In multiple close third person stories, one character’s voice can be used for one scene and another character’s voice can be used for a different scene, but a transition of some kind is needed between them. This isn’t to say that close third person stories can use only one character’s POV. A true omniscient POV wouldn’t use her voice for any of the lines. Then the next line puts us in his head, as she wouldn’t know that he’d purposely coughed repeatedly to make her squirm. The second line places us firmly in her POV, and it’s clearly in her voice-deep third person. Now look at that last example for head-hopping. A common test to see if close third person is deep enough is to check if the sentences can be changed to first person with just a switch of pronouns. Notice that the examples for first and close third person are very similar. How the heck was she supposed to react when her ex called out of the blue to tell her he’s dying? He coughed a couple times and then a couple more, just to stretch out the interruption and make her squirm. Head-hopping: She didn’t know what to say.A cough interrupted his next sentence, and he prolonged it for effect. The unexpected call from her ex with the news that he was dying left her uncertain how to react. Omniscient: She didn’t know what to say.How the heck was she supposed to react when her ex called out of the blue to tell her he’s dying? His hacking cough after the announcement wasn’t a good sign either. Close third person: She didn’t know what to say.How the heck was I supposed to react when my ex called out of the blue to tell me he’s dying? His hacking cough after the announcement wasn’t a good sign either. First person: I didn’t know what to say.(Note that the name of the post is “Why head hopping is good” but then goes on to clarify they’re actually talking about omniscient. I typically write in close third person, so omniscient is not one of my strengths, but I’ll attempt it here to demonstrate my point. Head-hopping occurs when the narrative jumps from one character’s voice to another without a signal or break in-between. In other words, an omniscient POV story would be able to share different characters’ thoughts and feelings, but would not word them in the characters’ voices. ![]() Omniscient: Like close third person, the third person pronouns are used, but for omniscient, the story is told in the author/non-character narrator/eye-of-God’s voice.Close third person: A character shares the story less directly, but the story should be told in that character’s voice.First person: The main character shares the story directly, so the story should be told in that character’s voice.Let’s take a look at the most common POV approaches. Now Janice was referring more to the overall story voice, but I think the same definition can help us understand POV. We’re more likely to listen to our friend’s version, aren’t we? How POV Affects Voice It’s the difference between a friend telling us about the movie they saw this past weekend and hearing a robot read the generic synopsis of the movie. Why? Because if we have a sense of someone sharing this story, we’re more likely to pay attention. ![]() We’ve often heard that voice can be enough to overcome many writing sins. Oice is that sense there’s a person behind the words. In a fantastic blog post last week, she described voice-that ethereal thing all writers strive for in their work-in a way I hadn’t heard before: ![]() Thanks to author Janice Hardy, I now have an easy way to describe the difference between head-hopping and omniscient. Head-hopping authors sometimes say they’re writing in omniscient POV to cover their tracks. Any change in point-of-view (POV), whether using an “allowed” technique or not, risks weakening the connection between the reader and the story. Last time, we talked about how head-hopping is something to avoid, and not just because there’s a rule against it.
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