Am I head hopping? If so, how do I stop?

[hopewrites]

Thanks in advance for advice and help. (Also grammarians, please red-pen me.) I've made seperation markers where I think the head hopping is going on. If it flows better without them I'll ditch them. What I'd really like is to get the story flow right. What I realized was that I was close in on one character then close in on another. Covering all pov's during the scene.
I dont know how or who's pov to cut, or if this is even my problem.

Opening. (If this doesn't work as an opening PLEASE says so, also why.)
One swear. Will be astricated out.

---

Amy fanned her wings gently in the soft autumn shade. It had been an interesting life, each stage lived to its fullest. As a pupa she ate in the sun, daringly dangling from the furthest leaf possible. Her chrysalis rode out a windstorm, the branch might have broken, but the grad student that found her next morning made sure she emerged in a relocation program. Now, after flying where none of her kind had flown in decades, her children safely scattered on the forest floor, she wondered... Where would life take her next?

~

“This’ll show ‘em I’m not a fool.”

Chester held his coated insect pin aloft for a moment, savoring the thought of validation*.

Then, he struck.

~

As the pin passed through her body, Amy felt a strange sensation. Not like death at all.

~

“What! Who’s screaming?” Chester cried.

“What the hell am I?” Amy shrieked behind him.

“You’re a girl you idiot. Stop screaming.” Where’d that damned butterfly go?

“I wasn’t a girl before you stuck me!” Amy felt a strange sensation in her stomach.

“What are you talking about.” Chester sighed. Nothing had gone right today. His experiment to preserve live butterflies with pins coated with his now-never-to-be-patented ‘life juice’ was turning out to be an utter failure.

“With your death pin! You stuck me! You were going to pin me up on some wall! I know your type. My chrysalis was handled by an entomologist too.” Amy tried again to fan her wings in agitation. But only her flimsy human arms moved.

“Your what?” Chester absently asked without looking up.

“You heard me! Now give me back my body or I’ll do something drastic with this one!”

“What he hell kind of threat is that?”

“I don’t know! I’m hysterical! What the hell am I anyway, ‘girl’ doesn’t explain anything.”

“Um… you’re human. Like me.” This day just gets worse and worse.

“HUMAN!? Oh gees! I was hoping for something better than that when I died; you guys suck.”

“Wait!" Chester finally stopped looking for the butterfly and began to pay attention to the woman behind him. "Are you saying you’re the butterfly that disappeared when I stuck it with my Life Pin?” his incredulation cracked his voice as though he was back in his teens.

“I’m alive aren’t I?”

“WHY THE **** ARE YOU NAKED!”

“YOU TELL ME SCIENCE BOY!” Amy finally figured out the right pose, hands on hips, eyes glowering.

Chester ripped off his lab coat and flung it at Amy while his mind tried to tumble past what he had just seen and realize what he had just done.

As she bent over to pick it up, strange gossamer threads brushed her shoulders and surrounded her field of vision. Amy screamed again.

“Now what?” Chester looked up at her only to be blindsided, again, by her beauty.

Amy was shrieking and trying to escape her long auburn hair.

“Of all the...” Chester caught hold of her. Grabbed the coat off the grass, and tugged it around her. “I’m Chester. What’s your name butterfly?”

“Amy.” She ran her fingers through her hair. Not a spider web after all.

---

*this word doesn't work for me. Can I get some suggestions on what the word is for what I mean? Appreciated? Recognized? Proof of his shinning brilliant character that doesn't exist because he's an overgrasping ****head... is there a word for that, the word that sort of person would use for what they expect from the world?
substantiation?

 

[SciFrac]

Yes, you're head popping. You start off talking about Amy, then we get internal motivation of the scientist. I think you should stay with Amy's POV since she is experiencing a huge change at the moment. If you want to jump into Chester later, do it in a completely separate scene. This includes deleting the "grad student" comment in your opening para. Unless you want to write in omniscient, in which case, your narrator plays a character all its own, and would need further development.

 

[Cory Swanson]

I agree. The phrase "grad student" is kind of abrupt. I was asking myself what kind of grad student, why was he out there. If you are not going to explain more, maybe leave out that phrase and fill in the holes later.

