deep POV Archives - Lisa Hall-Wilson

How To Create 3-D Emotional Depth In Fiction

May 14, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson Leave a Comment

Adding emotional depth to a scene, often in the revision stage, can be hard because you’ve written it as you pictured it in your head, right. However, sometimes what’s in your head isn’t what comes across on the page. How frustrating! Try creating a 3-D effect for readers and using sensory details to convey motive/goals/priorities, and emotions.

Before You Turn To The Sensory Details…

Yes, sensory details are going to be important, but first thing’s first. For deep point of view, you must become the main character in each scene. You’re not a passive third-party observer, a movie-goer in a theatre seat – you are the main character. This small tweak to how your brain captures the scene is very helpful.

Now, what’s your character’s goal in this scene? What do they want to happen? What are they trying to acheive? What’s at stake? What’s their worst case scenario? Jot all this down if you need to. This is your character’s WHY and it will be the filter through which all the other details are seen through.

List 5 Things Your Character Can See

This is actually a twist on a grounding exercise for those struggling with PTSD, anxiety, etc. Close your eyes and become your main character for a moment. Remind yourself of their WHY – what are they desperate to find, get to, rescue, overcome, etc.

List 5 things your character can see. What are the first five things your character notices about the setting? Remember, readers do 90% of the work with description. If I write that my pretty female MC has pulled the handsome male MC she’s been crushing on into a dark office and made a point of locking the door behind her. She reaches for the buttons on her blouse and he reaches for the blinds.

What are the first 5 things she sees? Here’s my guess: his body posture, the desk he’s leaning back against, the way his fingers curl around the edge of the desktop, the light coming into the office under the locked door, the file marked TOP SECRET on his desk.

Adding Layers Of Sensory Details To Show Emotional Depth

Sight is the primary sense writers use and that’s totally understandable, but we have other senses that take in information that influences our decisions and interpretations of things. You’ve written down the character’s WHY, and the first five things the character sees in this scene. (What she notices or searches for hints at her WHY.)

List 4 things she can hear: the metallic rasp of the blinds against the office windows, the muted footsteps and murmurs of colleagues passing by the office, the crunch of papers under his backside, the sharp intake of his breath.

List 4 things she can touch: the hard smooth buttons on her blouse, the soft silk of her blouse, the stiff utilitarian carpet under her toes, the restrictive watch band on her wrist ticking away the time…

List 3 things she can smell: his cologne or aftershave, the lingering scent of her own shampoo, the sharp popcorn odour from the microwave in the office across the fall.

What Can All Those Sensory Details Show Readers?

My character is concerned with getting a glimpse of a file on the guy’s desk, but she also really really likes this guy. She’s a little conflicted. She’s very aware of the time – of how quickly it’s passing, and that they’re not alone. They are in a busy office setting.

Now, in a story I wouldn’t want to just catalogue all these details. I would pick one or two or three details that would create a 3 dimensional setting for readers. The physical details of the setting, the desk, the door, are what’s vital for reader to know. Does it matter in this scene if there’s art on the wall? That the guy has a $30,000 vase on a shelf? What the name plate on his desk says? Not right now. All of the setting details are filtered and prioritized through her scene goals and motivations.

The Key To Creating A 3-D-Style Setting

The really key thing to remember is that YOU (the writer) are not describing the scene or the setting, the character is. That’s the tweak you need to make to the POV perspective.

Whatever is important to the character, whatever their goals are, what they’re afraid of, all those things are going to create a filter through which they take in information. In deep point of view, what they overlook or don’t notice is just as important as what they do see. If my character above had never been in that office before, she might notice different things maybe. If she had a different reason for being in that office with that guy, she would focus on different details. The fact that she doesn’t notice any setting details beyond the desk, the man, and the folder on the desk inside the office offers clues for readers.

Trust Your Readers To Understand How Sensory Details Betray Emotions

The biggest issue I come across when helping people learn deep point of view is that they don’t trust the reader. They leave this beautiful trail of clues that are subtle and well done, and then the next sentence they blurt out everything they alluded to above just to “make sure the reader gets it.” This is what beta readers are for. Ask them, did you get this? In this scene, what did you think she wanted most? These kinds of questions will help you figure out if you need to tweak the description or not instead of resorting to blunt telling.

