Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash
Most people have a handle on either dialogue or narrative descriptions. The last few months we’ve been exploring a scene with three people. I’m betting for most people, that meant a lot of dialog was written since the emphasis was exploring on how a point of view (POV) style and character changes a story and plot.
POV also changes the narrative description. A farmer might notice that a soil is dry, while a potter remarks on the porcelain white clay properties. A vegetarian might find the smell of a cooking meat dish offensive, where a hungry person’s mouth waters.
WRITING EXERCISE: For the last three months of exploring POVs, three different scenes have been created. The focus during those writing exercises was on the people, now let’s look at the room.
Review them for the scene descriptions. How did the scene change each time? For the different POVs, did each character have a different aspect to the room focused on during their time in the spotlight? For the singular POV, how did the world narrow or expand? Did sight, scene, or smell rise in prominence? When changing genre, did the palate/color scheme change – did the world get brighter or dimmer? Did the furniture and/or landscape become harsher or softer?
With these considerations in hand, pick one of the three previous scenes and increase the narrative description, filling in the white box. Word count should increase by at least 10%. If one hundred words, the rewrite should be 110. If a thousand, at least 1,100 words should result.
Why did you pick that particular scene to work with? Comment below.
This is the conclusion of a four-part series on the Power of Point of View. Each part can be explored as a stand-alone exercise.
Part 1 – March
Part 2 – April
Part 3 – May
Part 4 – June.