 

[JaeDarcy]

Yes, it's head hopping. =/
The excess marking you did may have made it tougher to read, also. But it was definitely confusing.
I don't know if it fits the character or not, but if you stick with Amy's POV, you could get some of Chester's thoughts out there by having him speak them aloud? (Even to himself.)

 

[pambaddeley]

Not that you'll be keeping that bit as it is part of the headhopping but 'his incredulation cracked his voice' - incredulity would be the word you were looking for. Though I wouldn't write it that way anyway, as it sounds a bit clunky.

 

[Wruter]

For the * word I would use vindication.

If this was the beginning of a novel I would think the POV changes too abrupt but it works as a short. It's not head hopping as long as the changes are marked as you've done here - you could use paragraph breaks and/or italics. It think it totally worked as an opening and the flow - at least for a short, where the reader expects brevity and dissonance - was fine to me.

Also, yay for manic pixie dream girls!

 

[J Riff]

Noooo... this is absolutely acceptable. It's still a draft, but zero problem following it. It goes Amy/Chester/Amy and Chester. Not even close to problematic. I like 'incredulation' but it prolly isn't in the dictionary, yet. )

 

[tinkerdan]

The first part with all the breaks is okay for switching from head to head.
The last part keeps switching back and forth between butterfly girl and pin boy without any of the breaks and I'm less inclined to want to see more of those breaks and could almost live with them being assumed after the first few; however I'd try doing this from one point of view--butterfly girl might be best--although you could possibly put the first half all in butterfly girl's POV and then make a break and then do Pin Boy POV. However that would require some changes in perspective of some of the information, unless you had each one do the same scene:making the reader read it twice; which is not one of my favorite things to find in the first part of a book.
That's just me.

The answer though is 'yes' it is head hopping--in the romance novel traditional style between a male and female character.

 

[J Riff]

At risk of seeming argumentative.. this is not even close to wrong. I'm glad I strated writing before headhopping became a buzzword. You could do this with 4 characters or more and have no issues, if it's clear. Sometimes it's the best, easiest, most direct way.

 

[SciFrac]

J Riff, can you point me to a published work where POV shifting in one scene happens this quickly? I'd love to see how they did it.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

At risk of seeming argumentative.. this is not even close to wrong. I'm glad I strated writing before headhopping became a buzzword. You could do this with 4 characters or more and have no issues, if it's clear. Sometimes it's the best, easiest, most direct way.

More and more I'm coming around to the view that we're losing the skill to do that.

@SciFrac - Captain Correlli's Mandolin does it all the time, within scenes, and is seamless at it. Also, Stephen King -
Beyond the Dome springs to mind as a particular offender - the last scene is a doozy for it. (And all the better for it.)

Anyhow, Hope, to answer your second part of the question (since it has been established as head hopping). Pretend you are one of these characters and only describe what they see or feel. Nothing else. Or, walk down your hall and describe it all as you see it. Start small, get used to point of view discipline and then extend out to whole scenes.

Or ignore it and get really good at third, shifting, limited.

 

[Phyrebrat]

It's immediate and gets right into the action, hope, I like it. I think the headhops are clear, too, and although I'm no authority on rules and so on, I agree with JRiff. It's like anything if you can pull it off. I like the humour in the voices but I think when you start cursing it loses some of the levity. I know we tend to go straight to swears in our own lives these days (Well, I do ) but I think it's a little shocking. Having said that, I like the juxtaposition of a fragile, delicate butterfly being foul mouthed when she becomes human...

The opening line is a favourite, too. i like the smart-ass sassiness of it.

For your word replacement of 'validation', I'm not sure. Perhaps 'his peer's revisionist vindicating.' I'm trying to think of something that sounds so egregious it's unbearable but I can't!

Nice piece.

pH

 

[hopewrites]

Thanks guys!
Working on two versions atm based on feedback. One with a straight Amy opening. One with a narrator manning the switch board.

Depending on how big a roll Chester plays I'll pick one. Don't really want to ditch his pov if he comes back later. But if this is all the page time he gets, I can't begrudge the loss if it strengthens Amy.
(My guy tells me he won't be able to live with having passed up on toying with her further, and to expect him back at some point. What I don't know is if that point is in or after this story.)