I’m opening up the 5 Day Deep Point Of View Challenge on Facebook again from May 20-24! Join the free group and get 5 days of free video lessons and get feedback on your homework! Make sure you answer the questions to get into the group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5daydeeppovchallenge/

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Brene Brown’s Guide To Creating An Emotional Arc Using Shame

April 30, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson Leave a Comment

Shame is one of the most powerful and underused emotions in a fiction-writer’s toolbox. Shame is pervasive and common, it’s ugly and hard to capture well, but deep point of view is the perfect technique to use with this complex emotion. Readers cheer for characters who are relate-able, who stand up to bullies, who stay and fight when they don’t have to. They relate to characters who have flaws!

And shame is one emotion everyone studiously avoids, denies, and conceals and because of that can have some awful negative consequences like rage, anxiety, depression, emptiness, isolation, addiction, substance abuse, violence, bullying, suicide, eating disorders, etc.

Guilt says you did a bad thing. Shame says you’re a bad person.

This is an excerpt from a guest post – click here to read the whole post on Writers In The Storm.

How To Show And Not Tell Shame In Fiction

Brene Brown in her book Rising Strongdescribed shame as living with a rock on your chest. Shame feels like a crushing, inescapable weight on our chests, cutting off our air, knotting our guts, stealing our words, making us flushed. (The Emotion Thesaurus is a great resource.)

Whether your character starts off feeling shameful about something (past or present) and works to shake that off, or shame is something that they take on in the course of the story, the key to a shame emotion arc is what Brene Brown calls The Reckoning, The Rumble, and the Revolution. It looks a lot like the 3-act structure *smile*

In Rising Strong, Brown gives this example: “…Your face turns red and heat radiates from your chest when you learn that your boss gave the lead for a new project to your colleague.”

Here are two scenarios Brene poses to this emotional problem:

“My boss is an a—hole. Todd’s such a brownnoser. Who cares? This job sucks and this company is a joke.” This is the shame-train reaction—the knee-jerk, off-loading, emotional avoidance caused by shame. As long as your character stays here and never questions WHY they feel this angry, then your character is letting emotions they refuse to admit they feel to drive the shame-train.

“I’m so pissed about her giving the lead to Todd. I need to figure this out before I lose it with everyone on our team…” This curiosity begins the process below. There’s an inciting incident that causes the character to take a proactive step to get off the shame-train.

The 3 Act Structure For Writing Shame According To Brene Brown

The Reckoning: At some point in the story, your character decides to jump off the shame-train and gets curious. Why do I feel like this? Why am I reacting like this? Why do I think of x or y when this happens? Hopefully your character has a friend or ally with them. The Reckoning is about identifying and/or labelling the emotion or thinking that’s got them convinced they’re a bad person (put them on the floor of the arena).

The Reckoning is heart-breaking work because it’s one step forward and two steps back over and over. Their best thinking is what put that boulder on their chest (either as a reaction to something they did or is a survival mechanism to something done to them) to begin with and they’ve managed the rock by ignoring it was there altogether. Now that they acknowledge it’s there, life is going to get harder as they reckon with hard emotions they’ve trained themselves to numb or off-load onto others.

This kicks off The Rumble.

The Rumble:The Rumble is the shame-showdown. Now that your character acknowledges the thinking and emotions that have put them on the floor of the arena, now they’re going to THINK their way out from under the shame-boulder. But they’re acutely aware of those in the stands staring at them, at their repeated failure, their unworthiness.

The Rumble is about living with, allowing to well up, wrestling with the emotions they’ve avoided all this time. It means admitting they over-reacted. It’s about acknowledging emotions they might not understand or memories that seem unrelated that keep popping up. It’s doing the hard work of figuring out how they feel and WHY!

Now the character moves on to The Revolution.

The Revolution:Once the character has gotten the rock of shame off their chest, once they’ve rumbled with the emotions that put it there, now comes the revolution. They now must rebuild their self-esteem. This provides incredible character arc if you look for it. How does one let go of perfectionism? How does one learn to forgive themselves? What do they ask themselves as they stumble in The Rumble? That’s narrative gold, right there.

