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Craft of Writing

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All About Head Hopping … from Ink and Quills

Cover of Gil Blas Illustré, illustration for t...

Cover of Gil Blas Illustré, illustration for the short story The Necklace (La Parure) by Guy de Maupassant. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my favourite writing craft sites is Kaitlin Hillerich’s “Ink and Quills” (inkandquills.com). I can’t better her ideas on head hopping. The short story above is one of her favourites. So here’s what Kaitlin writes:

 Are You Making These Point of View Mistakes?

July 17, 2015 ~ Kaitlin Hillerich

Are You Making These Point of View Mistakes? | Two #POV mistakes you want to avoid in your #story!Point of view is important to your story, and it must be established immediately. Why? Because the reader needs to know whose “head” they’re in, whose story this is. Your hero is the reader’s access point to the story. They will experience the story along with the hero–through his or her point of view.

There are a couple mistakes I’ve seen made frequently with point of view, especially by new writers. I think these come from the writer trying to do too much and trying to show the reader everything.

But that’s the thing about POV–you can’t show the reader everything. To understand what I mean, let’s examine these two POV mistakes.

Mistake #1: Head Hopping

When you’re writing a scene, make sure you only stay in one character’s head at a time. Switching back and forth between characters is known as “head hopping” and it’s jarring to the reader.

So what does this look like? Here’s an example:

Melissa wondered why Tom had asked her to meet him in the middle of the night. She leaned against the tree at the edge of the park, watching him approach.

“Hey,” she said, “Is everything all right?”

Tom took her hands in his. How could he tell her what was happening? He didn’t want to frighten her. “I’m fine. Listen, I need you to leave town for a few days.”

“What do you mean? Why?” What was going on, Melissa wondered.

“I just need you to trust me,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t argue. “Take this.” He pressed the train ticket he had purchased that morning into her hand.

Melissa shook her head. She wasn’t going anywhere until she had answers. Tom saw the look on her face and knew she wasn’t giving up easily.

***

It’s like watching a ping pong match, isn’t it? We keep switching back and forth between Melissa and Tom’s head, and not only is it disorienting, but it’s boring.

But why is it boring?

Because we’re being told everything. There’s no work left for the reader. There are no blanks for us to fill in, nothing for us to guess at or wonder. The writer has unintentionally deprived the reader of one of the joys of reading.

When we’re in one character’s head at a time, we’re constantly trying to interpret and figure out what the other character is thinking and feeling by judging their body language, dialogue, and whatever other clues the writer might provide. There’s something tantalizing about trying to figure out the puzzle of a character.

I think writers fall into this habit of head hopping because they want to let the reader know what each character in a scene is thinking/feeling. But it’s just not good having too many characters sharing the stage at once–after a while we may wonder whose story this even is.

Now, of course this doesn’t mean you can’t use more than one POV in your story. Stories with multiple POVs  are fantastic! The rule is to stay in one character’s POV per scene. If you want to change POV, then you need to switch to a new scene.

Mistake #2: Showing the Same Thing Twice

When you’re writing a story where you’re switching back and forth between multiple POVs, there’s one mistake you’re going to want to avoid: Never show the reader the same thing twice. What do I mean by this?

Let’s say you have a scene in which Sarah wins her swim meet competition. Then we switch to the next scene, which is from her boyfriend Matt’s POV…and it shows him watching her compete. We already know the outcome of the competition–we experienced it from Sarah’s POV–so we’re not going to care what happens here.

Never show the same scene from two different POVs. It’s going to kill your story’s tension and momentum. Yes, each character will see and experience it differently and this may be interesting to you, but it’s going to bore your reader. You’re just going to sound repetitive, and the reader is going to start skimming (harsh, I know). But we read because we want to know what happens next, not what has already happened.

As a writer, you have to choose from whose POV it’s best to show each scene. This isn’t easy, and I know it’s tempting to show both, but don’t. You can’t show the reader everything and you shouldn’t–you need to place trust in her that she can fill in the blanks.

See more at Ink and Quills inkandquills.com

October 5, 2015 2 comments
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Craft of WritingWriting

Characterisation in writing fiction

a-woman-eyes I attended my first ever Webinar one  day, about a year ago. It was a web-based seminar on Characterisation, organised by the TBA Lounge, an American site, and was set to happen at 9.30pm Thursday Eastern American Time. This corresponded to 11.30 am Friday in Sydney. As well as filling in holes in my knowledge of how best to reveal characters in writing, it was fun to connect and interact with a lecturer and audience on the other side of the world. We, the participants, had the use of a bar for written responses, and a “golden hand” icon that allowed you to ask questions using the microphone on your computer or laptop. If you wished, you could just remain quiet and take notes in the traditional way.

gandhi-madame-tussaud

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June 18, 2015 4 comments
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Craft of WritingWriting

The Narrative Arc

freytags-pyramid.svg

Freytag’s Pyramid

 

I have recently been researching diagrams to represent the Narrative Arc.  My memoir, based partly on childhood memories, needed to be restructured. I’m not one of these clever writers who map out their story-line up front.

