Is this okay?

John61480 · Nov 9, 2006

I know head hopping isn't generally accepted. But I was wondering if something could be done such as: one character is the main subject for half the chapter and then another main character takes over for the rest, with the possibility of coming back to the oiginal character's viewpoint at the end.

The reason I asked was because I posed this question with my writing teacher. He said it can be done (and that there are basically no rules in writing fiction).

I've seen it done time and again in the old and dated book Firestarter by Stephen King. And I was wondering if this is a valid technique that could be used nowadays rather than looked upon as a cheap gimmick like head hopping.

Opinions? I may be starting my new chapter with this technique because it appears it would fit.

Carmy · Nov 9, 2006

Yes, it can be done. Usually, a line space is inserted between the two POVs to denote a scene break.

Head hopping is not a cheap gimmick and is sometimes the best POV for certain genre like historicals.

zornhau · Nov 9, 2006

That's not head hopping, that's a change in POV. It'll work, or not, depending on whether the POV is where the action is.

Tracy · Nov 9, 2006

That's not head-hopping, it's FAR from head-hopping.

Head-hopping is where you know everybody's thoughts in the same scene, as if you're this omniscient being hovering above the scene. e.g.

"Hi," said Philip. He couldn't help but notice how fetching Jane was looking today. He always loved it when she had her hair like that.
"Hi yourself," said Jane, noticing that Philip was looking a bit dishevelled. What had he been doing?

See the way we know what both of them are thinking? That's head-hopping.

To avoid head-hopping, be in one character's head at a time. You can change point-of-view by leaving a couple of spaces to indicate that you're doing that very thing.

I personally, however, amn't too fond of swapping POVs even that often - but that's a personal choice thing.

But certainly to have whole chapters/sections of a book in different POV is totally fine - even the most ardent head-hopping-hater like me would have no trouble with that. So don't worry about that at all.

Gillhoughly · Nov 9, 2006

uts on editor's hat:

If you abruptly and with no warning shift your viewpoint character from one paragraph to the next--I've seen it done in MID-paragraph!--that is head hopping and I'll send your MS back smoking and whimpering. (If I'm in a good mood.) Shifts are my pet peeve and I make no apology for objecting to sloppy writing.

If you put a nice space between marked with. . .

# # #

. . .and introduce the name of the NEW V.P. character pretty quick so I know who's talking then I shall eagerly read on to find out what happens next.

My WIP has two V.P. main characters, and just to make sure everyone knows when I've done a shift I put the character's name at the top of the break. I'm leaving it to the copy editor to figure out how this will look on the galleys. I will also check those galleys very carefully to make sure no one goofed.

Smith
It was a dark and stormy night. Smith found his rain coat and got a flashlight.

# # #

Jones

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon. Jones decided it was past time to check the lifeboats for leaks.

Good luck!

LeeFlower · Nov 9, 2006

Head-hoping and omniscience are not the same thing. When writing omniscient, you're not head hopping. You're staying in the head of your omniscient narrator. The most frequent POV mistake in omniscient isn't giving too much information-- it's witholding it. When the narrator has information that's vital to the story but doesn't share it until the last page, they're breaking their contract with the reader (unless they're set up as unreliable from the start).

Head hopping is when you break POV by sharing information the POV character (or narrator) is not privy to. For instance, if Nick in the Great Gatsby had suddenly taken a paragraph or two to tell us what Daisy was thinking, that would have been head-hopping (unless the paragraph began 'she later told me...').

Back to the original question: it seems in general that a scene break is sufficient to introduce a new first or third-person limited narrator. Just be sure to establish clearly who is narrating each part in the first line or two after they take over.

Scarlett_156 · Nov 9, 2006

Whether it's ok or not is really not the point-- I mean, EVERYTHING'S "ok" in the world of imagination and creativity. But a technique has to be learned before it can be effectively applied.

Immature or inexperienced writers do this point-of-view-change thing a lot-- and most of the time that's something that will identify an immature writer; that is to say, it's very noticeable and creates a jarring effect. In day-to-day life, you know what another person is thinking because you read his or her body language, see him blush or hear him mutter something under his breath, or know him so well that you know what he's LIKELY to think in a given set of circumstances. Instead of moving into another character's head, therefore, why not use your powers of observation and description as you would in real life? Character A makes an educated guess as to what Character B is thinking, or Character A is thrown into a quandary because he CAN'T figure out what Character B is thinking.

That's one of the things that makes life so interesting-- you can't really HEAR someone else's thoughts, and have to proceed through the world by using your intuition and logic. (And is the reason people will pay me $50-$60 to read tarot cards for them.

Hurrah for the average person not being able to know another person's thoughts!)

An experienced and successful writer can change point of view in an artful way. I agree with the above replies that what makes a point-of-view change "ok" or "not ok" is how it's done. I would say as a general rule you should avoid changing point of view in a story until after you have gained some confidence with your skill-- i.e., after you have become published.