Phyre I appreciate what you had to say. Especially about the swears. I read your comment and thought "what? Amy doesn't swear. That's Chester." Then I reread my piece and realized everyone is wth-ing everything. Thanks for getting me to catch that.

Thanks again for everyone's input. J, Jo, thanks for encouraging me to take the voicyness of it to the next level. I'm going to parallel write that thought process and see where it takes me. Everybody else, thanks for letting me know I'd correctly caught myself head hopping, and for your helpful advice on how to stick with one head.

 

[hopewrites]

Ok!
Worked it from Amy's perspective. Now I'd like to know if this is better, Chester is almost completely out, I worry he feels like a brick wall she's talking at (probably the reason I was hopping to begin with.) or if there is enough of him left to have the scene work.
---


Amy fanned her wings gently in the soft autumn shade. It had been an interesting life, each stage lived to its fullest. As a pupa she ate in the sun, daringly dangling from the furthest leaf possible. Her chrysalis rode out a windstorm, the branch might have broken, but the grad student that found her next morning made sure she emerged in a relocation program. Now, after flying where none of her kind had flown in decades, her children safely scattered on the forest floor, she wondered... Where would life take her next?

As the pin passed through her body, Amy felt a strange sensation. Not like death at all.

“What! Who’s screaming?” a man kneeling on the ground in front of her, in a white lab coat, holding an entomology pin that still glistened with some teal-colored elixir, exclaimed startled.

“What the hell am I?” Amy shrieked back at him.

“You’re a girl you idiot. Stop screaming.” Where’d that damned butterfly go?

“I wasn’t a girl before you stuck me!” Amy felt a strange sensation in her abdomen.

“What are you talking about,” the entomologist sighed. Nothing has gone right today. His experiment to preserve live butterflies with pins coated with his now-never-to-be-patented ‘life juice’ was turning out to be an utter failure.

“With your death pin! You stuck me! You were going to pin me up on some wall! I know your type. My chrysalis was handled by one of your kind.” Amy tried again to fan her wings in agitation. But only her flimsy human arms moved.

“Your what?” he absently asked without looking up from searching the grass in front of him.

“You heard me! Now give me back my body or I’ll do something drastic with this one!”

“What kind of absurd threat is that?”

“I don’t know! I’m hysterical! What the hell am I anyway, ‘girl’ doesn’t explain anything.”

“Um… you’re human. Like me.” This day just gets worse and worse.

“HUMAN!? Oh gees! I was hoping for something better than that when I died; you guys suck.”

“Wait!" he finally stopped looking for the butterfly and began to pay attention to the woman behind him. "Are you saying you’re the butterfly that disappeared when I stuck it with my Life Pin?” his incredulity cracked his voice as though he was back in his teens.

“I’m alive aren’t I?” Amy's voice dripped sarcasm as she glared down at the self-obsessed human in the grass.

“WHY THE f*ck ARE YOU NAKED!”

“YOU TELL ME SCIENCE BOY!” Amy finally figured out the right pose; hands on hips, eyes glowering.

The entomologist ripped off his lab coat and flung it at her while his mind tried to tumble past what he had just seen and realize what he had just done.

As she bent over to pick it up, strange gossamer threads brushed her shoulders and surrounded her field of vision. Amy screamed again.

“Now what?” he looked up at her only to be blindsided, again, by her beauty.

Amy was shrieking and trying to escape her long auburn hair.

“Of all the...” the entomologist caught hold of her. Grabbed the coat off the grass, and tugged it around her. “I’m Chester. What’s your name butterfly?”

“Amy.” She ran her fingers through her hair. Not a spider web after all.

“Well listen here Amy. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in a mental institution, accept the fact that your human now, because nothing will change you back.” Chester gave a few seconds to the thought of helping her transition, but he knew the temptation to run experiments on her would be too high. “Keep the coat. Bye.”

Chester knew he should feel guilty. He did feel guilty, what he couldn’t decide was if it was over the lost opportunity to further his research, maybe win a Nobel Prize; or over the fate of a girl he didn’t know, but who’s life would never be the same again because of him.