Do beta readers keep saying, ‘I’m not in her head’ or, ‘this still feels distant,’? You’re not alone. This is by far the most difficult aspect of deep POV to put into practice. What if you learned how to transform character thoughts into forces of internal conflict that reveal personality, deepen emotion, and move the story forward?

The issue at hand then, becomes one of making the most of your character’s internal world. Instead of using the author voice (or the author speaking through the character’s voice) to summarize, explain or justify the character’s actions or decisions, instead you capture the raw, unfiltered thoughts, actions, and decisions that drive the story.

What Is Experiential Narration?

Lisa Cron in Story Genius wrote that, “Deep POV isn’t thoughts—it’s lived experience in real time,” and Tiffany Yates Martin wrote in Intuitive Editing that, “In deep POV we don’t ‘show thoughts,’ we deliver experiential narration.” Other point of view styles use internalization (including internal dialogue) and narration (author voice). Deep POV uses experiential narration.

There’s a shift that needs to happen for deep POV to really resonate with readers. Deep POV wants you to remove the frame around the character’s internal experience of the story world (the reader isn’t watching a story through a window or on a screen), but rather bring the reader directly into the story world and the character’s lived experience as though they are wearing a VR headset.

Now, on the surface this looks like removing thought tags, emotion words, and filter words, but there’s more to it. The character isn’t narrating their life, as can happen in first person POV. The author isn’t talking to the reader directly through the narrative or indirectly through the character. Rather, every sentence is filtered through the character’s unique perception, vocabulary, biases, and emotional state.

There isn’t an author voice to summarize, justify, or explain. The character’s thoughts are raw, vulnerable, unfiltered, sometimes chaotic, and are exposed to the reader without explanation. Deep POV exists on a sliding scale—most published novels sit at 80-90% experiential narration. The last 10% is where authors cheat and use telling, or summary, or whatever — just to keep the pace moving.

Why Experiential Narration Matters

We don’t have to agree with every emotion or action of a character to identify with how they feel. There’s a connection born between a reader and a character whose struggles are specific and particular — but common experiences. That shared experience is the glue that makes deep POV so captivating (in my opinion).

Experiential Narration allows authors to play around with external forces in conflict with internal forces. What does the character really want, but won’t speak up about or act on? Why? What would a stronger person do in this situation (according to this character)? Why don’t they do that? That push/pull of external and internal conflict, when done well, answers the WHY behind what the character is deciding and choosing and prioritizing.

That internal conflict between what they feel and what they feel safe expressing or allowing others to intuit is really fun to play with. Making good use of subtext here is going to add additional layers of complexity and emotional depth.

4 Non-Negotiable Author Voice Violations To Eliminate

This shift into deep POV might be painful for some. Deep POV wants you to stop summarizing the past, explaining how the character feels, or justify why they’re making certain decisions. If you’re going deep enough with the experiential narration, the reader will already know that.

Backstory

The info-dumping of backstory just ties an anchor to the pace of your story. Ask yourself: what does the reader need to know right here, to understand THIS scene? Be ruthless. The past is always an important driver of the present, but take a minute and think back in your own life to a painful experience. Do you relive the entire experience like it’s an episode of ER – in full colour, with full dialogue? (Exception: trauma disorders—PTSD, dissociation—often force characters to relive full sensory flashbacks. I’ve written about PTSD here. I’ve written about how to research for mental health and trauma in fiction here.

Probably not. What DO you remember? You’ll remember how it made you feel. You’ll remember snippets of dialogue that impacted you (negatively and positively). You’ll remember sounds and smells of that memory. You may have made a vow based on that experience that carries forward — not doing that again, never let them see you cry, can’t trust anyone. Those vows will pop up going forward but you’re not going to remind yourself why you feel that way, relieve in detail what happened, or what else has happened to confirm that belief.

Info-Dumping Mark stared at the gun and remembered that he was a former Marine who had served in Afghanistan for three tours, which was why he knew exactly how to disassemble a Glock 19 blindfolded, a skill that might save his life tonight.

Deep POV: The Glock sat light in his hand, still covered in scratches from the Kandahar sand. Three seconds, eyes closed, and Mark could still strip it to pins and springs. (This is using subtext to hint at the backstory without slowing the story down.)

Neutral/Generic Emotions

A common problem tends to be not enough emotion, a lack of emotional reaction, or no understanding of WHY the character is reacting a certain way. I ask students – why is this character doing this; why do they feel this way; why is THIS important to the character RIGHT NOW? About 50% of the time, they don’t have an answer.