I hope this was helpful!

PeeDee · Nov 9, 2006

I've changed POV many times in the same chapter...if the story warrents it. If I don't have a reason for it, I pick the best viewpoint and I hang out there until a change is necessary.

I've seen head-hopping down well. Actually, it surprised me because it was one of the few times that my writerly self popped up and said "Oi! He's head-hopping! In the same scene! Between paragraphs" which doesn't normally happen when I'm just reading for fun.

It was Charles de Lint. He does it all the time, particularly in Moonheart. Mostly, it works just fine. But then, I wouldn't try it because he's Charles de Lint and I am not, and I'm not confident I would be comfortable with it.

Provrb1810meggy · Nov 9, 2006

Agh, reading this thread has confirmed it. I am head hopping a lot in my NaNo novel. Ah, turn off internal editor, turn off!

zornhau · Nov 9, 2006

Caveat: POV is one of those things which shapes your story. You can't just throw a switch later and fix it.

cattywampus · Nov 9, 2006

I'm with Scarlett.

LeeFlower, I learned in college that there are two kinds of omniscent POV: 3rd person omniscent, where you can get into everybody's head, but not in the same paragraph or even on the same page, unless you don't care if you are read or not. My teachers illustrated this by telling us to place the reader on the right shoulder of the narrator, seeing and hearing what the narrator sees and hears. The danger here is "author interference." You can avoid that by moving the reader into the narrator's head. Good luck.

The other kind - what you're talking about - is 3rd person limited, which places the reader into the mind of one character. Everything is experienced through that character's senses; the reader rides in the character's head. Here is an example of what I mean. Consider these two sentences:

Jessica came around the corner and saw the snake.

Jessica came around the corner and there was the snake.

Did you feel the shift in position between the two? The first is 3rdP.OM, the second is 3rdP.OM.Ltd.

This is just what I was taught, and what I teach my students, because I think it's valid.

LeeFlower · Nov 9, 2006

Cattywampus, the omniscient I'm talking about is the sort often seen in classic literature: "Marley was dead, to begin with." My example of head-hopping may have been confusing, because it was not an example of ominscient head-hopping (Nick's a first person narrator, unless I'm remembering horribly wrong).

The comment upthread about head-hopping being appropriate in historicals is what prompted my comment, because I've seen that sentiment expressed a lot here-- that period literature head-hops. It does not, in fact (at least, no more than modern literature). It just favored a different sort of narrator.

head-hopping is head-hopping, whatever the POV. I would also challenge the assertion that it can be 'done well.' Head-hopping, to me, is like Mary-Sueism: it's inherantly negative. If you're doing it right, it's not called head-hopping.

John61480 · Nov 9, 2006

Well, it would be hard for me to tell if Stephen King was writing in omniscient 3rd. This is because he does a string of chapters from an individuals viewpoint. And then in a few chapters following, he'll shift between several within those. I won't complain because they worked (for me). But I'm wondering if that is something that can get me into trouble nowadays. I certainly don't want to hurt my chances with an agent who may be a stickler for style issues.

And to be honest, I'm not sure if what I'm talking about is head-hopping. When I talk about viewpoint, I also mean thoughts. It is literally a shift in the middle of a chapter and it sticks for a while. Sometimes Stephen King will begin with a few paragraphs with one character and them shift for the rest of the chapter. Just to be clear, I am referring to the novel Firestarter. I hope this makes things easier to understand.

LeeFlower · Nov 9, 2006

John, I think you're fine as long as you let the reader know that you're making a switch. If you did it every paragraph that might get a little old, but if you're going half the chapter, then putting in a scenebreak and continuing the other half in another POV, you should be fine. That's not head-hopping.

John61480 · Nov 10, 2006

I don't know how Stephen King did it, but it certainly did not consist of a scene break. It was a seamless transition, almost like a head hop that doesn't jump back for awhile until the end of the chapter. It would be easy to post an excerpt, but I'm unsure if that is allowable and even so, I am unsure just how much to post.

Now, I have tried it, I'm unsure as to the success of it. I may post it in the SYW area much later in time when I get back to editing a bit. (Right now I'm trying to hit 2000 words max each day for 37 days, phew!)

PeeDee · Nov 10, 2006

The best way to let the reader know that you're switching, mid-scene, is to photocopy a little post-it note into your manuscript that says "okay, guys, now we're going to join Annabelle's trouble, already in progress!"

batgirl · Nov 10, 2006

John, scene breaks in published books are not indicated typographically, only by a blank line. Scene breaks in manuscript format are indicated by dropping a line and putting in one or more #s.
I'll have to check my copy of Firestarter at home, but I suspect that if King is changing povs that there's a blank line between each scene. However, he also does use out-and-out narration, where the narrator is an unseen character observing the action in the book - rather in the way Victorian and Edwardian writers would speak to 'dear reader'.
I think it may appear to be seamless because he's doing it well and the pace of the story keeps the reader from slowing down and checking how he does it.
-Barbara

John61480 · Nov 10, 2006

Well, here is an excerpt. For those that have the book, just check out chapter 7 from which this is from. It features two characters, Andy and his daughter Charlie. At the top, everything is Andy's, but the bold green is Charlie's. In the book, for about several more paragraphs after this excerpt, the viewpoint is Charlie's.

