Picture this:

You share a scene you’ve written with your writers’ group, excited to see what they think. You finish reading, wait eagerly for their feedback … only to find they were confused or not engaged with the scene as well as you’d hoped. And it’s all because your scene has “head-hopping” in it.

What exactly is head-hopping, and why is it such a concern for readers? Well, for one thing, it’s a sure way to pull them out of the story experience, forcing them to try to analyze what you’re doing. And the moment they enter analysis mode, it’ll be less likely for them to enjoy the book. You don’t want that.

Here’s what to do to identify head-hopping and address it so your book reads smoothly and keeps readers hooked from start to finish.

What Is Head-Hopping?

Simply put, head-hopping is the term for bouncing around in multiple characters’ heads in the same scene. Instead of experiencing the story moment from the thoughts of one character, the reader is expected to live equally in everyone’s heads, trying to keep track of every character’s thoughts and internal feelings.

Head-hopping is characterized by abrupt switches from one character’s deep, intimate thoughts to another character’s internal perspective—often, without any cues or transitions. The result is that readers feel like they’re bouncing around without any clear sense of direction. It’s disorienting, and makes it hard to stay emotionally connected with any particular character for long. 

Here’s an example:

Maria put her fork down, biting her lip to keep from attacking John. She felt herself shaking from how mean his words were, but they were in a public place. How could she say anything? John watched her, smirking because he could see how he’d hurt her. It felt good to humiliate her. The waiter, Gene, approached, feeling his stomach clench. Nothing was worse, he thought, than dealing with a fighting couple during his work shift.

In one scene, when the point of view and inner thoughts of all the characters are being shared like this, it can be hard for readers to stay emotionally involved. Readers just don’t want to hold space for everyone’s feelings—they’d prefer to identify with one character at a time. Head-hopping violates this expectation, and can disappoint or confuse readers.

The confusion factor is not to be sneezed at. Imagine, if you will, that you have a scene with three characters who are all similar—such as three heterosexual males who identify as “he.” Suddenly, you have a scene like this:

Mark put his fork down, biting his lip to keep from attacking John. He felt himself shaking from how mean his words were, but they were in a public place. How could he confront him now? John watched him, smirking because he could see how he’d hurt him. It felt good to humiliate him. The waiter, Gene, approached, feeling his stomach clench. Nothing was worse, he thought, than dealing with two brothers fighting during his work shift.

After a while, it gets hard for readers to keep track of which ‘he’ is John, which is Mark, and which is Gene. The only way to fix this when you’re head-hopping is to use a lot of repetition of character names—which is displeasing to readers, and distracting. What happens is that your scenes won’t be as tense or dramatic as you want them to be. Readers will be spending too much time thinking about your word choices and trying to figure things out, and they’ll be frustrated by your book. 

That’s not what you want.

The Cure for Head-Hopping: Choosing the Right Point of View

The way to fix head-hopping is to become more intentional about choosing and staying in a single point of view for your readers. Each scene should stay consistent—one specific point of view that you deliberately maintain for the entirety of the scene. That consistency ensures that readers know what to expect. They can track with what you’re writing, and more easily stay connected to the action and emotions—which is what keeps them turning pages instead of DNF-ing.

You’ve got a few different options you can lean into, in order to fix your head-hopping situation. Choose one of these approaches, and rewrite the scene.

Option 1: Use first person

One way to eliminate the temptation to hop from head to head is to switch to first person. Writing in first person makes it super easy not to hop heads, because it becomes obvious how to stay within one character’s viewpoint. You’re using “I” to determine whose thoughts the readers are privy to. So, you get a scene that reads like this:

I put my fork down, biting my lip to keep from attacking John. I felt myself shaking from how mean his words were, but we were in a public place. How could I confront him now? John watched me, smirking. He’d always enjoyed humiliating me, and I imagine he felt that way now too. Typical. I saw the waiter approach, his steps careful, not making eye contact. Poor guy. I couldn’t blame him. I’m sure he couldn’t stomach dealing with two brothers fighting during his work shift.

 Notice that we only get the thoughts from within Mark’s head, and we get hints of how Mark interprets John’s behaviors, rather than getting John’s thoughts. We also get an intimate, personal sense of how Mark feels and thinks about what is happening.

Option 2: Use third person limited

This is the gold standard of fiction these days: third person limited. This phrasing simply means you’re limiting yourself to staying in one person’s head, and you’re using ‘he, she, they’ instead of ‘I’ to express that character’s experiences. It looks like this:

Maria put her fork down, biting her lip to keep from attacking John. She felt herself shaking from how mean his words were, but they were in a public place. How could she say anything? John watched her, smirking. Why was he like this? She’d sensed early on in their marriage his desire to hurt her, to humiliate her. If she felt her cheeks growing hot, he’d smile. If she curled around herself with shame, he’d laugh. Now, the waiter approached—Gene, he’d called himself earlier, hadn’t he? Maria watched him draw near, and his eyes tightened. He’d noticed them fighting, probably. How embarrassing! She was probably the last person he wanted to take an order from right now.

