Have you ever heard beta readers or others commenting something like: “You’ve head hopped right here”? Head hopped?

Head hopping happens when you jump from one character’s perspective to another without warning. This isn’t when you switch perspective characters at a clearly marked and expected place (like in stories with multiple perspective), nor is it when you’re using the third-person unlimited narrative (which we’ll discuss in a later article). This is when you’re supposed to be writing from one character’s point of view and suddenly, you’re writing about inside thoughts or details the perspective character of the story or chapter would have no way of knowing without reading the minds of other characters around them.

While you may think you’re helping readers understand certain points that are important for later in the story, head-hopping, at best, often takes readers out of the story, even if just for a few seconds, and makes them feel like something is off. At worst, it can make readers begin to distrust your ability to tell the story and may even make them put it down. I don’t know about you, but there are definitely a few authors I can’t read even if the story ideas are good because they head hop way too often.

You probably don’t want that to happen, but how do you fix recognize head hopping and get rid of it in your own work?

Here are a few tips and tricks you can try out.

Recognizing Head Hopping

A simple way to tell if something is head hopping is by asking yourself: (1) whose perspective is the story or chapter supposed to be in? and (2) if the situation or feeling in question happened in real life and I were the perspective character, would I know this about the other person or about the situation?

For example, if someone other than your perspective character knows something’s going to happen before the perspective character does, the following would be head hopping:

I rummaged frantically through the papers on the desk, looking for clues of where the murderer went. “Come help, me,” I said to Jack, who still stood by the door.

He started forward but then backed up again, afraid of what he knew would happen any moment now.

In this example, we’re using first-person narrative, so the main character is obviously the person using the pronoun I, let’s call this person Sophie. While this is a more minor head hopping offense, think about our two questions.

We clearly know whose perspective this is supposed to be in—Sophie, who refers to herself with the pronoun I.

If this situation happened in real life and you were Sophie, with no other warnings, would you know that Jack was afraid of what he knew would happen? No. Jack hasn’t told you that he knows something bad is going to happen, so all you would know is that he started forward and backed up again. That might register as suspicious, but you wouldn’t know exactly why he did that unless he told you so.

Now what if the head hopping was more obvious?

I rummaged frantically through the papers on the desk, looking for clues of where the murderer went. “Come help, me,” I said to Jack, who still stood by the door.

He started forward but then backed up again. If I go over there, I’ll get hurt just like she will any moment now, he thought.

If you were the perspective character, Sophie, again, you might have an idea that something’s up, but you would have no way to know his exact thoughts.

Another place head hopping commonly occurs is when describing other characters’ feelings. Reflect on the same two questions for recognizing head hopping in the example below, where Paul is the perspective character:

Paul placed the last clean dish in the drying rack and turned around to dry his hands. Then, he noticed Sarah sitting at the table. She was sad.

We’ve already established that the scene should be in Paul’s perspective, so how about the second question? If you were in this situation and noticed someone sitting normally at a table, would you automatically assume they were disappointed? If you noticed certain body language, maybe, but in this example, we don’t see anything about body language, so Paul has no reason to know or think she was disappointed. This would be classified as head hopping.

Fixing Head Hopping

So now that we’ve realized we’re head hopping in these scenes, how can we fix them?

Especially in scenes like the first one, it can be very useful to hint that something bad is about to happen; that creates tension, which increases the reader’s desire to keep reading. But there are ways of doing this without jumping into another character’s perspective.

For example, in the first scene noted above, we have to stick to Sophie’s perspective, but like I’ve noted, Jack’s action of stepping forward and then moving back can still be suspicious. We can use that to our advantage in hinting that he knows something Sophie doesn’t know.

I rummaged frantically through the papers on the desk, looking for clues of where the murderer went. “Come help, me,” I said to Jack, who still stood by the door.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack move forward but then back up again.

I paused my search. He wasn’t usually this hesitant. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Get over here.”

He stuttered some incoherent excuse and remained rooted in place. Something was definitely wrong with him.

While this doesn’t show the readers specifically that Jack knows something, they can now see that he’s acting suspiciously, and it’s not head hopping because Sophie would have noticed that.

Now, this is a little easier if we’re just looking at other characters’ feelings. Let’s look at the example of Paul and Sarah. As I noted above, he’s more likely to guess or assume that Sarah’s disappointed if she has the right body language, so if we add that in, we get rid of the head hopping.

Paul placed the last clean dish in the drying rack and turned around to dry his hands. Then, he noticed Sarah. She slumped in her chair at the table, one arm propping her head up and tears brimming in her eyes.

Now, we don’t even need Paul to say how she’s feeling because we’ve shown it. Readers can start making their own observations on how she’s feeling because we’ve given them the clues. Because of this, they will also assume that Paul has drawn his own conclusions of how she’s feeling, and it’s more acceptable if he decides to comment on the conclusion he’s drawn.

That being said, he can’t be perfectly correct about his assumptions all the time because no one is perfectly correct about assumptions from body language all the time. So if we’re going to comment about Sarah being sad, it should still be phrased as an assumption rather than a fact.

Paul placed the last clean dish in the drying rack and turned around to dry his hands. Then, he noticed Sarah. She slumped in her chair at the table, one arm propping her head up and tears brimming in her eyes. She seemed sad, but he wasn’t sure what had happened.

Conclusion

Head hopping can have devastating effects on your story, but luckily, it’s fixable! And as you work toward keeping the perspective consistent, you’ll find that not only are your stories more believable but they’re more enticing and enjoyable too.

So get to it, and make your manuscript the shining story you and I both know it can be!