Head Hopping

[AStrangeDesire]

Taking a small step back, these type of threads have been incredibly helpful to change (and hopefully improve) my writing.

I've been focused on maintaining a consistent POV, and for anything written recently and it comes with it's own challenges, but those are generally chances to improve how I lead the reader through the story and how I communicate about the characters.

To avoid head hopping, I've been writing more in 1P, which I didn't used to, and that's been eye opening in finding a clear 'voice'.

So, thanks to everyone who's contributed threads like this one, the 'On writing: point of view' thread, which has been instrumental to me personally, and many others.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Cheers

 

[ElectricBlue]

However, if you're going to do that, but the rest of the story is close third, it does break some of the immersion, and again leads to taking away beats from the main POV character.

There's the rub. Many of my stories these days, especially the Emma and Bobbie series, give two women equal time because, well: two women, one man. In other words, there is no main POV character. That was especially the case in the story mentioned - it started out focussed on Bobbie, then Lisa arrived with her compersion. The narrative flow seemed to seamlessly and naturally shift between them, with occasional input from Adam.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Yea, that's the lazy way to do it.

If it's done intentionally, I wouldn't call that lazy at all. There are valid reasons to have more than one first-person POV characters. First person is incredibly intimate, so if you want to do a doubly intimate story about two people and really tell the story from their POV with their voices, it's a perfectly valid use case.

I'm always hesitant to call particular things lazy, especially when it comes to stylistic choices like voice and POV (despite pretty much doing that in my previous post; but that's a structural laziness, not a stylistic one). It can be done lazily, certainly, but I wouldn't write off an entire style as lazy because it CAN be lazy. Like anything stylistic, it's a choice, and as long as that choice is done with intention, not simply because it's "easier," than I'd really hesitate to call it lazy.

 

[anthrodisiac]

There's the rub. Many of my stories these days, especially the Emma and Bobbie series, give two women equal time because, well: two women, one man. In other words, there is no main POV character. That was especially the case in the story mentioned - it started out focussed on Bobbie, then Lisa arrived with her compersion. The narrative flow seemed to seamlessly and naturally shift between them, with occasional input from Adam.

Yeah, that's perfectly fine. It's a consistent stylistic choice, not an occasional break from the established style (which is where my main issue lies). Might it make it harder to connect with those characters? Sure. But not impossible. In fact, it's certainly possible that, if done well, you could actually strengthen the connection between multiple characters. The execution does most of the work, the style and voice choices are part of that, but not the only components or means of providing connection with readers.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not quite on topic, but when I write such things I try to signal a difference.

The easiest is colour, cursive or bold. These can help signify something is different.

Lit doesn't support either colour or cursive fonts (did you mean italic?) and I would recommend against using bold for this purpose.

Bold text catches the reader's eye from anywhere on the page. It encourages them to jump ahead and read the bolded text first. This can be very useful for something like a technical manual where readers may want to find how to change a tire without reading through the whole manual to get there, but in fiction which is intended to be read from beginning to end it's likely to make the reader's experience choppy.

Colour is likely to have similar effects, and since it's not a conventional technique in fiction, readers' technology won't necessarily be set up to handle it. If somebody's reading your work through a screen reader, or if they've got their browser set to customise font settings to what's more readable to them, or if they're part of the ~5% of the population who have some kind of colour vision impairment, those colour cues may be completely lost or may not come across the way you intended.

I won't say never ever; I've seen writers make good use of colour on sites that support it. But I've seen far more occasions where writers turned a story into an eye-bruising mess by applying fancy formatting that wasn't needed.

I remember one pulp author talking about how he only mentioned his protagonist's name very rarely, because it had an é in it and under the typesetting technology of the day it cost them something like fifty dollars every time that é appeared. Bold text in fiction should be treated as a ten-dollar effect, and colour as a fifty-dollar effect, with the understanding that they're not going to work for all readers and whatever they bring to the story needs to be enough to justify what they cost.

I had one story where for reasons one party was essentially doing the same (giving head), and two receiving parties were receiving on different floors of the building. I used alignment to make clear what happened to whom. In the lead up I started to write one party aligned to the right, one to the left, and the party that straddled the divide was outlined in the centre. As you've already been reading person A on the left, B on the right and C in the middle it's easier to switch between the perspectives.

