Welcome to “An Author’s Voice” where I’ll discuss the craft behind writing and illustrate the points with my own work or discuss other well known examples.
Episode One : The Perception Filter
Technomancer is a multiple POV novel blending science fiction and fantasy realms. I chose multiple points of view for the story for two primary reasons: one,I wanted the interiority of widely differing characters and world-views, and two, I wanted to set the stage to show action not visible or known by the main characters without reverting to an omniscient POV.
Of course, multiple POVs create other challenges. One of those is keeping character voice clear and distinct for the reader. I personally dislike books that cheat and announce an explicit narrator at the chapter or scene shift. Yes, it helps readers orient themselves, but it also feels like dismissing the reader’s intelligence.
To keep characters distinct without resorting to such a method, an author must be deliberate in filtering what and how each character processes and interacts with the world around them. This creates differences in perception by the character, which will create alternative reactions to the world around them.
This is the perception gap, or perception filter.
Let’s take a look:
The Challenge : Put two characters in the same room. Make them see completely different things.
Why would you want to do that?
Because if Finn and Elara walk into a temple and both notice the architecture, you’ve got one voice wearing two names. POV isn’t about who’s talking. It’s about what they’re capable of perceiving. A character who’s trained as a priestess since age five doesn’t see a room the way a hacker from New York sees it.
If your POV shift only changes the narrator’s name and pronouns, you haven’t shifted POV at all.
Here’s How I Did It: Elara reads people through lunar intuition and moral character, not appearance first. She perceives someone’s inner state before she notices their clothes. Earth-specific observations — ancestry categories, academic credentials, specific brand names — are POV errors in her scenes. She literally doesn’t have the frame of reference.
Finn, in the same room, would notice the exits, the tech, the power dynamics. He’d clock the security cameras and the Wi-Fi signal before he noticed the stained glass. The constraint isn’t “they have different opinions.” It’s “they have different sensory vocabularies.”
When Elara perceives a threat, she feels it as lunar intuition pulling her attention. When Finn perceives a threat, he calculates angles and options. Same danger. Different nervous systems.
Let’s see an example
Two characters. Same morning. Same city. One is a priestess from another dimension. The other is a hacker on the run. This is Chapter Eight. This is what each of them sees.
Elara felt naked despite being clothed. She was used to sensing a weave of moonbeams providing her priestess’s attire. Now she wore loose, coarse jeans and a scratchy woolen shirt like that of a laborer but at least had a silky-smooth camisole underneath and shoes that fit. She had her own tan jacket to keep away the chill, and a ‘baseball cap’ to cover her head. The clothes were a step up from the hand-me-downs Finn had found in his closet but were not things she looked forward to donning. The absence of that subtle caress of magic made her nervous and self-conscious.
At least the food smelled good, she thought. The busy ‘diner’ Finn took her to was filled with polished stone and metal. A long counter dominated the room and a woman in a plain uniform bustled back and forth behind it, serving the patrons with practiced ease.
Same chapter. Same city. Now through Finn’s eyes.
Finn watched the crowd ebb and flow, glancing at his phone and waiting for the small blue dot on his screen to materialize into the person he was expecting. The plaza was always busy. It was a major pedestrian transit point due to some idiot’s poor planning. Two subway stations were a block apart, with no connection except to go up to the street and cross this plaza only to re-enter the underground stations. Their poor planning was his opportunity. Thankfully, it was not raining or otherwise miserable outside.
Finn considered Elara sitting a short distance away, sipping a cup of tea he had purchased for her with clear instructions. Stay at the small table, sip, but don’t finish the tea, watch the crowds but don’t stare at anyone, and rise and follow him when he meets Amy. Hopefully, she would be able to do that much in what was obviously a strange world for her.
Same world. Different nervous systems.
Hopefully, this shows the perception filter is much more subtle than putting a label for the narrator at the top of each scene or chapter. The benefit, it creates clear separation between the character’s vocabulary and interiority.
In my example, Finn noticing another character’s emotions is a flag during editing. Does he really know they’re “sad”? What specific observations make him reach that conclusion? In turn, this makes me a stronger writer and better storyteller.
Fellow authors: Do you write multiple POV stories?If so, have you considered the different kinds of perception and observational skills that are unique to each POV character? Do you watch for shifts in their distinctive narrative voices? Does part of your character description and notes include their unique sensory vocabulary?
If not, why not?
Even if you have a single POV story, defining how the character sees and interacts with the world will strengthen them for the reader. Give it a try and see.
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’d like to hear or read more of this sort of thing, subscribe to my email list and follow me on social media.
Until next time, thanks for following along.
Charlie Forêt 
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