Art of Storytelling: POV and Head Hopping

POV and Head Hopping

Point of View is very important in any story and can be a deal breaker for some readers based on preference.  You’ll see my own POV quirks below.  I do stress though that you write whatever fashion feels best to you and it most applicable to the story.  I know I’m revisiting English Lit 101 but let’s review the different forms of POV.

• First Person
• Second Person
• Third Person Limited
• Third Person Omniscient

Note: Tense and POV kinda go hand in hand but I will address Tense more in another post.

First Person is a very common storytelling method and one that newer writers seem to gravitate towards because it seems so natural and comfortable.  There are very many established authors that use first person as well.  The entire Twilight Series, as far as I know, is from Bella’s POV as the narrator.   First Person narrators are not always reliable.  Some are just wrong about what they thought was going on which can set up a good surprise ending.  Some are even liars or are biased by their own personal agendas and character flaws.  You never know what you’re really getting with a First Person narrator, often, until the end of the story.

I feel that the problem with first person is that there is a tendency for the narrator to fall into endless internal musings that can stall forward movement in a story.  While these asides can be very on topic for what is going on in the story and can give great insight into the true nature of this character, they can overburden the story and bore the reader.  Also, they just eat up pages and often lead a story that could have been wrapped up in 50k-80k words to be 100k-200k.  Storytelling needs to be tight and flowing.  First Person is a Telling trap, when a good storyteller will Show at every opportunity.

I’m a picky reader.  If I pick up a book that is First Person Present, I will immediately put it back down.  I just can’t get into a narrative that is happening right now.  “I am walking down the street and I see her again.  She’s hailing a cab.  I hate writing like this.   Please kill me.”

Second Person is rarely used in modern storytelling.  It addresses the reader directly at every turn.  I really don’t have an example of this because I would put down any book this POV as well.  Like I said, picky.  When I think of Second Person I think of roleplaying as the Storytelling, GM, DM, whatever you want to call it.  For anyone who has never roleplayed in a table top setting (yeah I’m geek level, Expert), you have one person who tells the story.  The other players are characters of their own creation.  As the GM (game master in some gaming systems), you have a setting and overall plot in which the characters take part.  Their actions shape the game and the GM tries to direct the story and characters where he wants them to go while constantly describing the setting and the actions and attitudes of the Non-Player Characters. 

Chad is a player character.  He tells the GM, “Okay I’m going to rush through the door with both guns drawn.”

“Alright. As you come through the door you see several tables and chairs turned over.  On the bar is Carl motionless, his head twisted around in an odd angle.  You see Shelly and Luanne slumped in a corner, both appear to have been shot in the head.”

Third Person Limited  This style of storytelling tells the story from the perspective of one character but the writer is the narrator.  This is my preferred method of writing and is just a personal choice.  Most YA that is not first person (and most of it is) is written in this style.  Third person limited is from the POV of one character and all knowledge about the world and the other characters is limited to what that character knows. 

This is great in fantasy and sci-fi when you have a whole knew world to introduce to a reader.  I always think of Harry Potter when I think of this POV style as Harry is a boy from the human world suddenly dropped into the Wizarding world.  As he learns about Diagon Alley and Hogwarts so do we.  We share his sense of wonder and amazement.  It’s a great way to draw a reader in when writing genre fiction but it works for any other style.

Third Person Omniscient  In this style of storytelling and POV, the writer is the narrator and knows everything about everyone.  We all probably should know everything about every character in our story but the difference between this and Limited is that it is not fettered by the personality, knowledge and experiences of one character. 

This style can get very unwieldy and confusing for a lot of readers.  Writers tend to Head Hop within the same chapter a lot.  I personally feel that it is harder to connect to the main character/s because I don’t get to really immerse myself into that one mind.  Head Hopping should be kept to a minimum if at all possible  A good rule to avoid it is to stay in the head of which ever character has the most interesting thing to say.

There’s a man being tortured on a table on one side of the room.  His wife is tied to a chair on the other side and forced to watch.  The torturer is present and goes about his task in a very clinically detached fashion while casually talking the wife the entire time.  

Who has the most interesting point of view?  Well that will vary depending on the greater context of the story and all three could have very interesting insight on the scene.  Hopping from one to the next to the next would negate the emotional impact of all three. 

My first thought was that the wife would have the most compelling story to tell.  Watching a loved one tortured would be torture and she could give an emotionally charged account of how they got there or perhaps this is all her fault and she is frantically trying to find a way out of it.

I immediately think of the husband as being too fraught with agony to be able to think coherently, though disjointed narrative could be effective if used right.  Maybe he’s trained to deal with torture and we get to find out why. 

Maybe we’re trying to tell the story of the torturer though.  What does he think about while he is doing these gruesome things?  Does he think about the man that taught him to do this?  Maybe he was tortured and underneath it all he is a boiling cauldron of emotions and believes that what he is doing is for some greater cause.

On Third Person Omniscient I would also warn about changing perspective in the same paragraph.  Just don’t do it.  If you change perspective start a new paragraph.  It’s like dialog.  No two people should speak in the same paragraph.

There is a hybrid of Third Person Limited and Omniscient in which the story is told from multiple perspectives but each character gets that chapter or those several pages to his or her self.  When perspectives change within the chapter, there is usually two hard returns  or a   ***  to let the reader know that the perspective has changed.  Sometimes you simply have to have many POV characters.  Stephen King does this a lot and I find that I do it in my WIP (work in progress). 

King’s “‘Salems Lot”, a personal favorite of mine, is told in this style.  He is showing how the plague of vampirism spreads through out this small town, infecting it like a cancer.  We the readers need to see what is going on in various parts of the town.  One character, the hunchback that lives and works in the junkyard, isn’t even introduced until the second half of the book, if memory serves.

Another favorite novel of mine, Roger Zelazny’s, “The Lord of Light”, a classic sci-fi masterpiece, is written in this fashion.  In a world in which reincarnation has become scientifically possible and those who have had thousands of lives not only gain powers but take on the aspects of the Hindu gods, one of their fallen brothers takes on the mantel of Siddhartha, the Buddha, and starts a society changing revolution against the gods.  This story is told from the perspective of Siddhartha, his followers and various gods, demons and mortals. 

My WIP takes place in one city but the fate of that city is in the balance so I have to tell the story from multiple POVs in Freaktown.  Here I even find that all the perseptives can be confusing so I know that I not only have to write another 30k-60k words but there will be a lot of work to tighten it all up and try to bring some clarity to the overall narrative.

Listening to Funeral for a Friend: The Sweetest Wave