I'll not say I'm an expert and this is the best practice, but for my own feeling it works pretty well.

Did you get any feedback from readers on how this worked for them?

 

[Imstillfun]

Yea, that's the lazy way to do it.

That tracks.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If it's done intentionally, I wouldn't call that lazy at all.

I meant the header titling.

BOB

blah blah blah blah

ALICE

blah blah blah blah

BOB

blah blah blah blah

You should be able to tell whose head we're in by the prose itself. Titling like that is lazy.

Yea, stuff like this ...

Lit doesn't support either colour or cursive fonts (did you mean italic?) and I would recommend against using bold for this purpose.

Bold text catches the reader's eye from anywhere on the page. It encourages them to jump ahead and read the bolded text first. This can be very useful for something like a technical manual where readers may want to find how to change a tire without reading through the whole manual to get there, but in fiction which is intended to be read from beginning to end it's likely to make the reader's experience choppy.

Very unprofessional. I never do that.

 

[SmilingLez]

Listening to Online writing coaches, I've learned of "Head hopping"... switching viewpoints and showing the internal emotions of multiple characters within a scene. But most examples are for non-erotica. Many erotica if not Most show both POV's. ("The pussy felt great" and then "his dick felt great") Do you think Head hopping in inhearetly needed in eritica. Have you thought of this concept?

I am almost done with a gay male flash fiction free verse hybrid story (for the on-the-job challenge) that has both POVs . I did separate the POVs. To me intermingling them might confuse the reader

 

[TheLobster]

(…) colour as a fifty-dollar effect, with the understanding that they're not going to work for all readers and whatever they bring to the story needs to be enough to justify what they cost.

I’d say bold is already a pretty, well, bold proposition to use in narrative fiction, but if you go all the way to varying the colors of different parts of the text, then you are essentially playing games with the medium itself, a’la House of Leaves or something like this SCP.

Since on Lit you don’t really control the medium, you have to curb any such enthusiasm for strange formatting variations pretty hard.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Lit doesn't support either colour or cursive fonts (did you mean italic?) and I would recommend against using bold for this purpose.

Bold text catches the reader's eye from anywhere on the page. It encourages them to jump ahead and read the bolded text first. This can be very useful for something like a technical manual where readers may want to find how to change a tire without reading through the whole manual to get there, but in fiction which is intended to be read from beginning to end it's likely to make the reader's experience choppy.

Colour is likely to have similar effects, and since it's not a conventional technique in fiction, readers' technology won't necessarily be set up to handle it. If somebody's reading your work through a screen reader, or if they've got their browser set to customise font settings to what's more readable to them, or if they're part of the ~5% of the population who have some kind of colour vision impairment, those colour cues may be completely lost or may not come across the way you intended.

I won't say never ever; I've seen writers make good use of colour on sites that support it. But I've seen far more occasions where writers turned a story into an eye-bruising mess by applying fancy formatting that wasn't needed.

I remember one pulp author talking about how he only mentioned his protagonist's name very rarely, because it had an é in it and under the typesetting technology of the day it cost them something like fifty dollars every time that é appeared. Bold text in fiction should be treated as a ten-dollar effect, and colour as a fifty-dollar effect, with the understanding that they're not going to work for all readers and whatever they bring to the story needs to be enough to justify what they cost.

Did you get any feedback from readers on how this worked for them?

In Dutch there's the word "cursief," which means italics. Cursief is also used for the loopy ones. I forget at times it's an important distinction in English. I meant to say italics.

You're right about the clarity with colour or bold. That being said, we'll always lose people for some reason or another. We could argue that someone just needs to write better, but maybe the writer is at their best, or it is better for the story. What's losing a few colourblind people or people who set their screens to weird settings vs people simply not being able to follow the story correctly? That some people make an eyesore is a given, just like some write horrible stories. Any tool can be used badly, and it's not a reason someone else should shun it. This just needs a careful application, as it's a crude tool we try to use with delicacy.

The story with the outlining left, centre and right hasn't been published yet. It is my biggest story so far meant for the "Dark fairytales 2025," but I was demanding too much of myself. I've been wondering if the outline would truly work. It was interesting to write at least.

I never do that. I just write it out normally and clearly. It takes a little extra care but it's far more professional. It's worth it.

That's fine, and I would recommend it for anyone talented enough. If you can write it clearly, you don't need to resort to such tools as colour.

