How to Avoid Head-Hopping

 

 

First person and close third person narratives are in favour at the moment.  This is possibly because these two narrative voices hold us very close to the characters in a story and that is what the modern reader enjoys.

I’m a fan of Charles Dickens. He was a great story-teller. But he was an omniscient author who could look down into all of the characters’ minds. We crave a greater closeness now.

I’m also a great admirer of Monika Feth, the German writer who has created a series of thrillers for young adults. We always know who ‘did it’ and the tension comes from wondering whether the victim will escape the criminal. In a novel I read recently, Der Libellenflüsterer, (the dragonfly whisperer)  we enjoy the point of view of the protagonist, her mother’s, the victim’s,  the perpetrator’s, his wife’s, his little girl’s, and that of a social worker who is murdered.  But Feth doesn’t head-hop. She stays with each character throughout a scene.

How does she achieve this?

She uses the senses

She tells us what the characters see, hear, taste, smell and feel

She doesn’t tag thoughts

Instead of saying ‘Merle wondered whether he would find her’ she just goes straight to the thought. ‘Would he be able to find her? Could she get out without him hearing?’

She gives each character a distinct personality

Each character acts, thinks and speaks in as particular way. We should be able to open the book at any page and know which character we’re reading about.  

Each scene is only seen by one character

Yes, we might see the same scene several times through different characters’ eyes but we only see them one at a time. The daughter has one perception of what her father is doing; her mother has another.

Each scene is consistent with how it character sees the world

Feth can do this because she knows her characters well.  She knows about their intellectual capability, their physical abilities and limitations and their emotional circumstances.

 

Feth is the master of having multiple viewpoints without ever head-hopping.  She writes very long books in series of small scenes.  It really works.