POV: How to Fix Head Hopping

Tags

close third, editing advice, editing tips, head hopping, omniscient, POV shift, Sherrily Kenyon, writing advice, writing technique, writing tips

I had this post requested a while ago, and I couldn’t figure out how to put it into words at first. But as I’ve been writing lessons for a mentoring program I’m working on, I finally figured it out.

So here it goes.

First, head hopping is when we dip into more than one character’s POV in a single scene. This isn’t omniscient POV, but rather a switch between close-third perspectives.

Most editors advise against head-hopping because when we switch mid-scene, we’re not often warned that the change has occurred, and the reader is more likely to grow confused. My argument is that writers should do their best to structure of everything clearly so that the work happens in creating imagery out of language, and the reader can delve into the world instead of staying on the surface to decipher what’s happening and where.

Now, it’s been said that head hopping is more acceptable in romance and erotica because the relationship is more important than the characters individually. It helps increase tension to have access to both of their thoughts.

Do I write my romance/erotic fiction this way? No. I’m not convinced. I have seen romance writers do this successfully, like Sherrilyn Kenyon does in her Dark Hunter series, but overall, I’m not a fan of it. It confuses me too often, and I have a harder time connecting with a particular character.

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how we identify head hopping.

The best way to identify is to categorize, or color code, a first draft. It’s easiest to do this to a first draft so that you don’t waste time making the parts you cut and have to redraft pretty.

You can color code on a printed copy or in your word processer. Simply section highlight the parts of the story that dip into a character’s POV. This will be their internal thoughts/dialogue, the analysis of the scene or characters, and their opinions of/reactions to what’s happening in the story.

Here’s an example:

Jennifer rushed into the room, adrenaline numbing her legs and burning her lungs. The giant’s destructive footsteps didn’t shake this far into the farmland, yet.

Her hair fell from her ponytail as she swung the door closed and grabbed for everything she thought might be valuable on the move.

Frank didn’t know yet, that a giant fell from a beanstalk that’d grown overnight on the other side of the city, so he shook his head and poured another cup of coffee. What is she looking for?

Note how we’ve gone from inside of Jennifer—as she’s the only one who knows about the giant—to inside of Frank, who doesn’t understand why she’s rummaging through their stuff. There are several places where small tweaks can keep this in Jennifer’s POV.

Jennifer rushed into the room, adrenaline numbing her legs and burning her lungs. The giant’s destructive footsteps didn’t shake this far into the farmland, yet.

Her hair fell from her ponytail, teasing the corners of her eyes, as she swung the door closed and grabbed for everything that might be valuable on the move.

A giant fell from a beanstalk that’d grown overnight on the other side of the city.

Frank, her husband, shook his head and poured a cup of coffee in the small, attached kitchen. “What are you looking for?”

In this version, no one needs to tell us that Frank doesn’t know about the giant, we can see that he doesn’t by his external reaction to her. The rest is a reflection of Jennifer’s reaction to her situation: she saw the giant; she’s freaked out; she’s searching; she places who Frank is for us; and she hears him ask the question.

This creates clarity for the reader to experience the situation rather than being told about it, another reason to stay in POV. Readers like to put the pieces together because they’re smart.

Another clue of a POV shift is description. If the character is describing themselves physically, we’ve shifted out of their POV. The camera-effect shifts us into the omniscient perspective. We can’t see ourselves, except in mirrors, and that’s often a cliché technique.

This may be a pesky task the first few times you try it, but seeing a draft in colors rather than chapters helps separate us from the story to see its parts.

Once you have the whole thing color-coded—or the parts you’ve identified as problematic—see what color is most present in the scene/chapter. That’s likely the POV character for that scene and the rest should shift to his or her perspective. Some of it may not make it. If it’s an important detail, find another way to include it—dialogue, a new scene in the other character’s POV, some prop that can provide the information needed.

Sometimes, all you need to do is split a scene in two and allow more than one character to describe what’s going on and fill in the gaps. I often like the tension that comes in a mid-scene cut to the other perspective. It’s a nice trick to use every now and again.

Well, there’s my opinion and advice.

How do you identify and/or fix head hopping? When do you feel like it works or doesn’t work? Got any questions? Let me know in the comments below.

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Ed Ahern, a Featured Spotlight

If you haven’t heard of the On Fire anthology, this mini-interview and excerpt series will showcase the amazing authors I get to work with and their writing. Meet Ed Ahern.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Type the crap out of it until it runs clear.

How long does it usually take you to write a story?

First draft: Four to six days depending on life interferences.

How do you research your stories?

Online, mostly. I also write retold folk tales, so I buy very old folk tale books, find a story I like, and then research it a bit on line.

What are you doing to market yourself?

I’m the heretic in the room. I dabble in Facebook and Twitter, but suspect that much of social media is just posturing for one another. I write about writing on Twitter, and that seems to attract more followers than pimping my latest pub cred. I also make a dedicated effort to get stories and poems reprinted on the unproven theory that the more readers encounter (and hopefully like) my stuff, the more likely they are to read more of it.

