We're a rigid lot, here...

[Ursa major]

Okay, so there is head-hopping: at minimum, once from Ann to Mordion, once back to Ann.

And knowing that it has happened, from Ann to Mordion, the debatable ones would come into play a bit more, I guess.



* Calls the Grammar Police. *

Hello, Officer. Is there a statute of limitations on head hopping?

 

[Hex]

I've skipped some of Ann's internal thoughts, and then:

... she kept hearing that weak, clean little snap.

Mordion opened his mouth slightly to ask her what was the matter. But there was no point. They both knew what they knew, though neither of them wanted to.

 

[prizzley]

Head-hopping or omniscient? I suspect it depends on whether we have our writer's or reader's hat on. Does it matter for publication of our work? Your guess is as good as mine, since marketability is the key, not the writing style.

 

[ctg]

To me Hex's example reads horribly head-hopping and I'd have said something negative with if the Author would have put it up in the critiques. But to be honest, I don't have a problem with head-hopping if it's done correctly. In fact, you have witnessed me recommending authors to experiment with it and sometimes I even have given them some pointers. But this Hex example, taken out from the context, is just absolutely horrible.

 

[Hex]

I was working with the thing that annoys people being a leap within a scene -- which I'd argue certainly happens here.

I think it's normally annoying because people do it badly. It may well be that now it's something that would turn agents etc. off since it's so often an indication of poor writing -- like "I came, I saw, I conquered" is actually perfectly respectable but we'd worry about being accused of splicitude now.

(although maybe not -- and I must admit I read Shadows of the Apt and didn't notice at all)

 

[Abernovo]

One thing I'd argue about Hexwood is that it's a YA/children's book (I put it in the lower end of YA*). Several authors, Enid Blyton, for one, use head-hopping to better explain the story to younger readers. I wouldn't like head-hopping as much in an 'adult-orientated**' book, but I don't have a huge problem with some for a 'younger' story. In fact, having grown up with that style, I quite like it. I put my more youthful head on when reading them.

Hope that makes sense. Anyway, it's just my opinion.


*Almost finished Hexwood, Hex. Found the reason I was having problems getting through books recently - I need new reading glasses!

**I wasn't going to call them 'adult' books - that's something different!

 

[Ursa major]

"I came, I saw, I conquered"

was dialogue, so can be forgiven. And, to be fair, it's a straight translation from a language whose grammar isn't/wasn't the same as that of English.

(Oh, and I don't think the author bothers to submit his work to publishers anymore....)

**I wasn't going to call them 'adult' books - that's something different!

and, obviously, nothing to do with your need for new glasses. *cough*

 

[Hex]

What I read on "I came, I saw..." was that in situations like that, it's perfectly ok to divide the very short sentences with a comma. However, doing so is risky these days because everyone's on the look out for comma splices. So even though it's not technically incorrect, it would be foolish to do.

 

[Abernovo]

Ursa, you cheeky sod!
And, no, it's not. :walking away, shaking head smilie:

 

[Jo Zebedee]

A more obvious example, maybe. (There is a three way scene, too, but I couldn't find it, and it is amazing how well it is done.)

That night, just as she was drifting off to sleep beneath her blankets, she heard a muffled cry, and shortly afterwards the captain appeared in the kitchen, a little wide-eyed, a towel wrapped about his waist. She sat up, clutching the blankets about her breasts. - Pelagia pov.

"Forgive me," he said, perceiving her alarm, "but there appears to be an enormous weasel on my bed." This seems to move to Corelli

Pelagia laughed, "That's not a weasel, that's Psipsina. She is our pet. She always sleeps on my bed."

"What it is?"

Pelagia could not resist essaying her father's mode of reistance: "Haven't you heard of Greek cats?" all Pelagia. (I see, too, he has used a colon before speech, which was in a recent thread; Brian, you are vindicated. )

The captain looked at her suspiciously, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his room. He approached the pine marten and stroked it on hte forehead with a tentative forefinger. It felt very warm and comforting. back to Corelli.


This is done the whole way through the book, in multiple scenes, between lines of dialogue, but we're still in limited third, imho, there is no narrator here?

 

[Warren_Paul]

was dialogue, so can be forgiven. And, to be fair, it's a straight translation from a language whose grammar isn't/wasn't the same as that of English.

This was what I was going to say. It's directly translated from the original latin:

Veni, vidi, vici

From what I can see, in both cases they aren't independent clauses, but a list of actions. Lists are allowed to be separated by commas, yet usually have a conjunction at the end. I came, I saw, and I conquered. But can't you also do "andless" lists? To me, that's what this is; an andless list. So I think you can get away without it being called a comma splice.

 

[Mouse]

"Forgive me," he said, perceiving her alarm, "but there appears to be an enormous weasel on my bed." This seems to move to Corelli

See, I'd say that was still her. She's looking at him, yes? She can see that he's perceiving her alarm. (Last bit's definitely him though!)

