The police detective waited for Michele’s answer.
Just tell the truth, Janine silently urged Michele. Keep it short, keep it simple.
No way, Michele thought. She looked at Janine and then back to the detective. No way do I want to tell him what we were really doing that night. Not when I can come up with something better that keeps us both safe.
The passage above is an example of head-hopping. We start out in Janine’s point of view (POV) and then hop to Michele’s. So what’s wrong with that?
POV is the perspective from which the story is told, and head-hopping is an abrupt change in POV. An ambiguous or shifting POV can confuse readers and pull them out of the story by making them reread to figure out whose thoughts are being explored. If POV changes too often, readers may also have trouble connecting with the people in the story because they’re too aware of the writer manipulating characters like chess pieces.
Fine, a writer may say, but even though Janine is the POV character, the reader really needs to know that Michele decided to lie.
Some writers fix the problem by creating an omniscient POV, believing that allows them to head-hop because an all-knowing narrator can tell readers what everyone is thinking and feeling. Well, yes and no. An omniscient narrator is like another character in the story, with his or her own individual voice, which shouldn’t be the same as Janine’s or Michele’s. Assuming an omniscient narrator had already been set up, the scene with Janine and Michele might read something like this:
The police detective waited for Michele’s answer. Janine hoped desperately that Michele would tell the truth, but instead Michele decided to lie to protect them.
Now readers know what everyone is thinking, but the writer has lost the intimacy of Janine’s and Michele’s voices. So how can you preserve the intimate, subjective third-person POV without head-hopping?
A common solution is to use scene breaks or chapter breaks to change POV. This often works, but won’t in this particular example, because Michele’s decision comes in the middle of a scene, and it feels arbitrary to break the scene here just to get her perspective. One thing I could explore is whether this scene should be from Janine’s POV at all; perhaps I could experiment by writing it from Michele’s POV and see which version I like better.
Another solution is to have characters just flat-out tell the POV character what they are thinking or feeling. That won’t work in this scene because Michele is not going to announce in front of a detective that she’s lying. Another drawback is that believable characters act like real people, and real people seldom express exactly what they’re feeling. And characters who say exactly what they think and feel drain all the tension right out of a scene. What other options are there?
I could use another source to convey the information. Maybe Janine has a flashback to a similar situation with Michele, and that past experience informs her (and the reader) that Michele is about to lie. In other situations, different ways to convey information could include overheard conversations; discovered texts, emails, letters, journal entries; or interviews, news articles, and legal documents.
Another solution, and the one I’d probably use in this particular scene, is to have Janine draw a conclusion based on her observation of what Michele does and her prior knowledge of Michele’s behavior. That scene might read something like this:
The police detective waited for Michele’s answer.
Just tell the truth, Janine silently urged Michele. Keep it short, keep it simple.
Michele glanced at Janine and then looked down. She twirled a strand of hair clockwise around her left finger.
Janine had seen this before. Don’t do it, she thought as she leaned forward, trying to catch Michele’s eyes. Just don’t. You won’t save us, and things will be so much worse.
Michele looked up at the detective, staring him right in the face. She opened her mouth and cleared her throat.
Janine slumped back in her chair as she waited for Michele to lie.
This approach has the added benefits of showing, not telling, and forcing the POV character (and the reader) to actively observe what Michele does to figure out what’s happening.
Using these different techniques will avoid head-hopping and keep readers invested in your characters.
Just tell the truth, Janine silently urged Michele. Keep it short, keep it simple.
No way, Michele thought. She looked at Janine and then back to the detective. No way do I want to tell him what we were really doing that night. Not when I can come up with something better that keeps us both safe.
The passage above is an example of head-hopping. We start out in Janine’s point of view (POV) and then hop to Michele’s. So what’s wrong with that?
POV is the perspective from which the story is told, and head-hopping is an abrupt change in POV. An ambiguous or shifting POV can confuse readers and pull them out of the story by making them reread to figure out whose thoughts are being explored. If POV changes too often, readers may also have trouble connecting with the people in the story because they’re too aware of the writer manipulating characters like chess pieces.
Fine, a writer may say, but even though Janine is the POV character, the reader really needs to know that Michele decided to lie.
Some writers fix the problem by creating an omniscient POV, believing that allows them to head-hop because an all-knowing narrator can tell readers what everyone is thinking and feeling. Well, yes and no. An omniscient narrator is like another character in the story, with his or her own individual voice, which shouldn’t be the same as Janine’s or Michele’s. Assuming an omniscient narrator had already been set up, the scene with Janine and Michele might read something like this:
The police detective waited for Michele’s answer. Janine hoped desperately that Michele would tell the truth, but instead Michele decided to lie to protect them.
Now readers know what everyone is thinking, but the writer has lost the intimacy of Janine’s and Michele’s voices. So how can you preserve the intimate, subjective third-person POV without head-hopping?
A common solution is to use scene breaks or chapter breaks to change POV. This often works, but won’t in this particular example, because Michele’s decision comes in the middle of a scene, and it feels arbitrary to break the scene here just to get her perspective. One thing I could explore is whether this scene should be from Janine’s POV at all; perhaps I could experiment by writing it from Michele’s POV and see which version I like better.
Another solution is to have characters just flat-out tell the POV character what they are thinking or feeling. That won’t work in this scene because Michele is not going to announce in front of a detective that she’s lying. Another drawback is that believable characters act like real people, and real people seldom express exactly what they’re feeling. And characters who say exactly what they think and feel drain all the tension right out of a scene. What other options are there?
I could use another source to convey the information. Maybe Janine has a flashback to a similar situation with Michele, and that past experience informs her (and the reader) that Michele is about to lie. In other situations, different ways to convey information could include overheard conversations; discovered texts, emails, letters, journal entries; or interviews, news articles, and legal documents.
Another solution, and the one I’d probably use in this particular scene, is to have Janine draw a conclusion based on her observation of what Michele does and her prior knowledge of Michele’s behavior. That scene might read something like this:
The police detective waited for Michele’s answer.
Just tell the truth, Janine silently urged Michele. Keep it short, keep it simple.
Michele glanced at Janine and then looked down. She twirled a strand of hair clockwise around her left finger.
Janine had seen this before. Don’t do it, she thought as she leaned forward, trying to catch Michele’s eyes. Just don’t. You won’t save us, and things will be so much worse.
Michele looked up at the detective, staring him right in the face. She opened her mouth and cleared her throat.
Janine slumped back in her chair as she waited for Michele to lie.
This approach has the added benefits of showing, not telling, and forcing the POV character (and the reader) to actively observe what Michele does to figure out what’s happening.
Using these different techniques will avoid head-hopping and keep readers invested in your characters.
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