If you read this link from Cool Links Friday last week, you’ve already had a taste of what you can expect in Rivet Your Readers With Deep POV by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. No matter what your skill level, you’ll benefit from the book, even if it’s just a reminder of the rules we quickly forget. These are the rules you don’t want to break, unless you want weak writing.
If you struggle with telling, this book will also help. For each topic, Jill gives examples of shallow POV, then shows how to make each sentence stronger. You might be surprised at how often you are inadvertently telling.
Topics include (note: these are not the chapter titles):
- POV basics
- What deep POV is and what it isn’t
- The dangers of thinking and feeling
- The horrors of prepositional telling
- It’s ABC not BCA: Are you writing out of order?
- First person deep POV (because you can screw up here, too)
I give this book 5 stars. Best of all, it’s only $2.99 for Kindle (or Kindle apps). And it’s short. About ninety pages short.
The book also explains how to show emotion beyond the typical clichés (e.g. pounding heart). The Emotions Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi will help take your writing one step further. It’s the perfect accompanying book to Rivet Your Readers. It will give you ideas for showing emotion that you might not have otherwise thought of, both viscerally and externally. It’s the most used writing resource I own and also worthy of a 5 star rating.
Have you read either of these books? Have you read any books on POV?