Questions To Ask Your Characters About Shame

What emotions does your character refuse to acknowledge they’re struggling with? Does the tomboy refuse to acknowledge the girly side that’s vulnerable? Does the warrior refuse to cry? WHY?

When something negative happens, we create the stories in our heads we expect to hear. We filter everything that’s said and done through how we believe we’re perceived even if there’s no evidence for that conclusion. How can a self-fulfilling prophecy of shame play into your story?

What thought does your character avoid having confirmed in any conflict or hurtful event?

What is your character’s go-to emotional substitution? Do they lash out in anger? Do they self-flagellate with destructive internal messages?

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How To Write Fear That Connects Emotionally With Readers

April 10, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson 1 Comment

When writing in deep point of view, do your beta readers figuratively yawn at what are supposed to be your scariest scenes? Deep POV was supposed to create an emotional connection with readers, so why isn’t it working?

Fear is a universal emotion, so if you want fear to actually come across to readers, then you need to explore the root causes, make it individual, and keep surprising your readers.

Why Writing Fear Well Is So Hard

The problem is that as writers, fear is an emotion we’ve felt so often that we gloss over it. We’re neither going shallow (when writing in deep pov) to surprise readers, nor going deep to pull them in closer. Rather, many put a foot in both techniques which has the effect of glossing over, summarizing, or skimming over details. This strategy offers no surprise, no tension, no feelings for readers.

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Remember, as common as fear is to you, the writer, it’s equally common to readers.

“Listen to genre writers talk and you’d think that their stories are designed to evoke only one gigantic feeling, perhaps dread, terror, joy or love. While there’s nothing wrong with hoping readers will feel those things, mostly they do not. Why? Partly because those feelings are familiar and the scenarios that are suppposed to evoke them are humdrum…Just remember this: details. Details have the power of suggestion. Suggestion evokes feelings in readers, drawing them out rather than pounding them with emotional hammer blows.”
The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass

Looking for help describing fear? Check out the entry on fear in The Emotion Thesaurus. Find a short description here.

Do You Know Why Your Character Is Scared Now And In This Place?

Because fear is universal, there are a wide range of gradients and intensities. Let’s look at a few:

Afraid. Anxious. Petrified. Shaken. Terrifed. Aghast. Panicked. Rattled. Frightened. Frozen. Upset. Shocked. Spooked. Daunted. Disheartened. Horrifed. Nervous. Intimidated. Timid. Apprehensive. Dread. Fearful. Uneasy. Troubled. Jumpy. Twitchy. Overwrought. Helplessness.

What causes apprehension in one person causes panic or terror in another. What’s the difference? Ask your character what are their stakes in this particular scene. What do they stand to lose, what are they risking, what’s on the line? Their answer could be anything from an irrational – there’s a spider in there to risking their identity or reputation, or maybe even a life-threatening circumstance.

Context is important. That scary biker with his leather and tattoos might have one person crossing the street to avoid, but the child he’s picking up from school runs to him with arms open wide.

If we see a lion in a zoo, separated from us by concrete trenches or fences, we take photos and comment on how cute or majestic they look. Put us on the Savannah nearing nightfall and we hear a lion’s roar, our assessment of the threat level will be significantly different.

**Side Note** My brother lived near a sketchy zoo for a few years (now closed) and they had a couple of male lions. Those lions could be heard roaring for a very long distance at night. It’s such a foreign sound in Canada. A black bear, wolf or coyote howl might give me shivers. That lion roar though, it reached deep into my gut and detonated. Felt like I’d been kicked in the chest. It was all I could do to stay in my chair and not run for the house.

Get to the root cause of the fear for your character. What past experiences (theirs or someone they know, something they’ve read or been taught) that’s informing or coloring their risk assessment of this scenario? In my Deep Point Of View Masterclass, a common comment I make is “I don’t know WHY they’re …” I can see the character is afraid, but are they afraid for themselves, for someone else, at the situation, or what the situation might mean? This level of specificity helps the reader identify with the character and cheer for them.

How Your Character Reacts To Fear Should Surprise And Inform Readers

Every character should react uniquely to fear because they should have their own perceptions of the threat, unique goals and motivations in any given scene or scenario, and personality quirks and predispositions that guide them towards one response over another in any given situation.