One diagram, from the Storyboard That site for teachers and students, was clean and simple, based on Freytag’s Pyramid. There are many examples of narrative arc diagrams—all originating from Aristotle’s ideas on Poetics—often with only minor variations.

Here is an example by a well-known Australian writer, Kate Forsyth.

kate-forsyth-triangle

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March 13, 2015 4 comments
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Craft of WritingWriting

Plot or Character?

Aristotle

Aristotle (Photo credit: maha-online)

Sophocles. Cast

Sophocles. Cast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our writers’ group recently invited a speaker from the University of Technology, Sydney to present a talk on Poetics, which he defined as the features of narrative writing. Did you know that Aristotle wrote the first literary treatise entitled “Poetics” on this subject in 350 BC?  You can read the book online at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt

We discovered that Aristotle considered plot to be the most important element in constructing a narrative. Character was next in importance, but secondary to plot (sequence of events). Mark, our lecturer, demonstrated this by retelling the story of “Oedipus Rex” in Sophocles’ dramatic tragedy written in 429 BC. Here characters are subservient to fate, which throws in their pathway terrible events with tragic consequences.

I recalled Australian writer Kate Grenville, expressing the opinion that plotting was a more traditionally “male” way of constructing narratives, whereas many women tended to write in segments (events based on characterisation and “showing” rather than “telling”) , which was her chosen modus operandus. In this way of operating, the plot evolves as questions are asked and answered. Is this really a more “female” way of writing?

Perhaps a synthesis of the two approaches is the ideal way: have an idea of the story, but modify or recreate as you go…

Other narrative elements include language, structure, setting, dialogue, theme, genre, point of view and tense.

Mark defined tragedy as “terrible things happening to good people”,  which is different from comedy, whereby characters are often severely flawed from the outset, and might change as the plot develops. Complex plots involve a change of fortune, accompanied by reversals and character recognitions. The reader’s response is one of pity or fear when a tragic outcome is achieved.

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February 18, 2013 0 comment
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Craft of WritingWriting

Keeping It Real

Photomontage - Composite of 16 different photo...

Photomontage – Composite of 16 different photos which have been digitally manipulated to give the impression that it is a real landscape. Software used: Adobe Photoshop (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An editor at a recent workshop stressed the importance of “keeping it real”, when writing fiction.  I think that that is, at least partly, why I started off on the writing journey with memoir, then fictionalised or creative memoir, and now, at last, graduating to fiction. I felt that non-fiction equated with “realness”, and that I would fall into the prey of artificiality, that my writing would come across as unbelievable (the opposite of the French word ‘vraisemblable’) if  I depended solely on the imagination in writing a novel. I have now come to the realisation that this is not entirely true, since you need to employ fictional or creative techniques in writing non-fiction, too, if you want it to be good or accessible to the reader. So the trick is to keep it real while at the same time employing the literary devices, such as narrative techniques, characterisation, dialogue and imagery.

It is usually obvious to a reader when a writer of fiction is going “over the top” in terms of language, plot or descriptions.  Of course, sometimes this is warranted by the genre or the type of writing, however in general it is best to conjure up the appearance of reality by choice of words. Relying on sensationalism is usually not a good idea. Nor is the overkill of too many adjectives and adverbs.  Our editor friend explained the situation by saying that richness in content is OK, but not wordiness in style. For example, a very painful experience in someone’s life does not become more powerful through the use of many adjectives. It is better to choose one apt or original one, rather than to lay them on thick like jam. So the need to cut and tighten are often paramount when it comes to a writer’s first manuscript. And sometimes it will be a whole paragraph, or a whole scene, that are causing the flab or are wasteful.

Editors and publishers are also looking for honesty and originality. So write about what you know.  If you are uncomfortable, or “haven’t faced up to your demons” it may be better to not go there yet, as you can’t pull back once you have started on a particular pathway.

The session ended on a positive note with the call to list what you know, as you don’t always know what you know.

Many of the ideas here are gleaned from the presentation given to our group by Catherine Hammond, a freelance editor with valuable experience in the publishing area, whose input is always appreciated.

My photos of Sydney Harbour are only slightly air-brushed using Photoshop, which I am trialling at the moment.  If I made too many changes, it would result in something verging on artificial, like the hyperbolical texts referred to above.  I see my creative writing and photography going hand-in-hand, as I enjoy the challenge of improving in both areas.

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September 27, 2012 0 comment
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