Oh. Meant to say that you didn’t make a big thing about the POV thing. I find it interesting.

It’s just an exercise: I appreciate your insight. One of the hardest things about prose — and probably the reason I stopped writing — was trying to figure out what to leave in and what to leave out.

One of the things I learned writing scripts (and having lots of people read my work) is that it isn’t always the writer’s choice. If the writer hasn’t communicated to the reader, s/he’s failed. If the reader stumbles over the words, if they take the reader out of the story…

As Brandi Carlisle sings, “These stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to.”

But you know, on stuff like this it really comes down to the writer’s choice of what information is relevant/important. Either way, it’s a nice scene.

You’re doing great. My rule of thumb is to insert the name only when it becomes unclear who’s doing what or when you need to draw specific attention to what a particular person is doing. If you’ve got a man and a woman in a scene, you may only need to use names every few paragraphs; with two women (or more than two characters), more frequently.

I don’t think I’ve ever considered POV (or heard / recognized POV discussed) in this context / with this specificity. (Nicola pointed out that I shifted POV in a previous exercise as well.)

Not sure I quite get it, but it might click down the line.

Here’s how I would streamline:

The waiter was a good-looking college student with slicked-back hair and a pretty mouth, and when Tracy handed him her menu, she hesitated — exchanging not-so-covert smiles — before relinquishing it.

You had “drinks by the pool” to lead into this, along with the cues of “good-looking” and “pretty mouth.” You don’t need the smiles — we’ll know why she hesitates. For that sentence, even though we’re in Brian’s POV, you’ve set up the mirror-neuron trigger so we’re in Tracy’s experience for that single moment of sexual tension. The “not-so-covert” description brings us back into Brian’s POV from an intellectual perspective and dilutes the nice moment between Tracy and the waiter.

Also –

“Oh…” She sipped at her wine, her eyes surreptitiously scanning the room behind him.

We’re in his POV, so it’s not surreptitious if he notices it; and again, we already get her behavior. We don’t need the “pointer” to interpret it. I wonder if this might be a holdover habit from screenwriting, in which those pointers are necessary because there’s no narrative prose component to set context?

Nice job.

Brian scanned words he couldn’t pronounce without humiliating himself and asked for the fillet and a salad. He adjusted the napkin in his lap while Tracy’s eyes followed the waiter’s butt into the kitchen.

“Happy anniversary,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.

She blinked, raised an eyebrow.

“Our first kiss. One year ago tonight.”

“Oh…” She sipped at her wine, her eyes surreptitiously scanning the room behind him.

“I thought women remembered that kind of thing.”

She shrugged. “Some do.”