POV: Three's a Crowd!

Point of View is something that besets and often bedevils many writers. It took me ages to work out the nuts and bolts of this technique. However, I could not explain it to anyone in terms that they would understand. Luckily for writers out there, here's an excellent article by Randy Ingermanson, and all is revealed.

Is Headhopping A Sin?

 Every so often, the issue of "headhopping" comes up among writers, and the fur soon begins flying. It came up recently in a circle of novelists I belong to. Some writers insist that there is no sin more vile than headhopping, except possibly teaching the cat how to smoke. Other writers claim that headhopping is an acceptable practice in romance, where many readers like it and a few editors even insist on it.

Is headhopping a sin? If it's so horrible, then why does Joe Bigname Author hop heads like crazy? Is headhopping just another "gotcha" invented by writing teachers to put newbie writers in knots? Isn't headhopping just the same thing as the omniscient viewpoint?

First things first -- we need to define "headhopping."

To do that, let's review the main alternatives. The two most common points of view in fiction are first-person and third-person.



1st and 3rd person POV

• In first-person POV, the author writes as if she is one of the characters, using the pronouns "I" and "me" to refer to that character. When you write in first-person, you put your reader firmly inside the head of that one character and it would be unnatural to get out.
• In third-person POV (the most common POV these days), the author chooses one particular character in each scene to be the viewpoint character. The author uses the pronouns "he" and "him" or else "she" and "her" to refer to that character.

When you write in third-person correctly, you put your reader firmly inside the head of that one character. You show only what that character can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or feel. Nothing more. So third-person is very much like first-person, except for the pronouns you use.

Either first-person or third-person puts your reader on intimate terms with the viewpoint character for the course of any given scene. This makes it easy to give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience, which I believe is the main goal of writing fiction.

Now of course it's possible that a writer will do a bad job of writing either first-person or third-person, which means that the reader will have no Powerful Emotional Experience. But tens of thousands of professional novelists use these viewpoints effectively because they work.



Two or more POV

 Now we can define headhopping. Headhopping is like third-person, except that the author uses two or more viewpoint characters within a single scene. In headhopping, you put your reader firmly inside the head of one character for a while and then hop into another character's head for a while.

Let's look at those questions we raised at the beginning of this article:

Is headhopping OK?

My own opinion is that it's OK to do this IF you do it well. But it isn't easy to do it well, for two reasons.

• First, those pesky transitions from one head to another are hard to get right. If you confuse the reader, then that's a speed bump in the reading experience and that's bad.

• Second, even if you do the transitions well, doing them too often will make your reader feel jerked around.

 Why does Joe Bigname Author use headhopping in his novel?

Good question. Some authors actually don't know any better (and neither do some editors). Some authors know that headhopping is risky but do it anyway because they believe they can do it well and the rewards are worth the risks.

Is headhopping just an invention of selfish writing teachers who want to earn more money by putting up more roadblocks for new writers?



Three's a crowd!

Not that I can tell. Headhopping is hard to do well, and very often it just plain doesn't work. Headhopping by novice writers almost always doesn't work. Writing teachers spend most of their time working with novice writers, so they spend a lot of time telling them not to hop heads.

Is headhopping exactly the same thing as the omniscient viewpoint that was used so successfully by the great 19th century writers?

In my opinion, no. I believe that omniscient viewpoint means that the narrator is actually omniscient and can know things that NONE of the characters know. I am tempted to say that all right-thinking people must agree with me, but I know at least one writing teacher who believes that headhopping is the same thing as omniscient.

I'm afraid that rational discussion will never settle this argument. However, kicking, biting, scratching, and hair-pulling might, so I have hope that someday all writers will agree with me on this point.

Let's fight about it!

So should you hop heads? Will you suffer eternal torment if you indulge in the forbidden fruit of headhopping? My own opinion is that if you're a new writer, then it's best to avoid headhopping, for two reasons:

• Headhopping requires that you master third person viewpoint AND that you master transitions from one head to the next. It's easier to master one skill than two.
• Some editors will reject you outright for headhopping.

 Once you've learned to write third-person Xtremely well, then you'll have the skills to try hopping heads when you have a scene where you believe it makes sense.

At the very least, if you're going to hop heads, you should be aware that you're doing it, you should have a reason to do so, and you should make it work.

The goal in writing fiction is to give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience. Do whatever it takes to do that.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 32,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Randy Ingermanson Publisher, Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/ezine

How to Write Really Bad Fiction and Enjoy the Benefits of Rapid Rejection

As a writer I am always looking for articles to help me improve my writing. I happened upon an absolutely hilarious article by Hank Quense. His advice is given the other way around… but it works!

