Head-hopping rips the reader from the story
Are you familiar with the term head-hopping? It’s something that I’ve run across in quite a few of the books that I’ve edited and something that in almost all cases shouldn’t be done. (There are exceptions to every rule.) But what exactly is head-hopping and how can you avoid it?
The first thing we need to do is establish some definitions about point of view (POV). The third person POV (he/she/they) has two main options: limited and omniscient. In the limited 3rd POV, we see the action through the eyes of one character. (That viewpoint character can switch each chapter.) In the omniscient 3rd POV, the narrator is all-knowing and knows exactly what is going on in each character’s head.
Most 3rd person stories today are told from a limited POV, which allows the readers to really bond with, trust, and be emotionally attached to the main character. It allows the reader to really be in the moment. If you’re writing a character-driven story in the 3rd person, this is the POV you want to choose.
The omniscient 3rd POV is often misunderstood as thinking that because the narrator knows everything then the reader can and should know everything. Writers who head hop often think that they’re just writing an omniscient 3rd, but that’s not actually what’s going on in this type of POV.
Omniscient 3rd is told from the POV of the narrator, and the narrator decides what to tell the reader. Internal thoughts of characters are told in the narrator’s voice rather than the character’s voice (whereas, internal thoughts in the limited POV are from the character’s voice). The omniscient narrator knows all but doesn’t truly see through the eyes of the character; the narrator is reporting from a distance.
The language will do more telling than showing and the scenes are describing rather than really sinking into the moment. It actually creates a divide between the characters and the reader. For character-driven stories, you really don’t want to use this POV because creating distance from the reader means the reader is less likely to be emotionally connected to the characters.
So where does head-hopping come into play? At its heart, head-hopping is a shift without transition from the thoughts/observations from one character to another told in the character’s voice rather than the narrator’s.
Head-hopping is jarring to readers and takes them out of the moment, especially when the switch between characters isn’t immediately clear. The reader, who had been emotionally invested in the POV character suddenly realizes that they’re not with that character anymore. Sometimes it takes a few sentences to figure out a switch has happened, which results in confusion and having to go back and reread sentences to catch back up.
And when that happens, the reader gets taken out of the story. Even if it takes just a few seconds, the interruption has still happened and the reader is no longer completely invested in the story. In many ways, head-hopping is a betrayal of your readers, ripping them from the story.
When a reader has been following along with one character’s POV, the reader gets invested in that character, the reader identifies with and cares about that character, only to have that connection ripped away when they get tossed into another character’s head.
It stops the momentum of the story and makes the reader focus on the mechanics of the writing rather than the story itself.
It’s tempting to hop around to various characters to quickly let the reader in on what multiple characters are thinking and feeling. In plot-driven stories, head-hopping might seem like an easy way to provide information quickly.
But really, head-hopping is lazy writing. Take the time to identify those head-hopping moments, and use one of these strategies for revising the writing to help keep your reader invested in the story.
1. While you’re writing, even though it’s 3rd person, pretend that you’re writing in 1st person. That should help you as you make decision for how to describe a scene remember that you should have just one POV character at a time.
2. Use chapter breaks to switch to a new POV character. If it’s important to the story to get the perspective of more than one character, start each chapter with a new POV. Make it clear from the beginning of that chapter who the POV character is, and stick to that POV in the chapter.
3. Use a scene break to indicate a POV switch. It’s better if you can wait until a chapter break, but sometimes when the action is fast and furious, you need a quicker switch between POV characters. Use a clear break (a blank space or a scene break symbol) and keep to one POV per scene. Make it clear at the beginning of each scene which character is the POV character.
Note: A paragraph break is not enough to switch POV characters. The reader needs to be given a more obvious clue so it won’t feel so jarring to switch.
4. If you’re not sure which POV to use for a scene, think about which character has the most at stake in that scene, which one is going to be most compelling for the reader, and choose that character as the POV.
5. Use actions and dialogue to show how other characters might be feeling or what they might be thinking. What does the POV character observe? (Going back to the suggestion to pretend this is 1st person might be helpful here.)
The key idea to remember is that you want your reader to get sucked into your story and to identify with the characters. It’s much easier for a reader to do that with a consistent POV. You want your readers to focus on what is happening in the scene, not on the structure of how the scene is being written.
I’ve picked some books off my shelf that use the limited 3rd POV without head-hopping to show you how it can be done. I’ve also picked a book with an omniscient 3rd POV so you can compare that and see how it is different from the limited 3rd POV.
From Supernova by Marissa Meyer
The explosion struck them from behind, knocking them both to the ground. Nova’s body tumbled a couple times against the concrete, and then she was on her back, her ears ringing and her body feeling like it had just been hit by a bulldozer. All she could see were hazy white dots blocking out the sky, while a deafening static roared between her ears.
She had no idea how long she lay there. How long she was incapacitated, unable to move, unable to think, until the reality of her surroundings slowly, slowly began to take shape again.
The static subsided enough to welcome in the blare of sirens and shouting voices. Her lungs gradually started taking in air, and it tasted like sulfur and ash. When her vision cleared, it was only to see a cloud of black smoke billowing over the neighborhood.
She managed to get a hand beneath her and use the leverage to peel her body from the asphalt. Adrian was only a few feet away, already sitting up and gawking at the house.
[…]
She turned her head just as Adrian, too, tore his attention from the destroyed house and looked at her, his mouth hanging open, the back of his Renegade uniform streaked with soot.
In this book, the author has two main POV characters and switches between them by chapter. Each POV is clearly just one character in that character’s chapter. In the passage above, we’re in Nova’s POV. Notice how although both she and Adrian are thrown by the blast, the reader only gets Nova’s experience of it. We as readers don’t see what happened to Adrian until Nova sees what happened to Adrian—we can tell he’s not seriously injured because he has managed to sit up, and we know that he’s shocked because Nova sees his mouth hanging open.