Then again, I think we shouldn't be afraid to tread on the rules. Be creative. If we know the rules well enough, we know when to follow them and when to break them. Not to mention that most of us here won't publish literary masterworks. It feels the place where you can also experiment. We have a whole toolbox at our disposal. I wouldn't exclude some tools just because it's not standard.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You're right about the clarity with colour or bold. That being said, we'll always lose people for some reason or another. We could argue that someone just needs to write better, but maybe the writer is at their best, or it is better for the story. What's losing a few colourblind people or people who set their screens to weird settings vs people simply not being able to follow the story correctly?

That's a tad offensive to colour-blind people, but never mind. What you have said, though (inadvertently, maybe), is part of the truth: no matter what you do, some folk just don't read very well.

A lot of the stylistic messing around mentioned in this thread seems to be more about writers catering for the lowest common denominator, spoon feeding readers.

And the other half of the responses are saying, if your writing is clear and concise in the first place, at most all you need is a scene break.

* * * * *

Going on to include labels, Bob and Alice style chapter headings and such, smacks of novice writing, I reckon. You don't need any of that stuff if your words are good enough to do their own heavy lifting.

 

[anthrodisiac]

In Dutch there's the word "cursief," which means italics. Cursief is also used for the loopy ones. I forget at times it's an important distinction in English. I meant to say italics.

You're right about the clarity with colour or bold. That being said, we'll always lose people for some reason or another. We could argue that someone just needs to write better, but maybe the writer is at their best, or it is better for the story. What's losing a few colourblind people or people who set their screens to weird settings vs people simply not being able to follow the story correctly? That some people make an eyesore is a given, just like some write horrible stories. Any tool can be used badly, and it's not a reason someone else should shun it. This just needs a careful application, as it's a crude tool we try to use with delicacy.

The story with the outlining left, centre and right hasn't been published yet. It is my biggest story so far meant for the "Dark fairytales 2025," but I was demanding too much of myself. I've been wondering if the outline would truly work. It was interesting to write at least.


That's fine, and I would recommend it for anyone talented enough. If you can write it clearly, you don't need to resort to such tools as colour.

Then again, I think we shouldn't be afraid to tread on the rules. Be creative. If we know the rules well enough, we know when to follow them and when to break them. Not to mention that most of us here won't publish literary masterworks. It feels the place where you can also experiment. We have a whole toolbox at our disposal. I wouldn't exclude some tools just because it's not standard.

Sure, sure. New things, experimentation, those are great. But the important question is: "Are you using these tools because you're doing something experimental, or are you relying on them as a crutch?"

Intentionality is kinda my buzz word (as is implicitness), so if you're going to be trying novel things and experimenting, it should, as @TheLobster pointed out, be for a good reason (i.e. it's important to telling the story; it adds something; it makes in-universe logic) beyond, "Well, I can't make it clearer who's saying what, so I'll just use colors instead."

You mention that the person may be struggling with clarity, and that's perfectly valid. We've all been there or are currently there. Hell, I still struggle with it at times, and I've been writing nearly 25 years. The issue with relying on that to solve your clarity issues though is that you might be using that tool instead of trying to figure out ways to make it more clear using the normal approach. I've seen a lot of writers use various crutches over the years, and for a lot of them what happens is they use the crutch, which was meant to be temporary, but it then turns into a permanent fixture and they never figure out how to solve whatever issue they were trying to address.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You're right about the clarity with colour or bold. That being said, we'll always lose people for some reason or another. We could argue that someone just needs to write better, but maybe the writer is at their best, or it is better for the story. What's losing a few colourblind people or people who set their screens to weird settings vs people simply not being able to follow the story correctly?

But colour also interferes with the ability to follow the story, as does any non-standard formatting choice. Anything that forces the reader to stop and interpret one's formatting choices breaks flow and immersion; as a writer I want readers thinking about the story itself, not my technique. I would expect heavy use of bold/colour in fiction to lose far more readers than just using words to convey what you need to convey.

(And customising display settings for visibility isn't particularly "weird"; plenty of people have vision impairments or conditions like dyslexia that benefit from being able to tweak the display to their needs. Some day when your eyes are a little older, you might find yourself wanting those "weird settings" yourself...)