Hank: "I'm an author of five books and over forty short stories along with a number of fiction writing articles. From my experience, I've learned a number important lessons and I want to pass them onto others. One important lesson involves getting a book published; it changes your life. No longer can you sit in your office and spend your time writing more fiction. Once you become a published author, you also become the book's marketing manager and its sales manager, a terrifying situation if you're not prepared for it."

To protect others from the trauma of this situation, I've put together a list of fiction writing techniques that will guarantee non-publication. Following them will ensure a rapid reply from editors who will use a preprinted form or a terse email. This rapid reply will allow you to maximize the rejections you receive in a given period of time.

Here is the list in no particular order:

• Always use adverbs! Lots and lots of adverbs. One of your writing objectives should be to use an adverb to modify at least fifty percent of your verbs. And don't forget about using them in dialog tags. Why show the reader a woman shredding a paper tissue? Make it easy on the poor readers. Tell them the woman is nervous. Thus, "He's making me so fidgety," she said nervously.

• A naked noun is evil! Adjectives exist to be used. Their primary purpose is to modify a noun, so make use of this most excellent writing technique. Load up your nouns with modifiers so the reader will have no doubts about the noun. “The skinny, ugly guy wore a hideous, ripped t-shirt, dirty, baggy pants and shredded sneakers.” Here's an even better example of clever adjective usage: “The scrawny boy used his undersized biceps to try to pick up the clumsy weight and place it in the old-fashioned truck before the foul-mouthed old man became aware of his clever trickery.” Get the idea? Remember, a naked noun is e-v-i-l!

• Use conversation. Don't limit yourself to dialog. Conversation is the stuff of life. Don't allow your characters to be stuck inside the story by restricting them to dialog that moves the story forward. Make your characters more life-like by letting them engage in idle conversation just like real people do.

“ How you doing?”
‘I'm cool. What’s up?”
“I'm good. Couldn’t be better. Watching the Yankees tonight?”
“Who they playing? . . . Yada, yada, yada.”
This stuff doesn't move the story along like dialog does, but it shows the characters are just as boring as real folk.

•Motivation is overdone. To properly show motivation requires a lot of creativity, time and words. It is much better to skip over that part and get right into the action. So what if the guy disarming the ticking bomb is only doing it because his shift doesn't end for two hours and he doesn't have anything better to do. The character doesn't have any motivation, but who cares; it keeps the story moving and doesn't slow it down with a lot of words explaining the motivation.

• Don't worry about Point of View rules. POV is perhaps the most technical of all aspects of writing and handling it correctly is time consuming and requires advanced planning. Who needs all that extra work when there is another scene to write or another crisis to defuse? Most of the readers will figure it out and sort of follow the story.

• The fine art of the -ing word. It's wise to develop writing habits such as peppering the page with –ing words. This technique will give your writing a pleasing sing-song effect. “Opening the door and running down the corridor while waving her hand, she tried shouting, calling attention to her life-threatening situation.” Doesn't that sentence make you want to hum along from all the –ing words?

• Use empty words. Very, really, ever, still, just and others are words with no meaning but they do fill up sentences and make them look more impressive. Fiction writing is filled with opportunities to use these words and titillate the readers. With a bit of imagination, you can also use these words to punctuate the sentence.

•Why bother with multiple-dimensional characters? Flat characters work just as well. Flat characters can fight, love and die just as well as the more complicated ones, but take considerably less work. The simple approach gives you more time to write still more stories.

• Character Voice. This attribute allows the reader to identify the characters from their dialog “voices.” What nonsense. That's what names are for. Just use the names in all the lines of dialog and the readers will be able to keep the characters straight.

Keep this list near your keyboard and refer to it frequently. Within a short time, your friends and family will be impressed by the huge stack of rejection notices you've accumulated. A side benefit is that your family will know you're really doing something in your office. Right now, they probably think you're goofing off and playing computer game. If you chose to ignore this excellent advice, there are alternatives listed in my book, Build a Better Story. Be advised that following the advice in Build a Better Story can significantly increase the response time from editors.

By Hank Quense © 2011 Originally published by Writing-World.com March 2011

Award-winning author Hank Quense lives in Bergenfield, NJ with his wife Pat. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. He writes humorous fantasy and sci-fi stories. On occasion, he also writes an article on fiction writing or book marketing but says that writing nonfiction is like work while writing fiction is fun. He refuses to write serious genre fiction saying there is enough of that on the front page of any daily newspaper and on the evening TV news.


I am looking forward to reviewing Hank’s latest work Zaftan Entrepreneurs. In it, an alien mining ship discovers a planet that holds promise to be a mining bonanza. Unfortunately, it is inhabited by humans, dwarfs, elves and other races and they object to the mining expeditions. Sounds like a whole lot of fun. Watch this space.

Find out more about Hank on his website.