Craft of Writing

All About Head Hopping … from Ink and Quills

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

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

Craft of Writing Writing

What is this thing called Voice?

A metaphor for narrative voice

What is it?

The elusive concept of Voice is one of the most difficult aspects of the craft of writing to explain in words. Like persona in Jungian psychology, it is more easily understood as a metaphor, and is often explained in terms of actors on the stage hiding behind different masks or personalities.

Definitions of Voice

An academic definition details it as an author’s distinctive literary style, basic vision and general attitude toward the world. This “voice” is revealed through an author’s use of syntax (sentence construction); diction (distinctive vocabulary); punctuation; characterisation and dialogue. (AP English Glossary of Literary Terms)

http://www.oxfordtutorials.com/AP%20Literacy%20Glossary.htm

A more writerly description of voice is “the heard quality of writing”. (Donald Murray, The Craft of Revision, 2001).

The well-known quotation that “writing is the painting of the voice” has been attributed to Voltaire, and is another metaphorical application of the human voice to the written word.

Voice is, thus, the distinct personality of a piece of writing or of a whole text. One way of developing a certain voice is by communicating strong feelings about a subject. Another way is by revealing an authentic, individual, and original personality through the choice of a narrator, characters, and vivid language.

A good example of a clearly “heard” voice is when a writer manages to put his or her personality into the words of a text, creating the sense of a living and breathing person concealed therein. This persona is known as the narrator. (The protagonist is the character the novel is “about”).

First Person Point of View

This is when a character is the narrator of his or her own story, relayed in present tense as it unfolds or in past tense from after the events have transpired. Because of the reliance on a single main character, first-person stories usually require the same type of linear plots as close third-person limited POV.

First Person POV presents the smallest emotional distance between the reader and the main character. Thus, first person is a great choice when the story is more about the inner character arc than it is about the outer plot. It is also the hardest POV to write well because it demands a very strong, compelling voice.

Third Person Omniscient Point of View

This is the classic external narrator POV, in which an abstract and “God-like” persona tells the reader everything that’s happening. The omniscient narrator can relay the thoughts and feelings of all or any of the characters in the narrative. Another name for this is the “fly on the wall” narrator. The omniscient narrator often moves into and out of different characters’ heads, so that the reader may not relate deeply with any one of them.

Third person omniscient is a great choice when you have a complex plot with several main and minor characters, who follow multiple story lines, moving towards a final resolution. It is ideal if your goal is to allow the reader to watch everything unfold, while the characters themselves aren’t aware of what’s going on. It is an excellent choice for certain genres, for example, a plot-driven crime thriller.

Third person omniscient can be emotionally very cold, because it is the most distancing in terms of the reader and the characters. When it’s extreme omniscient, it might seem old-fashioned to the modern reader.

Third Person Limited Close

The main difference with Third Person close is that this POV focuses closely on one main character. In fact, the entire story is narrated from one character’s viewpoint. You, as the writer/narrator, can show what the POV character sees, hears, thinks, believes, and feels. But you can only show those things and nothing more. Showing anything the POV character doesn’t directly experience is out of bounds.

This limited viewpoint gives the POV character and the reader the same information. It thereby closes the emotional distance between them, and is very effective at letting the reader share the character’s experience of the story.

Third Person limited offers a nice balance between a plot-driven story and a character-driven story. It is often a good choice when the outer events of a linear plot are closely tied to the protagonist’s spiritual growth.

Third Person Multiple is similar, but with two or more focus characters.

The Camera Analogy

With 3rd person, a scene might first be described from on high, through a neutral narrator’s voice. Afterwards, the narrator will need to enter the body and mind of the viewpoint character/s, to take on their persona/s, describing what they see, hear, think and smell, as well as how they talk and what they say.

The camera metaphor is perfect for writing third person prose, as it is impossible for machines to have attitudes or to offer up opinions. They can only record what is in front of them. For example, when viewing a wide-angle scene, ordinary camera lenses record only what is in focus. However, the narrator/camera is a magic one that records sounds, smells, tastes and even textures. It can also pick up the thoughts and feelings of the viewpoint characters.

However, keep in mind that variety is important within the context of the whole novel or text. Sometimes, the narrator will choose to launch directly into the action right at the outset, rather than establishing the scene first.

The key to mastering writing in the Third Person is to learn how to control the camera. After setting up the scene, the narrator must move the camera behind his/her eyes, in order to reveal the viewpoint character’s personality. Because it is a magic camera, the narrator and the reader can begin to hear the character’s thoughts, and to suggest the words and the speaking voice of the viewpoint character.

Another meaning of the term under discussion is the recognised Voice developed by a certain author over time. For example, Ernest Hemingway has a very distinctive voice.

My closing comment:

Dear Readers (old-fashioned omniscient voice!), as you can see, voice and point-of-view are closely related. However, that’s not the whole story, is it? Please add any other observations you may have about this elusive concept, in the comments to this post. This is merely an attempt to get my head around the differences between omniscient and more modern POVs, and to understand better, in order to write better.

Yours sincerely
Anne

the magic camera…

September 23, 2015 0 comment

Craft of Writing Writing

A Revisit: Characterisation

Sensuality-art.livejournal.com

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.

June 18, 2015 4 comments

Craft of Writing Writing

The Hero’s Journey

Kal Bashir’s Loop

May 23, 2015 1 comment

Craft of Writing Writing

The Narrative Arc

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.

I then drew up my own diagram (The Narrative Arc) based on one I found on the widbook writers’ site (See Above). It seems to fit my particular story well.

March 13, 2015 4 comments