 

[Britva415]

There are valid reasons to have more than one first-person POV characters. First person is incredibly intimate

I grudgingly concede that that can be one reason to have one 1p POV character. I don't feel that it's a great reason to have more than one of them

Subscribe to my blog about my strong feelings and opinions about 1p.

 

[Britva415]

Not quite on topic, but when I write such things I try to signal a difference.

The easiest is colour, cursive or bold. These can help signify something is different.

If you aren't "signaling the difference" with words... typographical contrast isn't going to help.

EDIT:
I should clarify... Yes, yes, sure it could help the reader distinguish between voices. But it shouldn't be written in such a way that it's necessary in the first place. Color, weight and font style don't improve the writing.

The words alone should be able to convey and carry the story. If they do, then the typography is superfluous.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I grudgingly concede that that can be one reason to have one 1p POV character. I don't feel that it's a great reason to have more than one of them

I... I'm so honored... *sniffs*

I shall always remember where I was when Britva415 reluctantly grumbled that I may have made a good point on something

 

[Husky_Embrace]

That's a tad offensive to colour-blind people, but never mind. What you have said, though (inadvertently, maybe), is part of the truth: no matter what you do, some folk just don't read very well.

<...>

Exclusion isn't always offensive. If I don't include incest of Loving Wives themes it isn't offensive to them, unless I post it there. Or a different example, if I build a villa, is it offensive to poor people who can't afford it? Is a movie offensive to the blind? Each choice we make can push any group away, but it's the intent that can make it offensive.

But colour also interferes with the ability to follow the story, as does any non-standard formatting choice. Anything that forces the reader to stop and interpret one's formatting choices breaks flow and immersion; as a writer I want readers thinking about the story itself, not my technique. I would expect heavy use of bold/colour in fiction to lose far more readers than just using words to convey what you need to convey.

(And customising display settings for visibility isn't particularly "weird"; plenty of people have vision impairments or conditions like dyslexia that benefit from being able to tweak the display to their needs. Some day when your eyes are a little older, you might find yourself wanting those "weird settings" yourself...)

Colour and formatting can interfere with the story, and I'm sure it can also enhance it. I've called it a crude tool that isn't needed if you can write it clear in the first place. Even so we can try things out to make it interesting or different. I've been to a concert of several classic works that tried to reinvent themselves. It was rather unusual, where a guy was coming in on a bike ringing a bell, or a pianist was arguing with someone on stage.

I'm not sure why people immediately go for extremes. We can be more subtle. Any heavy handed overuse is by definition a bad thing.

Some day when my eyes are older I'll manage. My father is legally blind, but has adaptive tools at his disposal to make it work. He does stamps with at times near indistinguishable colours or patterns. He hasn't called them offensive yet.

If it breaks the flow it can be an artistic choice, or simply bad writing. There's a highly voted story where the obvious self insert gets a small dick vehicle from all the women in his life. That breaks my immersion. I don't consider it offensive. Just bad writing.

Sure, sure. New things, experimentation, those are great. But the important question is: "Are you using these tools because you're doing something experimental, or are you relying on them as a crutch?"

Again, "but what if it's used wrongly" is obviously a wrong implementation. I'll not argue for wrong implementation, or solely relying on it to support bad writing.

It's like using AI. It is the bane of all evil. It is sourced unethically, without morals and used in great numbers for slop.

AI has also been used to solve the protein folding problem while sourcing the data legally, ethically and with a noble cause.

Use the tools you have responsibly and not like a hateful bigot railing against the visually impaired and wanting to subvert expectations like Star Wars The Last Jedi.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Again, "but what if it's used wrongly" is obviously a wrong implementation. I'll not argue for wrong implementation, or solely relying on it to support bad writing.

It's like using AI. It is the bane of all evil. It is sourced unethically, without morals and used in great numbers for slop.

AI has also been used to solve the protein folding problem while sourcing the data legally, ethically and with a noble cause.

Use the tools you have responsibly and not like a hateful bigot railing against the visually impaired and wanting to subvert expectations like Star Wars The Last Jedi.

Which is the exact point I made. Using it as a crutch for not further developing talent is a bad use case. Using it intentionally for effect is not.

Not sure how we got to hateful bigotry from that, though.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Personally, I wouldn't enjoy reading things with colour or shading. Even bold I find taxing, unless it's for headers / breaks.