You must know the WHY behind your character’s actions and thoughts. How does your character feel about what’s going on? They are driving the action of the story, they’re not supposed to be passive or objective observers (unless you’re writing in objective third person – but if you’re here that’s not your goal). Neutral verbs and setting descriptions require you to then explain and summarize, instead of infusing emotion into every sentence.

She entered the room. -> This is neutral. We don’t have any sense of how the character feels, why they’re entering the room, or what their priority is. This reads like a stage direction in a script.

Deep POV: She slipped in through the half-closed door, keeping her back to the wall, and clutched her bag like a shield in front of her heart. (Deep POV pulls you into her lived experience and lets the emotions drive the action.)

Objective third-person POV (camera-on-tripod, no experiential depth) Sarah walked into the room and saw the positive pregnancy stick on the counter. She picked it up and looked at the two pink lines, then sat down on the toilet seat.

Deep POV: Two pink lines. Two… The stick shook so hard the lines blurred. Mara’s knees gave out and she landed on the toilet seat, teetering to catch her balance. (It isn’t about adding a lot of emotions per se, but the lived experience of those emotions. You probably don’t need me to TELL you, or EXPLAIN that she’s in shock, but the lack of any emotional reaction in the example is problematic in deep POV because there’s no raw reaction. She could have picked up a cat and sat on the toilet seat. Give the reader a reason to lean in, surprise them.)

Subtext Replaces Over-Explaining and Summary

Subtext forces the reader to feel the truth instead of being told it. Subtext trusts the audience to connect the dots, turning passive consumption into active emotional labor; they lean in, hunt for meaning, and when they find it, they own it. That ownership is what makes a scene unforgettable, what makes them message you at 2 a.m. saying “I can’t stop thinking about that character.” Over-explaining hands readers a conclusion; subtext hands them a live wire and dares them to grab it. Every time.

Over-explaining She felt a sharp pain in her chest because her heart was breaking into a million pieces due to the betrayal she had just experienced from her boyfriend of five years.

Deep POV: The pain stabbed straight through her ribs and kept going, a lightning strike ripping her open. (A pain like this needs to be BIG. Don’t pull up short for fear of being melodramatic. It’s easier to tone down the intensity of the emotion than to make it bigger. OR – maybe you go smaller because the emotions are suppressed — readers will lean in because this should be bigger.)

Turn Thoughts Into Story Fuel

Emotions drive the deep POV story. Thoughts and actions are the character’s best plan to either follow or deny that emotion. Practice MRU’s (motivation reaction units) so readers make clear associations between emotions and actions.

Emotions are not objective, polite, politically correct, or linear. How we express them, can be. Societal norms, social expectations, setting, power imbalances, stakes — these can all play a role in how we allow our emotions to be expressed.

Emotional arcs are important to remember. Map out the emotional arc of your story as a whole, and each chapter. Where is the emotional high point? What emotion does the chapter/story begin on, and where does it land? You don’t want it to be the same emotional note. The emotions can be more or less intense, but that note needs to be different. Pinpoint the high emotional point. Have you infused enough emotion into that moment for readers to understand the stakes of what’s going on; the character’s priorities or their internal conflict(s)?

I really like Donald Maass’ book The Emotional Craft Of Fiction because at the end of every chapter he gives a list of exercises and thought experiments to help you go deeper with the emotions in your story. I’ve found those exercises very helpful.

Now Your Turn

Turn to your WIP and flag these bits of author intrusion where you are explaining, summarizing, or justifying how the character thinks, feels, or acts. Now ask yourself what the character is thinking? What’s the priority and goal in this scene (make sure that priority or goal is their next best idea to solving their story problem). List five potential emotions they could be feeling. Which one surprised you? Get curious about that. Why are they feeling that way? Does that knowledge change what happens in the scene or influence their emotional reaction now or later? How does that emotion colour or influence their thinking?

OR – take one scene in your WIP and rewrite it two or three times (just for you – don’t put pressure on yourself to use it) with different POV characters. They are reacting to the same external event, but their past experiences, priorities, prejudices/biases, should make each voice and emotional reaction distinctive. This will help develop experiential narration.

Want me to gently critique a page of your story live? Want to see me rewrite a manuscript from limited third person into deep POV? Join the new YouTube channel waitlist here to be the first to know when I’ve launched!

Next post: How to layer subtext without explaining.