So my last post was a little bit short and blunt, because I'm afraid I've scared readers away with my previous long ones. I read it over this morning and it felt abrupt. Maybe I can reach a happy medium today.

Now you know about the Telling problem, so I can move on to another biggie: Head Hopping—also known as POV Violation. (POV stands for Point of View.)

There are three major POV styles. They're called:

1^st Person—Written as if the main character is actually the one telling the story. Jane Eyre is a good example of this.

“I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance.”

Notice the, “I”? That's 1^st Person. You're in one person's head through at least a certain scene or chapter, if not the whole book. You see things only as the character sees them, and you know only his or her thoughts. This style is not the easiest of the three, but it is such a good read.

2^nd Person—“You did this, and you said that.” This style is pretty hard to make look good, and it's uncommon to find in novels. I hear it's been done, but I've never read it. We'll leave that one there.

3^rd Person. This is the most popular and easiest of the three. It is written as if the narrator is telling a story about the main character. “She did this,” or, “He said that.” There are lots and lots of authors who write this way—Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, to name a couple of examples. We're going to park here for a while, because this is where the issue of Head-Hopping rises.

Head Hopping: A weak writing technique in which the author skips from one character's thoughts and perspective to another's without appropriate pause.

I was browsing through a book in the YA section of the library the other day. The female character was looking at the male character, and she was noting the color of his eyes.

THEN, all of a sudden, we find the male character looking at the female character, noting the color of HER eyes!

This is a really confusing thing to do when writing a novel, and jars the reader from the story. When a reader picks up a book for the first time, he often doesn't care one way or another about it. He's thinking, “Hmm—wonder if this is any good?” The task of the first few pages is to reach out and grab his attention, pull it in, and keep it there. A POV violation is like a speed bump that makes the reader think, “Hold on—what? Now we're over here with THIS guy? Weren't we just...and who is...HUH?”

It may not be that extreme, and he may figure it out very quickly and settle in again. In fact, he may barely even notice that it happened. But it did. And focus, once broken, isn't as easily captured the second time.

Think of words as doors. He opens the cover. Grabs the doorknob. Opens it, and is immediately captured by the actions taking place on the other side. He's watching a...well, a horse-race, shall we say. He sees a horse he likes. Decides to root for it. Is just watching it glide towards the finish...

When he realizes that he's still standing at the doorway.

You DON'T want to draw attention to the doorway when the race is where you're trying to catch the eye.

You know how with tour buses, they have rules against sticking hands out the windows, or jumping out before the bus stops? It's the same thing in fiction. A stop can be a scene break, a chapter break, the break between parts one and two, or two books in a series. But don't get out and find another character's thoughts to hang out in 'till the bus has stopped.

Let me know how it works for you.