I've seen switching POVs that list the characters as the switch happens done well, and not get in the way of the story. To the point where I tried it in my latest story and was happy with how it turned out -- I was switching between the two MCs, using 1P. It didn't even occur to me that it might be considered lazy or be considered poor, style wise.

Having said that, I've also seen it really struggled with it, so maybe down to how it's done...

 

[anthrodisiac]

Personally, I wouldn't enjoy reading things with colour or shading. Even bold I find taxing, unless it's for headers / breaks.

I've seen switching POVs that list the characters as the switch happens done well, and not get in the way of the story. To the point where I tried it in my latest story and was happy with how it turned out -- I was switching between the two MCs, using 1P. It didn't even occur to me that it might be considered lazy or be considered poor, style wise.

Having said that, I've also seen it really struggled with it, so maybe down to how it's done...

It's not a universal opinion. It's a stylistic choice. Again, one of those things that if you're doing it intentionally vs. using it to shore up shortcomings, it's fine. If it's being used as a crutch, less so.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's like using AI. It is the bane of all evil. It is sourced unethically, without morals and used in great numbers for slop.

AI has also been used to solve the protein folding problem while sourcing the data legally, ethically and with a noble cause.

Not a great analogy, because this is not a case of one tool that does both good and bad things; these are two quite different things which just happen to share the name "AI". Marketers for generative AI like to confuse the issue and give the impression that what they're selling is the same thing that solved protein folding, but we don't need to assist them in that deception.

 

[Whanmore]

Thanks guys Youve given me A lot to think about. (I knew yall wouldn't let me down). Ever since my Hiatus I've been double analysing all my writing and this was burning my brain.

 

[Whanmore]

There's the rub. Many of my stories these days, especially the Emma and Bobbie series, give two women equal time because, well: two women, one man. In other words, there is no main POV character. That was especially the case in the story mentioned - it started out focussed on Bobbie, then Lisa arrived with her compersion. The narrative flow seemed to seamlessly and naturally shift between them, with occasional input from Adam.

There's the rub? No pun intended? But really, doesn't that desire to "give equal time" stem from the Genre of Erotica? We want to feel as readers both what the women and the man are feeling? Does that break the immersion or add to it? I know during Sex I certainly try to imagine how she may feel, though I'll never know!

 

[anthrodisiac]

There's the rub? No pun intended? But really, doesn't that desire to "give equal time" stem from the Genre of Erotica? We want to feel as readers both what the women and the man are feeling? Does that break the immersion or add to it? I know during Sex I certainly try to imagine how she may feel, though I'll never know!

Does it stem as in original stem? No. It's an old technique, older than strict POV actually. The oldest stories are told by omniscient narrators dating back thousands, probably tens of thousands of years.

Immersion is a tricksy beast. It can be accomplished in a few different ways. I don't necessarily think any one stylistic choice is going to make or break it, it's in the execution. Immersion is about how you draw in the reader, and manage to keep them engaged with the material with as few bumps as possible; smooth stories tend to be fairly immersive. POV changes don't necessarily break that, assuming you've established that the story is told from multiple POVs, or that we have access to multiple POVs from the outset.

When you start breaking immersion is when you start breaking narrative or in-universe logic, whether that's world logic or character logic. Having a limited POV story, but suddenly getting access to some random person's headspace would certainly give the immersion a kick, if not outright break it. The occasional slip is forgiven by most readers. You also have to remember that most of us AH aren't most readers — we're writers, and we tend to be more eagle-eyed and have stricter ideas about these things than the average non-writer.

So, having a sex scene where you include the thoughts and feelings of both (or more) partners can be immersion breaking if the story had been from a single POV until that point. It could be more immersive if you had both the whole time, because you're getting a fuller sense of how people are thinking and feelings, the sensations, really digging into the sensory experience of both partners and paint the picture in an enticing way. But again, that's execution, which is where most of the make-or-break moments of immersion live.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There's the rub? No pun intended? But really, doesn't that desire to "give equal time" stem from the Genre of Erotica? We want to feel as readers both what the women and the man are feeling? Does that break the immersion or add to it? I know during Sex I certainly try to imagine how she may feel, though I'll never know!

A lot of content here is, I think, mostly male-centric where women can be objectified, the male gaze blah blah blah. I try to write women characters with agency. Whether I succeed or not? Comments give me some idea, but the typical Lit reader doesn't say much.