The tension in this scene is palpable. Nova has been in a rush to get something from the house before it explodes, and she is horrified to discover that Adrian has arrived. The reader, too, feels that horror, the dread that something bad might happen to Adrian (and Nova). During the description of Nova’s experience of the blast, the reader wonders what is happening to Adrian. Tension builds until finally we see Adrian sitting up when Nova does. We feel the relief she feels in that moment. If we had followed along back and forth in both of their heads during their experience of the explosion, we would have known all along that Adrian was going to come out okay, and the tension would have fizzled.
From The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Buttercup began to tremble with fear. She was terribly ashamed of herself but there it was. She only wished she could see for a minute if there really were sharks and if he really would cut himself.
The Sicilian winced out loud.
“He just cut his arm, lady,” the Turk called out. “He’s catching the blood in a cup now. There must be a half-inch of blood on the bottom.”
The Sicilian winced again.
“He cut his leg this time,” the Turk went on. “The cup’s getting full.”
I don’t believe them, Buttercup thought. There are no sharks in the water and there is no blood in his cup.
“My arm is back to throw,” the Sicilian said. “Call out your location or not, the choice is yours.”
I’m not making a peep, Buttercup decided.
“Farewell,” from the Sicilian.
There was the splashing sound of liquid landing on liquid.
Then there came a pause.
Then the sharks went mad–
We’re very much in Buttercup’s POV in this scene, even getting her internal thoughts. Because she’s in the water, she can’t see what’s going on in the boat. Notice that even when the Sicilian winces, which doesn’t usually make a sound, the author actually says that the character winced out loud. (The second wince can be understood to also be out loud.) Yes, you could question how someone winces out loud (an intake of breath? a gasp?), but that’s not the point here. Buttercup is relying on her sense of hearing in this scene.
We don’t even get the narrator telling us that the Sicilian cut his arm and then his leg. Buttercup can’t see that, so they only way she (and by extension us) can know what is happening is through dialogue. And we aren’t told that the Sicilian poured the contents of the cup into the water. Buttercup just hears the sound of it landing on the water. Again, we’ve got a tense moment in this scene. And there is truly the question about whether or not it is really blood in the cup. If the narrator showed us exactly what was happening on the boat instead of giving us these audible clues that Buttercup hears, we would know for sure whether or not it was blood. Think about how that changes the tension in the scene. (And the scene is so tense that right at the moment with the dash, the reader turns to the next chapter and gets thrown out of the scene—the frame story of the father reading the book to his son—which actually amplifies the tension because the reader has to wait to find out what happens to Buttercup.
From Pegasus by Robin McKinley
The sign again, running all round the room. Even the footman who had opened the door and brought her footstool, who still stood near her at the foot of the dais, was a little less expressionless: he looked dismayed. Sylvi risked turning her head and looking at her father: he was cool and regal. His gaze was bent mildly on Fthoom, as if the magician were no more than a small farmer declaring a boundary dispute with his neighbour. She looked at the magicians arrayed behind Fthoom. They looked unhappier than ever, but determined. She wanted to turn her head again, and look at Ahathin, but she did not want to be seen to do it. Ahathin was still murmuring to Ebon.
“My lord,” said Fthoom, and again made his unmindful kneeling. He had never once looked at her, not even when he had tried to grasp her shoulder.
In this passage, we get to see several different characters and how they are reacting to the scene. But notice how those reactions are described. We’re in Sylvi’s POV here and it’s only as she is actually looking around at the individuals that the reader sees the reactions from each character, just as Sylvi does. We don’t jump into the head of the footman or Fthoom or anyone else. Besides what she can see on their faces, we don’t truly know what they are thinking. (She might even be misinterpreting.) But we don’t need to get into the heads of each of the characters here. That’s not the important part of the scene. Sylvi is the POV character, the one the reader identifies with, and being able to see the scene solely through her eyes and her experience brings the reader closer to her, makes the reader feel more connected to her.
From Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The tutor smiles. He steps toward her. “I shall never speak of it,” he is able to say, grandly, consolingly. He puts his hand on her arm. “Do not concern yourself.”
She flicks her gaze up to meet his. They regard each other at close quarters. He sees eyes almost gold in colour, with a deep amber ring around their centres. Flecks of green. Long dark lashes. Pale skin with freckles over the nose and along the cheekbones. She does a strange thing: she puts her hand to his, where it is resting on her forearm. She takes hold of the skin and muscle between his thumb and forefinger and presses. The grip is firm, insistent, oddly intimate, on the edge of painful. It makes him draw in his breath. It makes his head swim. The certainty of it. He doesn’t think anyone has ever touched him there, in that way, before. He could not take his hand away without a sharp tug, even if he wanted to. Her strength is surprising and, he finds, peculiarly arousing.
Although the scene here mostly describes the tutor’s reactions, look at those descriptions. We’re being told in a voice that is very much the narrator’s what is happening. Although we do get a bit into the character’s thoughts, those thoughts are simply being reported to us rather than described using the character’s voice. The narrator’s voice is clear throughout the book; the only time we get the character’s voice is in dialogue.
The narrator even makes this clear at one point, after he has described this woman’s early years:
This is the story, the myth of Agnes’s childhood. She herself might tell a different story.
I have to be honest: I didn’t love this book. I found myself having a hard time getting into it, and I realized that it was because of the POV. By having events and feelings being reported by the narrator than by one of the characters, I just didn’t find myself truly identifying with anyone in the book. And I’m a character-driven reader, so stories written this way just don’t appeal as much to me.
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