I'm curious if some of the examples of head-hopping that people say they see in published books, particularly examples of it done well, are actually cases of a POV character interpreting another character's thoughts or projecting onto them. I think the difference is important but not always immediately obvious. For example, let's say you have a passage like this:
A woman sat next to him at the bar. She kept an empty stool between them, but when she saw Bob watching her, she gave him a shy smile. She waited for him to make the first move.
This could be dipping into the woman's POV, but it could also be Bob assuming that she's flirting with him and wants him to make a move. Maybe it's actually an important part of Bob's character that he thinks like this. Similarly, you could have a character who likes to sit in the bus and come up with elaborate fantasies about what the other passengers are thinking.
Head-hopping stands out because it's a blatant shift and it's clear we're no longer observing the character through the POV character's eyes. This would be head-hopping, if the story wasn't in omniscient POV:
A woman sat down next to Bob at the bar and gave him a shy smile. Finally, a single woman who looked interested in him. Bob would try to order her a drink when the bartender came around.
The woman, Jane, was wondering if she should move. She didn't like the look of the guy next to her.
In this scenario, Jane clearly has her own thoughts that aren't just Bob's assumptions. There's also information about her (her name) that Bob wouldn't know. So it's definitely head-hopping if the story is supposed to be in close third.
This is a good point too. Writers who talk about
"deep pov" techniques mention the importance of using language in a way that makes it clear when a pov character is guessing at, or attributing thoughts or motivations to another. People are less likely to misinterpret it as head hopping when it's done in first person. Ironically, writing in a more distant third person, whether it's a distant limited third or omniscient third, wouldn't have this issue, because the use of filters like "guessed" or "knew" or whatever makes it clear when a pov (or character of focus in omniscient) "knows" something.
I entered the room. "Oh, Hi," Tom said without looking up. He was angry, really angry this time.
Sometimes the guideline to write limited third just like first with different pronouns can lead to problems, but adding filters isn't necessarily the answer either. Maybe changing it to,
Oh God, he was angry, really angry, or something like that would help in limited third. But even when it's done very carefully, some people might miss the fact that it's the pov character attributing a motivation to another character (and this can be correct or incorrect).
When I change character POV, I denote the change with a # sign at the very beginning of the change OR start a new chapter.
If you use a scene break ("a # sign"), but then don't actually change the scene, but stay in the same scene with a different POV, that to me would count as bad head hopping.
Maybe it would to you, but I've never run across another writer who describes it this way. The soft scene break (often denoted by a simple line break in published novels) is a perfectly legitimate technique, used in many trade published novels, and it's fine to change povs without changing settings if doing so advances the story. I've never had anyone tell me it was wrong or confusing in workshop groups. Maybe it could be confusing if the writer doesn't quickly ground the reader in the location and character, or if the end of the last scene felt like it was leading to a shift in location and not just perspective, and the reader expects the scene to commence in a new location.
I agree that doing this repeatedly within the same setting, staying with each pov character for just a few lines, can be almost as annoying as head hopping, but that would be an extreme example. And even that could have utility, as the story I linked up thread illustrates.