 

[Hex]

Dunno. I nicked it from other sources on the web, like wikipedia:

Strunk & White note that splices are sometimes acceptable when the clauses are short and alike in form, such as:

The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up.
​

The famous sentence I came, I saw, I conquered falls into the same category.

and a site called 'grammartips':

~1. If the independent clauses are very short, especially if the subject is the same for both clauses, then a comma splice is probably acceptable.

EXAMPLE:

​

I came, I saw, I conquered.

And also Grammar Girl:

There are rare specific cases where it is acceptable to join complete sentences using just a comma. Yes, I just said comma splices are allowed in some cases. For example, the authors of the grammar handbook Things Your Grammar Never Told You say it is acceptable to use commas to join very short sentences that are exactly parallel: I came, I saw, I conquered. Strunk & White give similar advice in The Elements of Style. Proceed with caution.

In the andless lists I am responsible for I try not to have independent clauses -- so I'd write:

"I came, saw, conquered."

which isn't technically a comma splice because 'saw' and 'conquered' cannot stand alone as a separate sentence/ separate sentences (but it is, arguably, a construction of dubious beauty ) but you can have an andless list that is also a comma splice.

 

[Ursa major]

It does seem odd that all three sites you mention all use an example translated directly - I was going to say word for word, but that should be two words for word - from another language to show that this is permissable in English.

 

[Kissmequick]

The thing is about omni...


Look at a Terry Pratchett book. The guy is a master at omni. But the salient point is this: The narrator is a character. Sometimes they are more or less obvious, but that is what they are. An all-seeing, all0knowing narrator, who can see inside everyone's head.

This is not the same as head hopping. Even in omni, you ned to clearly and smoothly segue from one head to another (again read Pratchett)

And ofc if it's done well, you;re cool anyway (the very best selling author in Romance is Nora Roberts, who head hops all the time BUT it is always clear whose head we are in)

And there's you key. Do not confuse your reader (okay, except on purpose). Come out of one head clearly before you delve into the next. Have your narrator be a personality in and of themselves if doing omni, even if it's subtle (LOTR does this - it's fairly clear where Sam takes up the writing of the story in the Red Book)

Bottom line/TLDR? Readers care little for the most part. They care of a) they are confused and b) are you telling them a great story well?

 

[Hex]

It does seem odd that all three sites you mention all use an example translated directly - I was going to say word for word, but that should be two words for word - from another language to show that this is permissable in English.

Indeed. I wondered if it had come from Strunk and White, but actually these are the two examples they give:

If the clauses are very short, and are alike in form, a comma is usually permissible:

Man proposes, God disposes.

The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was
drawn up.

Anyway, my point was somewhat lost (at least, I lost sight of it). It was that although such usage appears to be "usually" acceptable, even to Strunk and White, we might be cautious about using such sentences in case readers assumed we didn't know what we were doing. Similarly with head hopping -- it may be a useful technique but many writers might choose to avoid it because it's often an indication of writing that is poor in other ways.

 

[allmywires]

I'm currently reading a book that zips from characters heads quite frequently, and it's really irritating me though it's a pretty good book. (Deck Z, if anyone's interested. Zombies! Titanic! American writers trying to sound British but still using the words 'blocks'!) And I think I really do prefer a rigid, single POV. Otherwise, no matter how skillfully you do it, it ends up being kind of...transient. You don't stay long with one person so you can't really know them. Rigid, close POV is probably just as good as 1st person in that respect, and it's funny because when I started writing I always said I would never write 1st person because it's too close. Now I find it difficult to write anything else.

I dunno, I just felt like sharing that little revelation with youse lot.

 

[Toby Frost]

Like Ursa, I see almost no head-hopping at all in the excerpt that Hex posted. To me it just describes a list of things that different people did until the last two sentences, which are from Mordion and Anne's points of view respectively. I think the POV flicks a little too quickly between them, but that's it really.

Jim drew his gun and fired.
Steve was hit and fell over. "You've killed me," he gasped, staring at the wound.
Sally ran out the door, into the night.

This isn't head-hopping. If anything it's omniscient by default.

I must admit that I'm tempted to repeat what was said earlier: if it gets past the agent and the publisher and the readers don't complain, I'm not sure I see the problem. But that might not be the most helpful advice.

Kissmequick makes an interesting point about the narrator as character. In older novels - Titus Groan springs to mind -the narrator is much more prominent as a voice telling the story. I suspect it's easier to get away with that sort of narration in a comedy, because the narrator is often more sophisticated than the characters and almost always knows more than they do, which is the basis for a lot of jokes (such as double entendres, where the speaker doesn't realise the second meaning but the author does). A good and subtle example of this is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, where the asides, while not addressed to the reader, are clearly from some other voice removed from the action.