Fear is a primary emotion that triggers an autonomic reaction: fight, flight or freeze. Someone with elite military training should react differently to a surprise assailant than someone without that training. They will have a different threat assessement that someone who isn’t sure of their ability to defend themselves. Now, if that soldier has their child with them, their threat assessment will be different again. If the assailant strikes in a dark parking lot where help is far away, that soldier’s measured reaction might be different based on their perception of how far away help is.

Every situation and every character (their past experiences, their perceived threat assesment, and the context) should lead to unique reactions in every scene. If it doesn’t, either you’re skimming or summarizing the events (and likely the reader doesn’t know THE WHY), you don’t know your character well enough, or you’re recreating the same scenario over and over with little variation. All of these should be avoided.

Now, how a character responds to fear shows readers a great deal about what’s important to that character, what they prioritize, their strengths and weaknesses, their character, etc. The conflict between what a character feels and thinks vs what they DO and SAY can be full of rich subtext and understanding for readers. When trying to decide how your character should react to fear, ask them what would a better person do, what would a stronger person do, what would someone who doesn’t care do, what would someone who’s already angry do… etc. You get the idea, right. Be strategic!

Prime Your Readers For A Great Scare!

Ever had to prime something? When camping, we had this old camp stove that required one to pump up and down on a lever before trying to light the fuel to cook with. It was building up internal pressure and with fiction we do this either through anticipation or surprise (primarily).

The plot twist, the switcheroo, the SURPRISE! Think about how you could prime readers towards a particular emotion. Let’s say our main character is a 10yo boy who has a single mom, but she works a lot. She’s often angry and yells for no reason. He comes home from school and she’s throwing dishes in the kitchen so hard they smash. She’s cursing loud enough for the neighbors to hear. He sits down for dinner and she slams her chair into place and drops into her chair. He’s slow reaching for the potatoes so she shoves the bowl towards him. “Eat.” The kid hunches his shoulders, stares at his thighs, and breaks down in tears.

That kid was primed for a fear response, Mom didn’t have to do anything threatening for him to react to the fear his body had been denying. Mom might not understand why he’s crying. The kid may not know why he’s crying. But your reader will know and they will CARE about this kid.

Anticipation is a slow build-up to something scary you can see coming but dread all the same. Imagine walking home each day from work past your neighbor’s yard where a giant St. Bernard waits for you every day. That dog erupts at the sight of you on the sidewalk and barks and snarls predictably. Today, the St. Bernard gets loose.

You’ve played this scenario out in your mind. You’ve imagined this very worst-case-scenario and spring into action… Not scary, right. Anticipation only works if the character has no control. If your character has a plan to get out of the trouble, there’s no fear for the reader. They already know everything’s going to work out fine.

Instead, have your main character walking home, reading a book while they walk. They notice their neighbor’s teen out walking their giant St. Bernard. Your character is engrossed in what they’re reading and not paying close attention. And then the dog gets away from the owner and is headed straight for them snarling. No control. No plan. Just react.

What’s this character’s perception of the threat? Are they afraid of dogs? Are they afraid of big dogs? Do they have confidence that the dog will obey the teen? Do they have an escape at hand? Do they have prior training or skills that would help them navigate this situation? These are all questions that will color the hue of fear your character expresses to readers.

Who’s your favorite writer that really does fear well? Remember, every genre will include fear. Let me know in the comments!

Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers

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Advice From Jack Sparrow On Building Emotional Connections With Readers

March 6, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson 5 Comments

Captain Jack Sparrow, love him or hate him, most people FEEL something for the irrascible pirate. What can Jack Sparrow teach us about creating emotional connections with readers? Lots. Savvy?

There are many posts out there on the interwebz for writers looking for advice on how to create emotional connections with readers, but let’s look at a character many many people love but may not be able to put a finger on why.

Jack Sparrow Is Relateable

When creating a character you want readers to connect with, give them traits that your reader might share. It’s hard to put yourself into a story, into someone’s shoes if you can’t see yourself in any of their character traits or decisions.

Jack is selfish and deceptive and he appears morally bankrupt, so why do we love him? He literally stumbles through life. But we love Jack because we have a lot of things in common with him. No, really – we do.

He prefers to talk his way out of trouble instead of using brute force, even though he has the sword skills to do great injury. He’s intelligent and witty and uses those strengths to his advantage. Jack is immeasurably creative.

