We're a rigid lot, here...

[Gumboot]

Personally I distinguish head-hopping from omniscient. I think of head-hopping at 3rd Person Limited that can't stay in one person's head - that is, it skips from head to head mid scene, without warning and, indeed, even mid sentence (I just read a book that did this).

Few things so disrupt a story for me. I can't stand head hopping.

 

[HareBrain]

I'd love to hear more names of books that do this well.

Hilary Mantel's Fludd is probably the best modern(ish) adult novel I've read that does this well. It's not SFF though. I think it perhaps works because it's slightly humorous in tone.

 

[Warren_Paul]

There's no problem with using a different POV in the same scene, just stick a line break in.

I think the point Springs is trying to make is that some writers shift PoV without putting a line break in. That is what 'head-hopping' by definition is. Its an old-fashioned style that still surfaces now and again - usually by authors who were taught to write during the omniscient days which are now out of vogue.

You can still get away with omniscient, and I think that's the only way head-hopping will be accepted these days, but you have to be a very good writer to pull omniscient off without people saying it is distanced from the PoV. It's all about the voice.

The problem with head-hopping has already been mentioned; immersion. People imagine themselves as the character, they like to look out the character's eyes as they follow the story. That's why we have to write close to the PoV. So when you head-hop it destroys that immersion, pulling them out of the character they were imagining being.

 

[Mouse]

I understand the point springs is making.

 

[Boneman]

Leisha and Hex, thanks for the examples. I'd love to hear more names of books that do this well.

Shogun - unbelieveably good story and unbelieveable amount of head-hopping that not only works, it enhances the story... Written in the days before pov rules were thought up!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

For me head hopping is when the story is being told in the voice of a character. Omniscient is when the voice is the author's. However recent use in several best selling novels I have read recently is a weird and uncomfortable amalgamation between the two.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Personally I distinguish head-hopping from omniscient. I think of head-hopping at 3rd Person Limited that can't stay in one person's head - that is, it skips from head to head mid scene, without warning and, indeed, even mid sentence (I just read a book that did this).

3rd Limited, according to my understanding*, can shift PoV. It's still limited, so long as each PoV is restricted to its own sphere, there's no external knowledge.

My own understanding is that Third Person Limited cannot headhop during a scene. A chapter split into multiple scenes, with a different POV used in each scene, is absolutely fine.

However, a single scene where you see the thoughts of more than just one character is Third Person Omniscient, so far as I understand it.

With Omniscient, you're holding a camera, and can move where you want with it - very far away, or very far in. But it's still Omniscient if you're in one person's head and - in the same scene - jump into someone else's.

 

[The Judge]

Personally, unless there's a very obvious narrator, or near-narrator, I haven't the faintest idea how to tell the difference between omniscient when it's apparently OK to change from POV to POV within a scene without a break, and head-hopping when it isn't. And I sometimes get the impression from comments that which it is depends on whether that particular commenter liked the book or not, so it's omniscient and therefore acceptable if the book is liked, and egregious head-hopping otherwise...

Anyhow, I got a free copy of Heirs of the Blade last year, which is the seventh book in The Shadows of the Apt series and first published in 2011. As far as I recall, it had no head-hopping in it at all. (Bear with me.)

Since I enjoyed it, I went and bought book one, Empire in Black and Gold, first published in 2008. There, the POV jumps all over the place, within scenes and from paragraph to paragraph. (Or it may be it was written in omniscient and I'm too thick to see the difference. )

So, head-hopping wasn't enough to prevent an agent taking Tchaikovsky on and a publisher buying his series, but somewhere along the line he has changed his writing habits. I've no idea why, but if it came from his editor, why didn't he/she ask for the first book to be "corrected" before it came out?

As I've said before, I think this is something we agonise over more than does the general public -- the POV issue certainly didn't stop him selling a lot of books, and getting readers for his second and subsequent novels. On the other hand, he has stopped doing it, so presumably someone has raised it as an issue.

As to immersion, it never stopped me being immersed in a story before I was told (here) it was wrong. So, again, I wonder if that is simply an ex post facto rationalisation, rather than a reason.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

My own understanding is that Third Person Limited cannot headhop during a scene. A chapter split into multiple scenes, with a different POV used in each scene, is absolutely fine.

However, a single scene where you see the thoughts of more than just one character is Third Person Omniscient, so far as I understand it.

With Omniscient, you're holding a camera, and can move where you want with it - very far away, or very far in. But it's still Omniscient if you're in one person's head and - in the same scene - jump into someone else's.

My understanding is that omniscient is the camera but third person limited is in the person and you can be there for a sentence or a scene, or a chapter, and it is still limited if you are in the character's voice.

Ursa asked an interesting question i bristled at, sorry. I write third limited strict now, i would love to learn how to be fluid like De Bernieres, it seems the way to tell a story, the way the bards would have, but i will be sure to flag it up as an experiment when I do!

