What is Head Hopping? And Why is it Bad? (with Examples)

If you are writing in third person point of view, you should almost always avoid what's called "head hopping," and stick to one character's perspective at a time. But that is sometimes easier said than done, especially when you are new to writing. All of us have head hopped at one point or another, so let's go over what it is, why it's a problem, and how to (potentially) get away with it.

What is Head Hopping?

Head hopping happens when the writer jumps from one character's head to another's within a passage; it's a switch in viewpoint that is typically considered an error. 

This is different from a writer changing viewpoint characters at a scene or chapter break, which is considered acceptable. 

Head hopping, though, is best understood with an example.

Read More

Point of View Penetration

Over the last few weeks, I've been talking about point of view. I talked about first person, third person, and then last week I talked about some ways to pick your viewpoint character for a scene. This post follows up on those. It's about point of view penetration.

Penetration

In the fiction-writing world, the term "penetration" refers to how deep the narrator gets into the viewpoint character's point of view. (What is with some of the writing terms?) People usually use it in reference to third person point of view. Many say that penetration, and its different levels, doesn't relate to first person since in first person we are always in the character's head, and therefore, we're always deep into their viewpoint. I'm going to argue against this somewhat, but first I'll talk about penetration in reference to third person since that's how it is usually used.

Read More

Pros and Cons and Types of Third Person

Hey guys, I'm back to talking about point of view, which was requested by an anonymous follower. Again, there are people who have talked about this better than I can cover in a blog post. The two books I like are Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress and Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.

Like I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, there are three points of view:

First-person: I thought I was going crazy.
Second-person: You thought you were going crazy.
Third-person: She thought she was going crazy.

But I forgot to mention (and another follower brought to my attention) that there are plural versions too.

First-person plural: We thought we were going crazy.
Third-person plural: They thought they were going crazy.

The plural versions are used even less than second-person, but, they have been done. I know there are some science fiction stories that are written like this because the story is about a hive mind. What about plural second-person? I guess that could be done too.

I did a post outlining the common pros and cons of writing a story in first-person that you can read here. In it, I gave some suggestions on how to get around the cons, and then deflated some of the others. But today's post is all about writing in third-person!

Third-Person

She thought she was going crazy.

In third-person, the narrator is someone watching and experiencing the story, but not participating in it. It's like the narrator is looking over the character's shoulder.

Read More