by Anne R. Allen
Whenever I teach a writing workshop, the hardest concept to get across is point of view. Almost every new writer wants to “head-hop”— that is, describe the thoughts of every character in the story — “hopping” from one head to another.
This is why head-hopping is considered the mark of an amateur. It generally indicates the writer hasn’t yet learned to show various characters’ thoughts and feelings through action and dialogue instead of telling the reader what each one thinks and feels.
Yes, pros do get away with head-hopping, but we can assume they know the rule and have chosen to break it for a reason. (It helps if they’re already making lots of money for their publishers. Established bestsellers can get away with a lot that new writers can’t. 🙂 )
If you can avoid head-hopping, you’re much more likely to win contests, get published in literary magazines, or land an agent. And you’ll avoid confusing your readers.
What is the Difference Between Head-Hopping and Omniscient Point of View?
Head-hoppers often think they’re writing in an omniscient point of view. But generally, they aren’t.
In true omniscient point of view, the narrator of the tale is a god-like entity with a voice and attitude different from the protagonist or any other character.
Omniscient point of view is great for high fantasy, space opera, historical fiction, and other genres where you want to create an old-fashioned tone or sound like a historian. This point of view distances the reader from the characters as if they’re listening to a storyteller spin a tale, not experiencing the action along with the protagonist.
Think of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, where the narrator addresses the reader directly as “O best beloved.” Or imagine you’re writing the opening of Star Wars. If you can start your tale with, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” you’re probably writing in omniscient point of view.
But non-omniscient head-hopping makes a book harder to read. It’s tough to know who the protagonist is, who’s reliable, and who’s lying. Readers don’t know who to follow and care about. We often don’t know who is acting or who is talking.
Head-hopping often treats all the characters as if they are protagonists.
Also, head-hopping is less realistic. In real life, we only know the thoughts of one person: ourselves. In order to find out what other people are thinking, we need to hear them, have someone tell us, or read their body language.
That’s why the third person limited is the easiest point of view for readers to enjoy. It’s what feels the most natural.
What is the Third Person Limited Point of View?
We call this point of view “limited” because it is limited to one character at a time. You can have several points of view in a third person limited novel, but not in the same scene. They are usually divided by chapters or sections.
This is the most common point of view in contemporary novels. I recommend it for most beginning novelists. The exception is YA, where first person is very popular. First person gets the reader closest to the protagonist.
There are two types of third person limited: standard third person limited and deep third person limited. The difference between standard and “deep” third person is how intensely the reader experiences the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. Deep is almost like first person.
Standard 3rd person
“’Run faster,’ he told himself. He could tell that rhinoceros was getting closer.”
Deep 3rd person
“Run faster! The sound of rhino hooves thundered closer.”
A Tip if You’re Having Trouble with Head-Hopping
There’s a simple hack for new writers wrestling with point of view: rewrite your difficult section in first person.
You’ll be amazed at how you can show what other characters are feeling just by your protagonist’s reactions. You’ll probably find you only have to change a few words.
Instead of saying: “Fidelity is important, Jake thought. He would never cheat on Jessie,” you can write: “Jake told me fidelity was important to him. He would never cheat on me.”
I’m not saying you need to keep it in first person. But try writing at least five pages in first person. Then you can turn it back to third person.
Now you can say: “Jake told Jessie fidelity was important to him. He would never cheat on her.”
See how easy it is? We’re back in third person and we’ve stayed in Jessie’s head the whole time.
And if you find you’re more comfortable writing in first person, it’s fine to stay there. Lots of great novels are written in first person singular.
But note: first person plural should be reserved for experimental books like And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. It can be something of a slog to read. (Personally, I never did get to the end of that one.)
Should You Use Deep Third Person POV or Standard?
This depends on genre, tone, and personal choice. Deep point of view immerses the reader in the character’s world. It increases intensity.
For thrillers, suspense, and horror, it can strengthen the emotional experience. It doesn’t work as well for light romantic comedy or breezy beach reads. Mysteries where the puzzle is more important than the intensity of emotion could be confusing in deep POV.
But I think every writer’s work can improve from practicing writing in deep point of view. And if you tend to head-hop, it can often cure you of it.
Mastering Point of View is Essential to Good Writing
There’s a quote sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde: “I never edit my own work. Why would I tamper with genius?” Some beginning writers tend to think that way. Or they’ve fought so hard for their word count, they refuse to give up one word.