I didn't want to post a whole bunch, so hopefully this illustrates the beginning of the transition.

Is this really the Victorian style? 'Cuz if so, I have some studying to do.

Andy sat down again and put his arm around Charlie. It was very hard to think now; his thoughts were tiny silver fish swimming around in a great black sea of throbbing pain. But he had to do the best he could. He needed Charlie if they were going to get out of this.

“He’s all right, Charlie. He’s okay. They just took him down to the security office. Now, what happened?”

Through diminishing tears, Charlie told him. Overhearing the soldier on the phone. Having a few random thoughts about him, a feeling that he was trying to trick the girl he was talking to. “And then, when I was coming back to you, I saw him…and before I could stop it…it happened. It just got away. I could have hurt him, Daddy. I could have hurt him bad. I set him on fire!”

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “I want you to listen to me, Charlie. I think this is the most encouraging thing that’s happened in some time.”
“Y-you do?” She looked at him in rank surprise.

“You say it got away from you,” Andy said, forcing the words. “And it did. But not like before. It only got away a little bit. What happened was not dangerous, honey, but…you might have set his hair on fire. Or his face.”

She winced away from that thought, horrified. Andy turned her face gently back to his.

“It’s a subconscious thing, and it always goes out at someone you don’t like,” he said. “But…you didn’t really hurt that guy, Charlie. You…” But the rest of it was gone and only the pain was left. Was he still talking? For a moment he didn’t even know.

Charlie could still feel that thing, that Bad Thing, racing around her head, wanting to get away again, to do something else. It was like a small, vicious, and rather stupid animal. You had to let it out of its cage to do something like getting money from the phones…but it could do something else, something really bad.

(like mommy in the kitchen oh mom I’m sorry)

before you could get it back in again. But now it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t think about it now, she wouldn’t think about

(the bandages my mommy has to wear bandages because I hurt her)

any of it now. Her father was what mattered now. He was slumped over in his TV chair, his face stamped with pain. He was paper white. His eyes were bloodshot.

aruna · Nov 10, 2006

PeeDee said:
I've seen head-hopping down well. Actually, it surprised me because it was one of the few times that my writerly self popped up and said "Oi! He's head-hopping! In the same scene! Between paragraphs" which doesn't normally happen when I'm just reading for fun.

.

Vikram Seth does it A LOT in A Suitable Boy.

Scarlett_156 · Nov 10, 2006

If there is a "warrent" out for my arrest in teh city and county of Denvoid I'm glad. If there's a "warrant" then I'm still ****ed.

UrsusMinor · Nov 11, 2006

It's usually only called "head-hopping" when it's not working...

Moving between POVs without breaks is done frequently in both older and contemporary fiction, and done by some of our finest writers.

If you want to see someone who does it with jaw-dropping skill, take a look at Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto." Smooth, sweet, and seamless.

If you want to see it used as a deliberately bumpy stylistic device, check out McMurty's "Lonesome Dove." There are stretches there where every paragraph dives into a different head.

Staying in a limited POV, and changing POVs only between chapters, or at breaks, is usually good counsel, because doing otherwise requires a real command of craft.

And, moving from head to head may or may not be "omniscient." Omniscience is a bigger matter than just how many heads you can dive into.

Take a close look some day, in nothing but craft terms, at "Moby Dick." I don't know what to call it other than 'first-person omniscient.' Ishmael relates events he could not have been present at, knows things he could not know, and, in many cases, the narrative voice is not Ishmael's at all.

Don't try this at home.

Éclairer · Nov 12, 2006

John61480 said:
I know head hopping isn't generally accepted. But I was wondering if something could be done such as: one character is the main subject for half the chapter and then another main character takes over for the rest, with the possibility of coming back to the oiginal character's viewpoint at the end.

Opinions? I may be starting my new chapter with this technique because it appears it would fit.

Breaking rules and pulling it off is half the fun of being an author.

Is this okay?

John61480

The Elements of Style

Carmy

zornhau

Swordsman

Tracy

Gillhoughly

Grumpy writer and editor

LeeFlower

Lurker Extraordinaire

Scarlett_156

asdf

PeeDee

Where's my tea, please...?

Provrb1810meggy

zornhau

Swordsman

cattywampus

LeeFlower

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John61480

The Elements of Style

LeeFlower

Lurker Extraordinaire

John61480

The Elements of Style

PeeDee

Where's my tea, please...?

batgirl

Writting broad

John61480

The Elements of Style

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

Scarlett_156

asdf

UrsusMinor

Éclairer