Notice that we’re solidly in Maria’s thoughts. We notice what she sees—Gene’s approach, his eyes tightening, John’s smirk. But we don’t know what John or Gene are thinking. We get Maria’s interpretation of what she believes they are thinking and feeling. All is filtered through Maria’s eyes and mind.

Option 3: Use omniscient

Omniscient is a narrative voice in which an all-knowing narrator is viewing the action and reporting on it from a bird’s eye view. Depending on how a writer executes the omniscient viewpoint, readers might get a bit of the thoughts and feelings of all characters. But what makes omniscient different from head-hopping is that the use of it is super deliberate. To make this work, the author has to be highly intentional about creating a narrative voice that is set apart from the story—one that feels as if an outside person is recounting the story from a distance.

It might look something like this:

Maria put her fork down, biting her lip. She shook, her trembling the result of his mean words. In a public place, she wouldn’t call him out. The awkwardness of fighting in public was something she avoided—and John knew it. He watched her, a smirk playing on her lips, like a man who enjoyed hurting women, humiliating them. Tension hung in the air between them, a tight stillness that barely had room for the uncomfortable blend of nerves and shame, self-satisfaction and cruel enjoyment that the two of them had turned into a clockwork, day-to-day dance. As they sat unmoving, locked in their strange chess match of hostility, the waiter approached. His steps slowed, became tentative, gripping the water pitcher tightly in front of him like a shield.

There’s no doubt this moment is difficult and tense for everyone involved. We get a sense of Maria’s emotions, John’s thinking, and Gene’s behaviors. But we’re not hopping into their heads to get that. Instead, it’s as if the author is recounting what they’re seeing—and the author is the one interpreting everyone. In this version, the author is making lots of comparisons to create a specific tone, and it’s the author who’s making those word choice decisions. Not Maria, not John, not Gene. The writer.

It’s worth noting a couple more things about omniscient. First of all, this is not an easy viewpoint to execute, because as an author, you have to slow down and deliberate about what you share, when you share, why and how. You must look extremely closely at your personal writing style and pick it apart like a surgeon. This isn’t something you can execute in a casual way. It requires the same precision that it takes to cut a diamond and set it into a ring to maximize its sparkle.

Second, omniscient is not something writers use these days all that much—not compared to first person or third person limited. So, it’s also a technique that, if we’re being real about it, you won’t find much in the best sellers you’re pulling off the shelves, especially not genre fiction. Sure, you might find omniscient out there in the wild of recently published fiction. But first and third person limited will be a lot more common. What this means is, readers aren’t used to reading omniscient these days. You can write in it if you want to. But you’ll have to strive harder to make it work for readers who don’t normally read it. 

Again—you’ll have to be super intentional and highly precise with every single word choice, weighing everything with extreme care, if you want to pull omniscient off. Intentionality helps with every viewpoint, honestly. And growing your skills in writing techniques across the board will only help you do all you want your book to accomplish, in ways that readers appreciate.

But I Want to Show Every Character’s Response!

We hear ya! A lot of times, writers head-hop because they want to bring their characters to life in each scene—and that desire is a good thing. Your characters should jump off the page. The good news is, you don’t have to hop from head to head to do this. Instead, you can lean into a valuable, immersive technique that works for bringing readers deeper into a story: show those characters’ actions, give us their nonverbal behaviors, and let their thinking leach into their dialogue.

In other words, make them understandable in the ways we have to know everyone—through what they say and do. After all, we humans do this all the time. We pay attention to what others tell us, listen to their tone of voice, notice their expressions, watch their behaviors, and interpret them. Having your characters do this is only natural, and feels like what we do every day.

Stick inside the character’s head that you’ve chosen to be your viewpoint character. Show them noticing the things you and I notice—the facial expressions, the tightened fists of anger, the drumming fingers of impatience, etc. These things feel natural, and help the reader to feel immersed in your viewpoint character’s experience of their world, which makes the reading experience more pleasurable. 

This living through someone else is why we read, in a lot of ways. You don’t have to sacrifice this experience. You simply need to learn to execute it with finesse. Leaving head-hopping behind and embracing these other techniques will strengthen your writing and make it more immersive for your readers.

Have questions about the editing process? We’d love to chat with you and help you figure out your next steps. Contact us to set up a free sample edit.

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