Go to any writers conference, or any writing class, and one of the things they will drill into you is: Don’t head hop! That is, don’t go changing point of view within a scene. To do so will “confuse the reader”, they say. Decide who is the point of view character for a scene, and stick with that POV through the whole scene.
This requires a brief discussion of points of view, and what head hopping would consist of for that POV.
First person: What the narrators sees, hears, feels, smells, tastes, and knows. The text is in the first person: I, me, my, mine. Others speak, but only in the presence of the narrator. Any time you get out of the narrator’s head, that’s a POV error. This POV is somewhat frowned upon by editors, because they say it’s so easy to make that POV error. “Jill and I went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. I fell down and broke my crown, and Jill came tumbling after.” But, Jack can’t say, “Jill thought to herself, ‘Stupid rock!'”
Second person: Rarely used, difficult to pull off, I don’t ever intend to use it. Let’s move on. “You went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. You came tumbling after Jack, who fell and broke his crown.” But this narrator can’t say, “You thought to yourself, ‘Stupid rock!'”
Third person: The narrator speaks from someone else’s POV, much as a movie camera strapped atop the head of a character. You can only write what that character hears, sees, smells, feels, tastes, and knows. So, it would take another character to be able to write this: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.” The POV can shift, but only in different scenes, even within a chapter. Such different POV scenes are set apart by dividers (a row of * * *, for example). But any given scene is always in a character’s head. So if the POV is in a person other than Jack and Jill, who has observed the calamities of Jack and Jill, you can’t have that other character saying, “Jack thought, ‘Stupid rock!'” That other character doesn’t know what Jack is thinking, only what Jack is saying and doing.
[third person] Omniscient: A narrator who is God-like, removed from the story, seeing everything, being in anyone’s and everyone’s head. This is almost unlimited. Think of the great epochs, such as any of Michener’s or Wouk’s works. Thus an omniscient narrator could say, “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Jack thought to himself, ‘Stupid rock!’ Jill thought to herself, ‘Stupid Jack!'” An omniscient narrator can say that because he is omniscient; he sees all and knows all.
There’s no question that, when I read, I prefer fiction written in the omniscient POV. I want to know what’s going on in everyone’s head. I prefer it. So, in The Winds of War, in the scene where Victor Henry and his wife are attending a church service, I like it that that four paragraph scene has the first three paragraphs in Victor’s head, musing about how he is aging and his navy career is stalled, but the last paragraph is in Rhoda’s head as she worries that her husband is soon to see her lover for the first time since her (then unknown) affair. It gives me a full picture.
Last night at BNC Writers, I shared four pages out of chapter 6 of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This is where a reporter, John Lind, has his first interview with the protagonist, R0nny Thompson, and Thompson’s manager. The scene is in Lind’s POV, with one minor exception. I’ll paste in some of the text.
“Ah, well…the team has been backing me up real good. They’ve gotten the runs needed to win, and they’ve been playing without errors. It’s easy to win when the team’s with you.”
Lind could see his plan was going to work fine. “But it’s more than the team,” he said. “You’ve had good stuff. What kind of pitches are you throwing?”
Thompson looked at Standish, who nodded permission with a slight smile. This was not the interview he expected, and was pleasantly surprised.
“I throw a lot of fastballs,” Thompson said, “but mix them up with sliders and change-ups. If my curve is working, the catcher usually calls for a few of those.”
Notice that the whole scene is from Lind’s POV. Thompson answers a question, which Lind sees and hears. Lind asks a question, which of course is within his POV. Thompson looks at Standish, his manager, which of course Lind can see. Standish nods permission, which Lind sees. Skip a sentence and Thompson answers the question, which Lind sees and hears.
But that one sentence I skipped, “This was not the interview he expected, and was pleasantly surprised,” is from Standish’s POV. Lind can’t know what’s in Standish’s head. He can guess what’s in Standish’s head, or muse about it, but he can’t know. So I’ve head hopped—or my narrator is really omniscient, not third person. An editor would mark this against me. An agent would probably mark this against me.
This has been through two other critique groups some years ago, and no one of the ten or so people who read it commented on it. So I asked the four others at the meeting last night what they thought about it. No one noticed it. One person said she liked it, because she liked to know what the other characters are thinking.
This makes me wonder if the prohibition against head hopping is more in the eyes of the editor than it is in the reader. Do they send head-hopping scenes out to reader focus groups and say, “Now what about how your has different POVs in this scene. Did it confuse you?” Do they allow some books to be printed like this, only to have disgruntled readers write in, “The book gripped me from the start, until you head-hopped in Chapter 6 when you shifted from the reporter’s POV to the manager’s POV.”?
I suppose I will have a difficult time accepting this position of editors. I’d love to have the book go out this way, and see how many reader complaints I get.