 

[Abernovo]

My own understanding is that Third Person Limited cannot headhop during a scene.

Ah, you never said during a scene before, Brian.

However, I was under the same impression as springs on what constitutes Limited and Omniscient.

My understanding is that omniscient is the camera but third person limited is in the person and you can be there for a sentence or a scene, or a chapter, and it is still limited if you are in the character's voice.

Where else could you debate the finer points of what exactly constitutes the different types of Third Person Point of View?

 

[SciFrac]

I think TJ has an interesting point. The difference between what is commonly expected vs what readers enjoy may not have such a strict relationship.

 

[Brian G Turner]

My understanding is that omniscient is the camera but third person limited is in the person and you can be there for a sentence or a scene, or a chapter, and it is still limited if you are in the character's voice.

Most stories are still a narrative voice, that tells the character thoughts - I don't know if using Omniscient close for a sentence is referred to as being in Limited, but my understanding is that the naming is used according to the consistent POV.

That means if - in a single scene (thanks Abernovo!) - you are moving between a camera view and character view, you are strictly using Omniscient - it limits itself only when the writer wills it, but will typically move about the characters and landscape.

And that if you are only in the character view during a scene, then it can only then be called Third Person Limited POV.

Omniscient can work really well - Frank Herbert's "Dune" is a superb example of using Omniscient to highlight conflict (especially Jessica, Paul, and Dr Yueh early on).

Where I find it grates is if someone takes a while to establish one character POV in a scene, then suddenly, jumps into someone else's thoughts - for just a paragraph, a page, or even the rest of the scene.

In epci fantasy at least, Limited is the most common of the third person views, but I find Omniscient very common in historical fiction.

Having different types of POV in different scenes isn't unusual - I just read Scott Lynch's second Lamora book, and while mostly in Limited, there are a couple of short intro scenes done in Omniscient. Each scene POV remains consistent, though.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I, too, make a distinction between omniscient and head-hopping. I don't think of it as head-hopping unless it's generally written from inside one character's head and suddenly jumps to someone else's in the middle of things. Something written in omniscient does not hop, in my opinion.

I think all of this is kind of like making soup. The person making the soup may agonize over the ingredients, and other cooks may concern themselves with what's in it, but for the people eating it, it only matters whether (1) they can identify the ingredients, and (2) whether they like them.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I always thought of omniscient PoV being related to the actual meaning of the word: a person is omniscient when they know everyone else's thoughts. They know everything, even how the story is going to end before it actually has.

From what I can see, the omniscient narrator is not one of the characters in the scene, but an entirely separate one with their own voice. Omniscient PoV doesn't really switch between heads because it's never in one of the character's heads to begin with. It's in the ghost-like narrator's head that is watching the characters and knows their thoughts. So that's how you get away with showing everyone's thoughts in that PoV.

So no, you're not actually head-hopping when you write omniscient, although it has a similar feel. To me, head-hopping is when the writer is trying to blend both limited 3rd and omniscient together, which I don't think really works too well. They are pretty much making the PoV character omniscient.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the PoV is to switch quite suddenly, and perhaps repeatedly, throughout a scene, how can you tell whether it's well-handled?

In my opinion, that sudden switch is how you can tell that it's not well-handled. And it's even worse when, as somebody pointed out, it happens in mid-sentence.

Older writers could handle these switches gracefully, and that's because there wasn't that abrupt change. They could switch POV a dozen times in a scene, but there was always something "neutral" between the changes: a bit of action (even if it was just somebody crossing a room or lighting a cigarette) or a description. The longer the section where the writer was not reflecting anyone's thoughts or feelings, the less likely readers would be to notice that there was a switch.

Personally, I have no problem at all reading books like that, because I read so many old books. On the other hand, I've (tried) to read modern books where the head-hopping was continuous and clumsy, and eventually they were such torture to read, I had to give up. To be fair, it wasn't just the head-hopping. I thought that the books were so bad in every other way, I was astonished they had ever been published.

 

[Gumboot]

My understanding is that omniscient is the camera but third person limited is in the person and you can be there for a sentence or a scene, or a chapter, and it is still limited if you are in the character's voice.

Ursa asked an interesting question i bristled at, sorry. I write third limited strict now, i would love to learn how to be fluid like De Bernieres, it seems the way to tell a story, the way the bards would have, but i will be sure to flag it up as an experiment when I do!

This is my thought on it too. Omniscient is a neutral third-party observer, who has access to information beyond any given character. This is different to jumping from one 3rd person limited view to another mid scene (or mid sentence!).

In the end it comes down to a subjective judgement call, however, so maybe we're all right (or all wrong...).

 

[Hex]

Actually, when I looked, there isn't a lot of head-hopping in general but there is this bit:

Ann screamed as well. "Hume, stop!" The rabbit was making a horrible noise, almost human. "Stop it, Hume!"

