I had intended to post today’s Thursday Creation Review last Thursday, but cold ravaged our household. The younger members of the family recovered within a day or so, but us old folk are still recovering ten days later. I’m forcing myself to write this as the book deserves a good review, although it will be late and briefer than usual.

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

by

Lisa Hall-Wilson (Goodreads Author)

Are you struggling with writing characters readers care about? Critique partners, editors or agents saying you need to write vivid emotions? Do you want to write deep scenes and emotional arcs into your stories to keep readers engaged and turning the pages?

Writing deep point of view is like handing your reader a virtual reality headset; it’s dynamic, visceral, and immediate. This intimate and emotive style of writing resonates with contemporary readers, if you’ve got the guts to “go there” with your characters. This writing skill isn’t difficult to master, but it requires a shift in how you tell stories and sometimes those shifts don’t seem intuitive.

What Will You Learn?
• Eliminate unnecessary telling
• Create immediacy
• Effectively use internal dialogue
• Understand and use subtext
• Strategies to make words pull double duty
• Create unique character voice
• Tap into your emotive memory (just like actors do)
• Learn tips from psychology to write emotions with visceral authenticity
• Learn layering and blending techniques for writing emotions
• Identify and eliminate author intrusion
• Learn effective pacing strategies to intensify emotional impact
• Recognize POV breaks
• Know when not to use deep point of view
• Recognize areas where you’re not going deep enough
• Learn what an emotional story arc is and how to employ it

Take this deep dive and get back to writing FAST! Put Deep POV to work on your whole novel (or just key scenes) for an emotional punch readers can’t resist.

Review 5 stars

This short but excellent book was everything that I’ve needed as a struggling advocate of deep POV. I’d attempted to go deep a few times over recent years and tried to use guidance in online articles. Sometimes my writing felt as though it was getting deeper, other times it felt like another failed attempt.

Now, at last, I have a convenient guide on my desk. And as I was reading her book, I was writing another short story, and, with Lisa Hall-Wilson’s guidance, phrases traced salt-runs on my cheeks.

Okay, that’s more purple than deep, but this gem of non-fiction was full of so much immense value that my current writing makes me feel more confident. From simple ways to eliminate unnecessary telling and ways for going deeper, to creating voice and layering emotions, there are so many simple techniques to help a writer tackle deep point of view,

I felt that I was ready to delve far more in my writing with every page I read and I wrote. For me, this was essential and invaluable. (Apologies for weird phrases pulled from a catarrh-addled brain.)

I won’t remove a star for the lack of page numbers as there is great advice on every page. And it doesn’t end there as Lisa Hall-Wilson has a Facebook page – Confident Writers – and she runs courses and offers online help.