Not a good idea. We can all learn new things and improve our writing in many ways. Learning to write using different points of view is useful to all of us. And learning to avoid head-hopping is essential.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) June 16, 2024
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What about you, scriveners? Do you have trouble with head-hopping? Did you find point of view baffling when you started writing? What point of view do you prefer as a reader?
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featured image from Joshua Rawson Harris at Unsplash
Brava!
I’m a huge fan of third person deep (aka close), & because I write for teens, I’m also a sucker for first person. Love the Wilde quote — how I wish that revising was even closely related to “tampering with genius.” Well done, Anne.
CS–I love writing in first person. It helps me feel totally in touch with my protagonist.
I’ve been prodded by a couple writers to write deep person third, but it just doesn’t feel natural to me. First person feels even weirder.
Fortunately I understood head-hopping by the time I wrote my first published book. But the fourth and fifth ones, I took it down to just one third person narrative which made it even easier.
Alex–I think a single third person narrative is the easiest to write and to read.
I started off as a rookie writer not understanding POV at all. I think it might have been caused partly by reading ‘classics’. I find many writers from the past wrote in omniscient. I thought I was writing in omniscient, but in fact, I was head hopping.
Then critiquers started telling me about close POV, and making suggestions about show don’t tell. I began to realise more about it.
But I still get a bit confused about omniscient and head hopping, even after 10 novels published.
Vivienne–I think that happens to most of us. For exactly that reason. I’m reading a classic mystery right now that’s omniscient. It’s a very detached British voice that is a bit snarky, even about the protagonist. It’s great fun, but harder to read. And I don’t think I could imitate it effectively. This is why I write my series in first person. 🙂
I learned through the first person to third person method! Fun times!
Traci–I can’t remember who taught me that trick, but it works, doesn’t it?
I’m smiling, Anne – As you have seen, I write almost exclusively (and that’s 20 novels and 60 short stories) in first person. I do so, because I love becoming the character as I’m reading (and also as I’m writing.)
I’m delighted to tell you that I have an exercise in my advanced Crafting a Novel course: I have everyone write a scene in third person close point of view, and then rewrite the whole scene in first person. Exactly as you suggest! It does indeed make clear any point of view problems a student may be experiencing.
Melodie–I didn’t even remember that, but that may be why I was drawn to your work in the first place. You get to be Rowena and then the reader gets to be her. Somehow it’s funnier when we follow her thoughts. (And deal with her ripping her bodice in every chapter. 🙂 ) All your mystery characters too.
I’m so glad to know a real college professor uses that method too!
I tried re-writing one of my early published novellas in the first person/present tense. While I was able flesh out the characters, the finished product just really turned me completely off to ever using that point of view again (I mean, I felt so bad about it that I didn’t even want to show it my college age daughter who offered to beta read for me for fear of her confirming my opinion of it). Fortunately, I still have the original version stashed on my computer, so I can once again re-re-write back into the normal third person.
Live and learn I guess.
GB–I did that too! I wrote a whole novel in the present tense. Oh, my. Exhausting. Again, I think that’s something to do as an exercise, not with a whole novel. Do five pages and then go back to past tense. You may learn something, but if you publish it that way, it probably won’t please any readers.
I wish someone would show exactly how what Louise Penny does in her first book, _Still Life_, is not head-hopping.
Eric–IMO, it IS head-hopping, and it drives me crazy. She’s such a good storyteller, she gets away with it, but she’s one of the “pros” I was talking about in paragraph 3.
I’m glad you agree about Penny.
The thing is, though, that it wouldn’t bother me that she does that if I hadn’t spent the last ten years being warned about head-hopping.
And I have to wonder if head-hopping and other PoV crimes really have a negative effect on the experience of readers who haven’t been exposed to the rules.
Eric–I do think that people who know the rules tend to be more annoyed when writers break them. It’s true of grammar, too. If a writer doesn’t know how to use an apostrophe and confuses “lie” and “lay” I don’t enjoy the book. People who don’t know grammar won’t be so annoyed. But they may find they don’t follow the story as easily and give up on it, not knowing exactly why.
Ok, so… reading the about technical—1st, 2nd, 3rd, omnipresence—POV is like holding a raw egg in my hand. ‘I got it. I got it. Oh, I don’t got it.’
