Head-hopping is a mildly pejorative term for a writing technique that is usually summed up as “switching viewpoints within a scene,” followed by the strong recommendation that one should never, ever do it.
The reasons given for never, ever head-hopping range from the blanket assertion that it is “bad writing” through “it jars the reader out of the story,” “it breaks the reader’s identification with the POV character,” “it takes out too much of the mystery,” and “it confuses readers,” to “it’s too easy and you don’t learn anything.” The negative attitude surrounding the technique was summed up by a writing acquaintance with the dismissive comment, “There is never a good reason to do head-hopping.”
The trouble with this position, from where I sit, is that every single discussion of the technique that I have seen so far has difficulty dealing with the many successful and/or venerated writers who regularly switch viewpoint in mid-scene. About a third of the discussions ignore the existence of “good writers who head-hop;” another third acknowledges that there are good writers who look as if they’re head-hopping, but then redefine what they’re doing as something else (usually omniscient POV); most of the rest admit that there are best-selling/literary writers who successfully head-hop regularly, but then inform you sternly that those writers can make it work because they have lots of experience and you don’t. (How is anyone supposed to acquire experience without ever experimenting with a technique?) Oh, and there are a couple who contend that head-hopping is, ipso facto, bad writing, no matter who does it or how well they make it work.
What this says to me is that head-hopping is, like most literary techniques, something that can be done badly, or something that can be done well. Furthermore, the diatribes against it indicate that there are a lot of examples of ineffective, poorly handled head-hopping out there, which almost certainly means that it’s one of those things that’s easy to do poorly and hard to do well.
Hard to do well does not mean impossible, however, and it certainly doesn’t mean useless. Also, it never hurts to be aware of the tools one has available, even if one chooses not to use them. So let’s take a closer look.
A typical “bad example” of head-hopping might read something like this:
As she reached for the letter, Jennifer saw Anthony frown. She jerked her hand back and sat on her fingers, hoping he wouldn’t say anything. He tucked the note into his breast pocket. There; now she had no excuse to make a scene. He smiled grimly. He’d have it out with her tonight, in private. He turned to flag down the waiter. Maybe it’ll be all right this time, she thought, breathing a slow, invisible sigh of relief. Maybe he’s not as angry as he looked.
In the course of one paragraph, the viewpoint switches from Jennifer to Anthony and back. It’s possible to follow the shifts, but it isn’t instantly clear who is thinking what, and if the entire story is written in this rapid-fire, back-and-forth style, it could be hard to tell who the main character is supposed to be.
The first thing I notice about this is that head-hopping is strictly a third-person technique – at least, I have trouble imagining how anyone could do this successfully in first- or second-person, let alone why anyone would want to do so. The second thing that occurs to me is that head-hopping is not a useful technique even in every sub-variety of third-person; camera-eye third, for instance, does not provide any character’s thoughts, and therefore one cannot use this technique in camera-eye third person without totally breaking the chosen viewpoint.
That leaves tight-third person and omniscient. In tight-third, dipping into any thoughts other than the chosen POV character’s is a technical violation of the viewpoint, whether or not it is done well. In omniscient, however, the narrator can dip into anyone’s thoughts at any time, as long as it works. The above “bad example of head-hopping” would only be a bad example in omniscient because it isn’t clear and doesn’t flow smoothly.
This is almost certainly why good examples of head-hopping (i.e., scenes that work) get labeled omniscient viewpoint, regardless of what’s going on in the rest of the story. It also implies that as a technique, head-hopping sits most comfortably in omniscient viewpoint, where one needn’t argue about breaking the viewpoint, only about whether or not the scene works.
That doesn’t mean one can’t use head-hopping in a tight-third story, though; it just means that doing so has a lot of risks, even if by most standards the head-hopping scene works. (See comment above about all the people who think head-hopping is automatically bad writing.) Breaking the viewpoint can be annoying, obvious, and jarring, even when it’s handled well. You can make it less jarring by incorporating it in the style/voice of the story throughout, or you can make the jar a deliberate effect, calling attention to the one or two scenes you’ve chosen to use the technique.
Or you can bite the bullet and do the whole story in omniscient.
At least in my own reading, it’s the un-signalled shifts that distract. Mark off the new viewpoint with something more substantial than a paragraph break, and I feel much less disorientated.
Well, if a new viewpoint is marked off as new scene – even if the only thing new in the new scene is the viewpoint shift – then it isn’t head-hopping.
