My biggest problem is POV

The POV character doesn't know what anyone else is thinking/feeling, so any references to such things need to be cut. Of course, we can all guess at what people are thinking/feeling from their facial expressions or body language -- but this should, for the most part, be shown, not told. (I won't go into show vs tell here because there are eleventy million threads readily available on this topic with explanations far clearer than what I'd manage.)

In other words, if you're in Bob's POV, you can't say what Alice is feeling or thinking. Bob has no idea. He can only guess.

ETA: Just read sunandshadow's comment -- if Jerry is being sarcastic, it needs to be clearer, because at the moment it reads like Marylin's thought (at least to me).

If you are writing to show Jerry's thoughts, it could be Jerry thinking sarcastically that Marylin thought spotting a rabbit was creative?

Hmm interesting. I posted at the same time as lisamarie, but I have to disagree, I love hearing the viewpoint character speculate about what other characters are thinking. I mean yeah it can be annoying if done badly, but it's delightful if done well.

Generally, you'd have to pick either Marylin or Jerry per scene to dip into thoughts. I've read omni that did what you're describing, though, if it's really hard for you to stop.

Night by Elie Wiesel gives a play-by-play of many characters' thoughts as they happen throughout the same scene. Of course, there are many other considerations in choosing POV, but maybe check out omni.

cut the underlined text. it does nothing to add to your scene. If you need to show how clever and creative, let Jerry respond to what she said.

What you've shown us here definitely looks omniscient. If you're trying to find ways of commenting on Marilyn's attitude, you can do that relatively simply by giving Jerry's impression of what she said - even something as simple as saying "Marilyn said, importantly." If you want to avoid the impression of using gratuitous adverbs (which isn't necessarily the case if you just use one) then you can give Jerry a sentence worth of internalized comment on his impressions of her attitude.

The key is to keep the narrative focused entirely on the POV character's sensory impressions, actions and judgments. This one would fall into the judgment category. As an author, you probably know what everyone is thinking in the scene, but POV is only going to give readers what a single character knows.

I wrote an article on point of view in the Internet Review of Science Fiction in 2006, talking about specific tools that classic authors use as well as the functions of point of view. If you're curious, it's here.

Kenteicher said:

My question: is it okay to do this or should I just eliminate the underlines words?

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First, it's fine to do in the first draft.

When you rewrite, you have a number of good options. One, as you suggest, is to cut the out-of-POV stuff. Another is to show us what the character is doing, in a way that we can infer the character's thoughts and feelings.

There are probably other options that I'm not thinking of right now.

I suppose another option is to rethink the POV. That's a bigger task to take on.

Dale

Kenteicher said:

I try very hard to write each chapter, or at least each scene, from the POV of only one character. While working on my draft the biggest problem I discovered was that very often, after providing a tag for a bit of dialogue, I continued with something POV from that character even though not the scenes POV character. For example:

"I love to look at the clouds and assign some animal to each shape,"Jerry (scenes POV character) announced, enjoying the comfort of the thick grass beneath his body as he looked up and the blue sky.
​

"That one looks like a rabbit," Marylin told the others, thinking herself very creative.
​

My question: is it okay to do this or should I just eliminate the underlines words?

Click to expand...

No, it's not okay if you're in 3rd limited. Jerry -- point of view character here -- doesn't know what Marylin is thinking, thus that can't be reported. Otherwise, it's what we called headhopping.

Unless, you're writing in omniscient, then it's really not Jerry's point of view, but the omniscient narrator's.

You can "fix" this problem by filtering through Jerry's perspective: