Showing posts with label Writing Point of View. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing Point of View. Show all posts

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Head Hopping....I just can't let go of this...


I'm listening to a book on CD in my car for my drive to work and...I have to go look up the author's name...she's head hopping. Not blatantly and if I wasn't a writer would I even notice? It's subtle but it's there.
We're in a room with four sets of parents of kids who have been kidnapped together. Our main head is Lena's (mother of one of the victims) and we're hearing her husband's thoughts at one part and then SNAP' we're back in Lena's.
It was just like one sentence, but it was there. We weren't Lena watching the husband or listening to him, we were in his thoughts. It was so well done I'm not sure it would have bothered me except for the fact I knew it was a head hop.
I was like ...wait a minute...flip the CD back a few paces...listen...again... Yep! that was a head hop.
So now my radar is up and I'm watching for more.
Like I said, this was very well done. It kept with the flow of the story and characters.
So when is head hopping okay? Is there some kind of rule?
Or, and I've seen this before, could this be an older, more established writer who is allowed to take liberties the rest of us poor folks don't get?

Friday, April 09, 2010

When to hop heads...tell me how you do it???



Since my writing has been lagging lately I've been reading a lot. Right now I'm reading Under the Dome by Stephen King, Sins of the Flesh by Caridad Pinero (interesting romance about genetic testing) and something by Jennifer Cruise about a basset hound. (someone who knew we were hosting Frieda the Basset gave me that book the other day.)
So since I was once called a head hopper by a wonderful editor I've been worrying about this issue a lot. Some writers do this so smoothly you don't even feel it. The shift of POV is barely felt by the reader. Then there's others that I can see it clearly but for some reason it seems to work. Then there are writers who hop heads so often I have to back up and say...where was I?
So my question is how do you change POV's in a story? Do you have any rules on how you hop heads? Have you ever written a book totally in one POV?
Help!
I'm obsessing and I can't stop!

Last Day of NANOWRIMO --- Oh No!

 Where did the month go?  Certainly not on the page. I have an outline, some character sketches but mostly I have a lot of research notes.  ...