So if the headhopping is not within the same paragraph, it’s not headhopping? Then what is it? It isn’t always omniscient.
Here I thought I had a good example of it being done well, in C.J. Cherryh’s recent Foreigner books. The series is written in tight third person from Bren’s point of view, but the recent books have included chapters from the (tight third) viewpoint of Cajeiri. Can it still be tight third person with two points of view?
That certainly doesn’t make these books omniscient, as she limits herself strictly to those two viewpoints.
In the Foreigner books, the POV never switches within a given scene. One scene will be tight third from Bren’s POV. Another scene will be tight third from Cajeiri’s POV. The reader is never confused as to which POV he is following.
It’s when the POV switches within the same scene that the reader can get confused, if the writer is not sufficiently skillful. When the reader gets confused, that’s when the writer gets accused of head-hopping.
Wow, I never expected a second writer who’s stories I love to answer me! Thank you for doing so, and giving the example of The Crown of Dalemark.
I love most of Diana Wynne Jones’ stories, but the Dalemark quartet I first read in a Dutch translation as a young teen, and didn’t like as much.
Rediscovering her in English, years later, I read everything else I could find but didn’t feel like rereading those.
I think I need to give them a second chance now, in English – if the translation of the headhopping was clumsily done, that might explain why those books clicked less for me.
Thanks for the kind words, Hanneke.
I also love nearly all of Jones’ work, but certain of her books are especial favorites. Deep Secret is another one I re-read regularly.
What you’re describing is multiple viewpoint, where more than one character is used as a viewpoint during the course of the book, but each scene or chapter is limited to one particular character’s viewpoint. Usually, multiple viewpoint is written in third-person, but I’ve seen it done as multiple first-person, and as multiple mixed viewpoints (where, for instance, Scene 1 is first-person from George’s viewpoint, Scene 2 is tight-third from Janet’s, Scene 3 is omniscient, etc.) In the latter case, the type of viewpoint (first or tight third) is generally tied to the viewpoint character (George’s and Karen’s scenes are always first-person; Janet’s and Abdul’s scene’s are always tight-third).
Also, in this as in pretty much everything else about writing, the terminology is not standardized. What I call tight-third-person is variously referred to as intimate third, close third, third-person-personal, and probably several other things I can’t call to mind just at the moment.
I was just re-reading The Crown of Dalemark by Diana Wynne Jones.
It’s one of my favorites, and I re-read it every few years. This time I was able to note some of her technical skills. She does indeed “head-hop” throughout the book, but she does it so skillfully that I never even noticed it until now. I certainly was never confused by the POV shifts.
If you want to see POV shifts done well within a scene, check it out. See if you can figure out how she does it. (I think I could discern how she was pulling it off, but I’d love to hear what others think.)
I had never heard of or noticed “head-hopping” until I read about it in Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Steering the Craft.” I don’t remember the details of what she said but I recall her recommending against it.
The one example I recall in a published book was in an early work by an author I love: the entire book is in one character’s POV, but slips into another’s for a single sentence in one scene. Had to be a mistake.
We talk about it a lot in my writers’ group, where it’s definitely a “bad thing” – but hardly anyone is actually attempting to write omniscient POV, so any POV switch like that would be an error anyway.
I still remember a scene where there was a free-floating thought and I wondered which character thought it.
When I first started writing, I “head hopped” naturally, because most of the formative books I’d read were apparently old enough that it was an accepted technique. I was rather startled the first time I was told I couldn’t do it — not because it was confusing (it wasn’t) but simply because it Wasn’t Done.
At some point I started trying to write single POV, and now I’ve lost the ease I used to have with switching POVs in mid-stride. I rather miss it; I think (for the right kind of story, at least) it adds a richness and variety that’s hard to achieve otherwise.
FWIW, in the “bad” example above, I had no problem following the first shift. It was the second that was jarring.
Naomi Novik’s recent book Spinning Silver was all written in first person from several different viewpoints and I’m fairly certain I remember a time or two when she head-hopped in the middle of a scene. It was only a couple of times, but it jumped out at me. For what it’s worth I enjoyed the book a lot so it can’t have been too devastating, but I wish I could remember better what she did exactly.
I just came across another good example – Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. It’s told in omniscient POV, and internal thoughts sometimes switch characters very quickly. Mostly I only noticed because I was thinking about it, but there was one single instance where the shift was abrupt enough to be jarring. Overall it’s so smooth as to be almost unnoticeable.