“Did everyone see that? Because I will not be doing that again.”
Jack Sparrow

Jack is OK with ambiguity. Today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s ally. He’ll steal your rum one day and shake your hand the next. Jack’s morality tends to be situational, but isn’t that also true of our own society where little white lies, no harm no foul, and other such sayings are held as truth. A person might never steal a chocolate bar or clothing from a retail store, but they’ll pirate movies or music or ebooks without thought. The character who always chooses the moral right, who’s never dishonest or corruptible in any way, is hard to relate to.

Jack’s An Ethical Pirate

Your character needs to stand for something. They have to draw a line in the sand — this far and no farther. That line will look different for every character and that line doesn’t have to be one that readers necessarily would choose for themselves, but it’s one they can cheer for. Readers connect emotionally with characters who have a code of ethics they won’t violate–an ethic the reader can cheer for.

Jack is a complicated character and whether he’s good or bad is often up for interpretation. Certainly, he’s no moral paragon, but unlike many other pirates Jack does his best to uphold the Pirate’s code. Jack isn’t a pacifist, but he often steps in and tries to de-escalate an impending conflict (often for self-interested reasons) by suggesting a negotiation. When he does draw his sword, it’s in self-defence.

“Why fight when you can negotiate?”
Jack Sparrow

Let’s not forget that the reason Jack was branded a pirate was because instead of delivering a shipment of slaves, he set them free. Jack, in the end, often chooses the morally right thing to do at his own personal sacrifice, even if he’s doing it for selfish reasons. He rescued his friends from the Kraaken (and the Pearl), he walked away from the fountain of youth, and he helped break the curse of the The Flying Dutchman to free Will Turner.

“Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.”
Jack Sparrow

Jack Is Always The Underdog

Readers love to cheer on the come-from-behind-kid, the one who succeeds against all odds, the David in a David-and-Goliath story, the nerd fighting against the schoolyard bully. When a character faces overwhelming odds, when they choose to step into a hard thing when they could walk away, readers get behind that. They want the character to win. But let me clear, the odds need to be overwhelming and preferably the stakes are life and death. I don’t mean only literal life and death stakes, but identity-ending, career-suicide, life-is-no-longer-worth-living kind of stakes.

In every movie, Jack has a goal–there’s something he wants. His motivations aren’t always obvious or clear, sometimes even to himself, but he presses on even though the odds of him succeeding are fairly remote (hello – finding the fountain of youth??).

“I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly…stupid.”
Jack Sparrow

Jack Teaches Us Things

Readers want entertainment AND they want an emotional journey. They want to immerse themselves in a fictive dream and become a character, live vicariously through them, for a short period of time. Fiction helps challenge people’s thinking and offers new perspectives and paths for readers in a non-threatening way. It’s OK if you only want to entertain with your writing, but it’s OK if you want to use if for more than entertainment too.

“If you choose to lock your heart away, you’ll lose it for certain.”
Jack Sparrow

Jack is a character a lot of people wish they could be more like (in certain ways). Jack is comfortable in his own skin, in the expression of his personality, and doesn’t care too much what other people think of him. He doesn’t take offense easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He lives in the moment

Jack very much lives in the moment. He doesn’t concern himself with a five year plan or even where he’ll sleep that night. Jack embodies freedom. “Wherever we want to go, we’ll go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and hull and deck and sails–that’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is–what the Black Pearl really is–is freedom.” Jack has simple wants: to be a pirate and to be captain of the Black Pearl. Most of us, in some way, long for that kind of free-spirited freedom, ability to laugh at ourselves, own our eccentricities and quirks, and care less what people think of us.

Jack Surprises Us

Writing that has readers leaning in, afraid to put the book down because they have to know what happens next — that’s the goal, right? That’s my goal. The surprises have to be true to the character and the storyworld, often the surprise causes the main character even more trouble, but we cheer them on even harder.

Jack constantly surprises us. He’s funny. His wit and charm are disarming and the way he plays with the truth makes you feel like you’re inner circle sharing an inside joke. His antics, his flailings, his reliance on rum, it all adds up to entertainment and surprise. A joke isn’t funny if you already know the punchline, right. Sometimes his wit is full of great truth. Sometimes you have to repeat to yourself what he’s just said, and then it hits you — ooooh, that’s deep.

