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Head Hopping
Friday, March 28, 2003I've edited a lot of manuscripts by first time authors, and many of them have a deadly fault...head hopping. Basically, you have a scene Like this... Andromeda took a pen out of her pocket and used it to nudge the cloth aside. The partial picture was a painting, a miniature, she thought they were called. It was Sevrin. How did she know the prince of Vampires? Was she a victim? A helper? Someone who wanted to become one? Andromeda would have to ask him. She picked up the diary and began leaping through it. Alaister, across the room, looked at her. She was intent, and he thought again how pretty she was. Now, on the surface, this doesn't seem to be so bad. I transferred you from one head to another, but still, it can be confusing. Also, there are other ways of conveying the information without hopping around, you can add dialouge (always good to show rather than tell...dialouge shows, rather than feeding the reader) or you can tell us later, while we are in Alaister's head. See, you can change heads...just not in the same scene. For example: She picked up the diary and began leafing through it. Across the room Alaister clearned his throat. "Sometimes I can't belive how pretty you are." Andromeda blinked at him. "Um...we're in the middle of a case. Where'd that come from?" Alaister shrugged, sighed. "I don't know. It's what the author told me to say." Andromeda rolled her eyes and went back to work. See? More dynamic. Less confusing. Head hopping in this case might not seem bad enough for an editor or agent not to choose to accept you...but as you keep doing it, it makes things more confusing...imagine if I went on longer, and hopped back and forth between them a bunch of times...then threw in a few idle thoughts from Sevrin. You'd go mad trying to wade through it. Also, because of this, even a small amount of head hopping will mark you as an amatuer...even if you only do it once, and you attribute the heck out of it, and have a really, really good reason for doing it. Most important of all, never, ever, ever do something that might give your reader a achance to put the book down. Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:08 PM 0 comments |