You propel me to learn more 🙂
Lp
Londie–As I said, POV is one of the toughest things for a writer to master. As readers, we don’t always notice the POV the author uses–unless they do lots of head-hopping, so we have to keep flipping pages to go back and figure out which character is thinking and which one is talking. But as writers, we need to keep the POV under control and know how we want to tell the story–in more confessional first person, easy-read standard 3rd, or more intense deep. Or whether we want to go the omniscient (all-knowing narrator) route of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
Oh, how nice long, long ago feels. Can we just go there? I have to say, I often grapple with purpose, when my passion is words. Your response, in its self—for now—is like a thread that holds this little kite. Thank you.
Londie–Don’t get discouraged. You can do this! (And yes, I often miss the long, long ago. Especially when dealing with tech!)
I believe the choice of point of view depends mostly on the type and needs of the story. While first person is more popular today, it forces writers to filter all events past their MC, which can sometimes be tedious and contrived. They can’t be everywhere, so they must periodically cross paths with other characters bearing information.
As for third person omniscient, “deep,” or standard, again it depends upon what the story needs.
“Head-hopping” is none of these three POVs. Head-hopping is only when you write one these three POVs very poorly. It is simply a matter of craft, something learnable, that can allow you to greatly expand and enrich both your characters and story.
The more complex and nuanced your characters and plot, the more you need to get into other character’s shoes and head. Want to share more than one (or even two) characters internal thoughts in a scene? It is not a sin. It may even make the scene. You simply need to learn to use discretion.
I’d never recommend going Frank Herbert or Umberto Eco on your readers, dishing out lengthy passages of internal thoughts for most characters in a scene. However, you can choose in advance which of your characters can provide readers with the most interesting and insightful point of view for the scene, the restrict one or two other characters to short, tight internal reactions.
And, yes, you can and should show reactions through descriptions, but sometimes their thoughts can immediately and dramatically change the dynamic of the entire scene. Very useful when you have characters working in opposition to one another.
Last thing, third person omniscient narration is not a “god-like” voice, unless the author deliberately wants it to sound that way. It’s still just a third person voice, which, hopefully, the reader won’t particularly notice.
Jerold–Thanks for weighing in. We always welcome differing opinions.
Very well explained and very good advice. Head hoping can be very jolting for readers and create a lot of confusion. Thanks, Anne.
Olga–Exactly. We need to keep our readers in mind at all times or our book will end up in the Did Not Finish heap. Readers have so many choices these days.
I do some first person, and it does cut way down on word count because you can’t go backstage, hear Jimmy and Joan plotting. You have to stay with the character. And more times than not, readers don’t want to spend much time in the protagonist’s head. Tony Hillerman caught himself doing too much protagonist head time, went back and “had to put someone in the car with him.” In spite of his massive appeal, John D MacDonald used Travis Mcgee to go off on lengthy psychobabble excursions about the curious state of some aspect of the modern human condition. James Lee Burke spends too much on botany and Lawrence Bloch on stamp collecting.
Further to your comment on how we don’t know what everybody else is thinking, I defer to Elmore Leonard – All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
Phil–Finding the right balance between dialogue and narrative is difficult no matter what POV you use. Dialogue is easier to read, but when we use “as you know, Bob..” reader-feeder dialogue, we lose the reader by treating them like morons. And pages and pages of introspection can be super boring. But I do think some readers like getting a little information along with a whodunnit plot. I learned quite a bit about cooking from Rex Stout’s Nero Wolf.
My sci fi trilogy is in 1st person. My heroine narrates as if she’s telling her life story to friends around a campfire. She relates many things that happen in her own head–emotional reactions, flashbacks and dreams, noticing her own growth.
My wife’s romance/ghost story–which I recently completed after she passed away–is in 3rd person. Three main characters–a man, a woman, and a woman’s ghost. The story gets into the head of the man and woman quite a bit, but not the ghost.
My challenge with 1st person is relating events where my heroine wasn’t present. I did this in several ways: She saw it on TV. She had a secret “deep throat” who gave her transcripts of government conversations about her situation. She used excerpts from books her friends (other characters) wrote about her. This worked out well I think.
Mike–I find first person the easiest to write in, because there will never be any head-hopping. Third is probably easier to read, and your wife’s book with two alternating POVs makes it easy to move around the story, seeing things with two sets of eyes. Learning to give information in other ways, like seeing a news report or getting a telephone call takes a longer learning curve, but obviously your wife mastered it.