“You’ve stolen me and I’m here to take myself back.”
Jack Sparrow

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Understand me?”
Jack Sparrow

What do you love about Jack Sparrow? In what ways did you (or did you not) connect emotionally with Jack?

Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers

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5 Day Deep Point Of View Challenge 2019

February 26, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson Leave a Comment

Want to create an emotional connection between your characters and readers? Tired of beta readers and editors telling you to go deeper? Can’t find the right emotional tension between blase and melodrama? You need deep point of view.

What Is Deep Point of View?

Deep point of view is a writing style, a technique, that aims to put the reader IN THE STORY with your characters, experiencing everything the POV character experiences in real time. When you remove all the distance between the reader and the story, remove all the filters between the writer and the story, the reader gets an emotional journey they’ll never forget and want to tell all their friends about.

5 Day Deep Point Of View Challenge

Next Date: tba

The 5 Day Deep Point Of View Challenge ran in March 2019, but will happen again this year.. It is hosted in a closed Facebook group where you’ll be able to watch a live video (yes, they’re recorded) of a lesson and a small bit of homework you can share with the group and get feedback on.

What Will You Learn?

The 5 Day Deep POV Challenge is a taste of the Method Acting For Writers Masterclass I teach. This was the content for the March 2019 challenge, it changes up each time it’s run.

Day 1 – Shifting How We Tell Stories

Day 2 – Understanding The Why

Day 3 – Identifying Filter and Distance

Day 4 – Adding Emotional Depth With Setting

Day 5 – Creating Emotional Arcs

Now, at first glance not all of these seem directly applicable to deep point of view. But here’s the thing, understanding deep point of view isn’t just learning some style techniques and tricks, learning where to bend the rules, or even what kind of story you’re writing — it’s a shift in HOW we tell stories. It’s not a difficult concept to understand, but it’s not intuitive and it takes a lot of practice.

And writing is such a solitary pursuit. Why not take this chance to learn with a group of people just as dedicated to taking their writing to the next level as you are!

The 5 Day Deep Point of View Challenge is FREE. You get professional feedback on homework FREE. You get 5 lessons on learning deep point of view you won’t find in books FREE. But it will cost you time. And effort. As well as a few drops of blood on the page — because that’s what it means to go deep. At the end of the Challenge, all the video content will be removed from the group until the challenge runs again, so don’t wait to sign up!

Heck Yeah! I want in the 5 Day Deep POV Challenge!

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4 Questions To Ask To Avoid Info Dumps In Deep Point Of View

January 25, 2019 by Lisa Hall-Wilson 4 Comments

No one likes reading an info dump, but we writers justify their existence because we’re sure the reader needs all this background information here, right now. Info dumps kill the pace and tension in your story and readers may just put down your book and walk away forever.

What Is An Info Dump?

“An info dump is a very large amount of information, usually backstory, supplied all at once in a narrative.” Backstory is important and vital to any character and story, but the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know all of what you know or have created. As any good introvert knows, people have to earn the trust to be told your entire lifestory, you don’t just verbally vomit on a stranger. It’s rude. *smile*

Concerning Hobbits…

In an omniscient point of view, the kind of worldbuilding Tolkien used in The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit is acceptable. Omniscient point of view though is largely out of favor with modern readers and acquisition editors.

It’s hard to ground the reader in time and place without frontloading a work with all the ways that world is different from our own world/reality/time/place. Whether you’re writing Steampunk, Space Opera, Edwardian romance, spec fic, etc etc — the key is to avoid large deposits of information and let the world unfold for the reader as the character sees it. If everyone in your story world is green with large antennae, construct an organic scenario that would cause your character to notice it — because we don’t often think/comment on things that seem every day or ordinary.

An Info Dump: Cassandra kept her claws rounded and painted which showed her pride in her appearance. The green-skinned passersby didn’t give her any notice. They kept their long antennae gleaming and straight. Her people were fastidious and prided themselves on their appearances. Not being noticed was a good thing.

Organic Worldbuilding: Cassandra examined the filed ends of her claws. Perfect. Her antennae twitched and she turned to find Steve behind her.
His left antennae was bent and hung limp. Sickly splotches of purple marred his green skin. Everyone gave him a wide berth, covering their gills as they passed by. Would she be contaminated by association? She took a step back. “What happened to you? Are you contagious?”

