was harder than childbirth.

This passage is immediate and intimate, clearly conveying the character’s inner life in the subjective, firsthand perspective of deep third, which it’s written in.

The detective’s sleaziness and wolf eyes are the POV character’s own view and interpretation. The direct frame of reference is indicated in her referencing “Dad” (rather than “her father,” as in a removed POV). We’re privy firsthand to how she’s affected by the action—her breathlessness and racing heart—and to her direct thoughts (Stop it. Chill.). The figurative language reflects her own background and biases, likening her forced smile to the remembered effort of childbirth. Even the vernacular reflects her personality and way of communicating (“pull her own ass out of the wringer”).

In direct POVs like deep third, essentially readers are directly inside the character’s head, behind their eyes, inside their skin, experiencing everything they do right along with them.

Indirect POV

But let’s look at how those techniques are affected in an indirect POV, which adds a layer of narrative separation from the character’s direct perspective. 

• The author must clarify that the biases and thoughts are the character’s, not the narrator’s.
• Her reactions must be filtered through the perspective of being reported rather than directly experienced.
• All without drawing attention to the narrative voice, so that the scene feels seamless and organic, yet still immediate.

Readers still need to understand what’s going on inside the character and how she’s affected by the action, but in indirect POVs we lose the ability to experience it right along with her. The author has to find a way to convey her inner life without that firsthand intimacy:

The lieutenant watched her with the cold, hungry eyes of a predator, his gaze sharp enough to pierce through pretense. She felt the chill of it deep in her gut. It was obvious he knew something—someone must have let slip the secret of her father’s new will. The realization drew the air from her in a silent gasp and her heart thundered in her chest, loud enough that she was certain he could hear it. Stop it, she berated herself. Chill. She’d always found a way out of trouble. Slowly, deliberately, she shaped a smile—strained, practiced, and far from genuine.

Notice that this version—in limited third—conveys many of the same intentions and ideas of the last one relative to the character’s reactions, thoughts, feelings, etc., but it does so from the perspective of an invisible narrator closely observing the character and sharing that insight with readers. In this case some filter words may be necessary: “she felt,” “she berated herself,” etc.

The descriptions and observations are more objective as well, from the perspective of a detached narrator witnessing the scene, rather than as if readers are living it directly through the character.

Notice, too, that these two passages have a very different feel from each other: The first is more personal and casual and has a strong, specific voice—that of the character. The second has a slight formality by contrast and a separate, more neutral voice, as is often the case with indirect POVs. Direct POVs offer authors the ability to plunge readers into a character’s subjective perspective, but indirect POVs offer the chance for objective commentary or insight or interpretation of events that the characters may not have.

Take into consideration those differences in choosing the right POV for your story, as well as your comfort level with different POVs and the effect you want to achieve on the reader. [Read more: “Picking a Point of View for Your Story]

Inner life and other characters’ POVs

Just as POV affects how the narrative perspective affects the inner life of the main or POV character, it also impacts the way the author conveys other characters’ inner life as well, another key component in bringing your stories and characters more vividly to life and drawing readers in.

Besides the characters’ own reactions, readers want to be privy to the character interactions: meaning how one character’s actions, behaviors, and reactions affect the other character(s) (and vice versa).

In the second example above, in the indirect POV of limited third, we see the scene filtered through the woman’s perspective. In limited third person the narrative is removed from the character’s direct perspective, but still confined to it; readers can’t know anything that’s happening beyond the POV character’s radius and purview.

But in this passage readers have insight into the detective’s inner life as well—the non-POV character—through the POV character’s eyes and interpretations. We see how his reactions impact hers, which adds texture and depth to the scene and brings their exchange more vividly to life.

In omniscient POV, by contrast, the author has godlike access to what’s going on inside all the characters—but from that same indirect perspective where the narrative can observe and report on it, but not directly experience it. [Read more: Understanding Third-person POV: Limited, Omniscient, and Deep]

Compare these two “omniscient” versions of the passage.

Version 1

The lieutenant’s gaze cut across the room—cool and probing. He had seen too many liars to miss the signs: the stiff shoulders, the too-smooth smile. Someone had told her father’s secret, and she was wearing guilt like a second skin.

She, too, felt the balance shifting. The stare told her more than words could: he suspected, maybe even knew. Panic stirred behind her ribs, but she masked it with practiced ease. The smile she forced looked convincing enough, but it cost her more than pride.

The lieutenant saw it all. Not just the smile, but the strain behind it—the effort, the fear. It confirmed what he already believed. She was hiding something, and time would show exactly what.

Version 2

The lieutenant drilled her with wolf eyes, calm and unblinking. He’d seen this look before—just before the truth cracked open. Jonny D had come through again, told him about the will.

Ice shot through her gut. Dammit. Who tipped him? Her lungs tightened, chest rising too fast. That stare—he could probably hear her heart trying to punch its way out.

He watched the panic ripple under her skin. She was trying to bury it, but he could see the math happening behind her eyes.

Stop it. Chill. She forced a smile, tight, brittle, all performance. Harder than childbirth.

He clocked it. Too polished. Too late. He didn’t smile back. He didn’t need to.

Both versions reveal both characters’ inner lives, but if the second version felt a little herky-jerky or confusing to you, it’s because it’s breaching the parameters of indirect POV by delving directly into the characters’ immediate, direct perspective. (This is where Kevin Kwan often gets into trouble.)

The effect on readers is of leaping frenetically from inside one character’s head to another (which is why it’s called head-hopping), rather than as if the objective external “camera” of the narrative perspective is smoothly panning between them, guiding the reader’s experience of the story.

Parting thoughts

Opening the window to your characters’ inner landscape for readers heightens the story impact, draws readers more deeply into your characters and story, and lends fluidity and cohesion to showing characters moving along their arc as a direct result of the action of the story.

But make sure you’re doing it in a manner consistent with whichever POV you choose to keep readers firmly grounded and oriented to the story, and avoid making them conscious of the author’s hand.

Tiffany Yates Martin

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent her entire career as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial (named one of Writer’s Digest’s Best Websites for Authors) and author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and her latest, The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.She is a regular contributor to writers’ outlets like Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman, and Writer Unboxed, and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers’ organizations around the world. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she is the author of six novels.