"Dragon! Kill, kill, kill!" Hume shouted, battering at the rabbit.

Mordion heard the din as he sat sipping a hot herbal drink. He flung off the duvet and sped to the spot. Ann saw him coming up the path in great loping strides and turned to him thankfully.

"Mordion. Hume--"

Mordion slung Hume aside, so that Hume sat down with a crash in a heap of frozen brushwood and, in the same movement, he knelt and put the rabbit out of its agony. "Don't you ever do that again!" he told Hume.

"Why?" Hume said sullenly.

"Because it's extremely cruel," Mordion said. He was going to say more, but he looked up just then and saw Ann's face.

She was fixed, unable to look away, seeing again, and again, and again, the way Mordion's long, strong fingers had known just the right place on the rabbit...

(Diana Wynne Jones, Hexwood, 1993)

It switches from Ann to Mordion (possibly Ann and then back to Mordion again, depending on whether it's Ann's POV when she sees him coming up the path) and then back to Ann. It brings over the chaos of the situation very clearly.

Also, except for Mordion sitting with his drink, the switches aren't very obvious -- most of it could be from Ann's POV if you wanted to argue it that way. I don't think it is because Ann's too horrified to make the leaps she'd need to in order to realise, for example, that Mordion's about to say more.

Anyway -- for me this is one of those things that either works (as here) or doesn't. I think getting dogmatic about it is sad.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Interesting. In context, I'd probably have a problem with it switching to Mordion's PoV sitting bit - I can see it being a bit of a jump if we are settled in Ann's PoV already - but going off this quote alone, you could also argue that it was completely from Mordion's PoV. There isn't anything in that particular quote that couldn't be. Of course what comes before and after it might be different.

 

[Ursa major]

Ann screamed as well. "Hume, stop!" The rabbit was making a horrible noise, almost human. "Stop it, Hume!"

"Dragon! Kill, kill, kill!" Hume shouted, battering at the rabbit.

Mordion heard the din as he sat sipping a hot herbal drink. He flung off the duvet and sped to the spot. Ann saw him coming up the path in great loping strides and turned to him thankfully.

"Mordion. Hume--"

Mordion slung Hume aside, so that Hume sat down with a crash in a heap of frozen brushwood and, in the same movement, he knelt and put the rabbit out of its agony. "Don't you ever do that again!" he told Hume.

"Why?" Hume said sullenly.

"Because it's extremely cruel," Mordion said. He was going to say more, but he looked up just then and saw Ann's face.

She was fixed, unable to look away, seeing again, and again, and again, the way Mordion's long, strong fingers had known just the right place on the rabbit...

The thing is, that there's very little internal stuff going on here, which means that there can only be a little head hopping. I've marked the words that are definitely internal in red. Blue looks like internal stuff, but might be divined from seeing things that are external. I've used green to highlight the stuff that almost certainly could be worked out by an observer.

It looks to me that only one indisputably internal thing is in that passage, which means that there's no indisputable head hopping. Only if we assume that Ann was the PoV character before this passage, then there has been one head hop.

Okay, the details.

• 'Ann saw him coming up the path' - Mordion could easily have noticed when Ann noticed him.
• 'He was going to say more' - we can often tell when someone is going to continue but doesn't. Besides, we've never left Mordion's PoV in this passage.
• 'then and saw Ann's face' - Again, we're still in Mordion's PoV. However, even if we weren't, all this does is identify the precise moment at (and probable reason why) Mordion doesn't say more.
• 'seeing again, and again, and again' - this is the most obvious evidence of possible head hopping, particularly from an experienced writer, because if it was in Mordion's PoV, it would be seen as clumsy: yes, you might might see someone staring at the dead rabbit, transfixed, and assume, from their expression, the reason why they were, but you'd expect Mordion's narrative to show a bit of the reasoning (or, at least, to add the word, obviously: 'obviously seeing again, and again, and again, the').

I'm not saying that there isn't head hopping - the way things are expressed suggests there might be - but it isn't blatant.

So I'd argue that the author opens herself up to an accusation of head hopping, but could very well argue that she shouldn't be foud guilty of it.

 

[Hex]

I agree it's not blatant.

When Ann and Hume find the rabbit we're securely in Ann's POV -- and they're out of sight of Mordion so he can't know what's happening until he hears the noise.

So that's a switch from Ann to Mordion (and equally, Ann can't know about Mordion and the duvet).

It feels to me like it's Ann's POV when she sees him coming up the path, but I wouldn't like to fight about it. Then Mordion for the action.

Then Ann for the aftermath when she can't look away (there's more -- completely internal to Ann's POV I maybe didn't leave enough at the end).

She might be accused of head-hopping but it's not accidental. She's chosen to use this approach for effect. I don't think that's the same as people who don't know what they're doing.