Add Backstory In Phrases

Jami Gold has a great technique (and I’m sure she doesn’t use it exclusively) of adding backstory through phrases. Not paragraphs, not even whole sentences, but in phrases. Check out this excerpt from Jami Gold’s novel Stone-Cold Heart about the first time we meet the hero, a gargoyle named Garrett. (read Jami’s post on info dumps on page 1 here.)

Warmth crept through Garrett’s chest and spread into his limbs. Tingles followed, racing along his nerves, stirring sensations in his body.

For the first time in countless years, he awoke from stone-death. The human female curled between his limbs explained why. She must have focused enough trust toward him to help him regain full consciousness.

About blasted time. Although these circumstances weren’t the situation he wanted to encounter when he awoke. Of all the things he’d seen during his stone-death, he hadn’t seen the one thing he’d expected. None of his regiment had brought a human female he could use to awaken—or had even come by to check on him.

All those years in his vulnerable form, where his prison of stone could have shattered—ending his life. Years without word, without reports from the field, without conversations with his regiment. Years left alone. Abandoned.

Jami has bolded all the phrases that give backstory bits. Readers are drawn into this story world through the eyes of a gargoyle and what he’s concerned with RIGHT NOW. We know he’s just waking up after countless years asleep, that he needs a female to wake him up, he’s been forgotten, and that things aren’t right in his world. That’s all we really need at this point to cheer for Garrett.

An info dump would have seen Garrett reflecting on his past years as a gargoyle before he was turned into stone, perhaps the history of why he’d been abandoned by his gargoyle friends, blah blah blah. These would all be things he already knows but wouldn’t think about without a reason to bring up all that history. Instead, keep the reader rooted in the right now and what would organically come to the character’s mind.

Backstory should answer one question for the reader and leave them with two more.

Backstory And Deep Point Of View

If you’re writing your entire novel in deep point of view (as opposed to just using this technique for emphasis in key scenes), backstory and worldview info dumps whether through narrative, internal dialogue or spoken dialogue are easily avoided by asking yourself these questions:

What is the character worried about/interested in/working towards RIGHT NOW?
What information does the reader NEED to know RIGHT NOW in order for the story to make sense. How can I answer their most pressing question but leave them asking even more questions?
Which bits of backstory are so compelling that readers will be cheering for my character? (Look at Jami’s excerpt – Garrett’s been forgotten, a soldier left behind-vulnerable, and now someone’s woken him up. I’m already cheering for him.)
Why do I think the reader needs this information now? Is it just to prove I’ve thought of it? (You, as the writer, need to keep yourself out of the story.)

Remember, in deep point of view, the reader is restricted to only what the point of view character (POVC) knows, sees, hears, feels, touches, etc. But it’s also a very intimate and immediate style of writing, so just as we often reflect on the past, the memories are triggered by something in the here and now — a smell, a sound.

Answer The Why

With any bit of backstory or worldbuilding info you include, ask yourself why you’re putting that there, in that scene, right now. Is there an organic reason for the character to think of it? Otherwise it turns into what I call I-have-a-puppy syndrome. I’ve been a teacher in a variety of formal capacities, and it never fails that in a group of young children someone feels left out and interrupts the conversation by bouncing up and down, their hand shooting up in the air, to say, “I have a puppy!”

That’s what it feels like to the reader to be jerked out of the character’s head and sent on a bunny trail that neither feels organic to the moment or the character.

So, ask why you want to include that information in that place of the story. Ask why your readers need that information. Often, the reader needs only a fraction of what we think they need, but be sure and offer context for the character and the setting. Giving the reader too little information is as bad as too much.

Finally, ask whether the character really would be thinking or talking about that bit of backstory or worldbuilding. Because we rarely explain things to ourselves that we already know.

There’s Bob with Cindy, his third girlfriend this year.

There’s Bob. Is it Cindy? No, that was the second one. Mindy? I don’t remember.

Do you struggle to identify info dumps in your work? What’s your achilles heel – what kind of info dumps are you most prone to committing without realizing it?

Make sure you check out my book Method Acting for Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layering.

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