 

“The Birthing” by Ed Ahern

Matt shuffled closer. As his shock abated the anguish of his cauterized finger drummed against his throbbing collarbone.

Still screwed. This whatever-it-is is bigger than me, and I’m too crippled to fight. Find a branch or a rock? Meanwhile, kiss Girra’s ass.

The fire burned in a shallow pit, but Matt couldn’t see any wood or charcoal, just burning dirt. “Please, sir, how did you get that to keep burning? And how did you do this to my finger?”

Girra’s belly swayed as she stepped toward him. “Another nattering chimp. My names mean nothing to you?”

“No.”

“So stupid. They are the names your kind gave to fire gods. Elementals. The fire burns because I will it so. Just as your finger burned. Just as you will burn.”

“But you appear human.”

Sort of.

“Ah. We are the essence of flame, eternal, never seen except as candle or conflagration. But your kind creates billions more and different kinds of fires, forcing us to breed. And to breed we must appear to take animal shape. For my Birthed to best acclimate to your fire, I have taken your shape. But we are hermaphroditic. I procreated with myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Witless. Do you know of Plato’s cave?

“No.”

“In a cave much like this one, an ignorant man—that is you—sees fire-cast shadows and thinks the shadows are beings. But they are not. What you think you are looking at is shifting shadows of an entity you will never comprehend. Be resigned to ignorance.”

Something shifted in Girra’s belly, and fire light seeped through the skin. “But if I am ignorant and cannot harm you, why must I die?”

“So that your kind remains blind to us. Your race hasn’t believed in elementals for two millennia. We prefer it.”

 

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had a hundred seventy stories and poems published so far. His collected fairy and folk tales, The Witch Made Me Do It was published by Gypsy Shadow Press. His novella The Witches’ Bane was published by World Castle Publishing, and his collected fantasy and horror stories, Capricious Visions was published by Gnome on Pig Press. Ed’s currently working on a paranormal/thriller novel tentatively titled The Rule of Chaos. He works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of five review editors.

ON FIRE is available now: Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and the Transmundane Press store.

Misconceptions of Satire

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dystopic fiction, free book, humor, irony, moral outrage, must read, narrative, Parody, satire, YA literature

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard: “That’s not satire. It’s not even funny,” and I want to know where the hell this belief came from. No one mistakes Bradbury as funny, Wells as funny, Swift as funny…okay, maybe Vonnegut is a bit humorous.

I like to think that satire includes humor, but to say that it’s all inclusive is ridiculous. Satire’s intent is to comment on society and exaggerate it to make a point or facilitate an argument. We’re meant to question ourselves, our behaviors, and our world.

Granted, after a discussion with my husband, I concede that all satire does have a sense of dark humor—as in, that tickling moment when you know exactly what the author is referring to—but that’s not to mistake the story or content as funny.

Most satire creates moral outrage through this level of awareness, using various literary elements, such as irony, paradox, colloquialism, anticlimax, obscenity, and violence. But the most essential is creating vividly painful and absurd people and situations to prod readers to see the truth that many habitually ignore.

We often see this used in narrative and parody. Like my favorites: South Park, Archer, The Simpsons, and the majority of adult cartoons, and maybe cartoons all together, but I’ll refrain from declaring that as an absolute truth. And dystopic fiction, like The Hunger Games, Divergent, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Giver, I could go on, and on, and on…

Satire is essentially sarcasm. It’s funny to those who get it, so it cannot make us laugh every time. Cognitive dissonance aside, we don’t often like to watch others tap into our faults.

Well, those are the broad strokes. Good thing I’m a sarcastic asshole because satire is most certainly my thing.

Think you know enough about vampires and pop-culture monsters to laugh at my books? Get the prequel for free on Kobo, Nook, or the Transmundane Press Store (in .mobi, .epub, and .pdf).

It’s up on Amazon, too, but for 99 cents since they don’t like me giving things away for free. But if you want to donate the dollar, I suppose you could do that, too. Or report their greedy need to control the market…you know, either way.

Want to know something more about satire? Want me to examine a specific text or technique, feel free to drop suggestions in the comments below.

Hello. My name is Alisha, and I am a Caffeine Addict.

Tags

addiction, apocalypse, business-owner, coffee, editor, grading, professor, step-mom, survival, wife, writer

My addiction knows few bounds. After a week of intense grading, coffee has become my crutch once more. Four down and four to go? Refill the mug and hope my brain cells don’t melt, or combust, or simply give up on me.

It happened the other day. I laid down for a nap at 6:30 and woke up at 6:30…am…

Oh, the life of a professor/editor/business-owner/writer/wife/step-mom. Man, that’s a lot of slashing.

I wonder if my ingrained need to keep productive fuels my coffee addiction. It certainly works the other way around.

I don’t have to wonder—and maybe, now, neither do you—why Ria, my caffeine-fueled vampire, seems to drink a million cups per book. It’s her ultimate distraction—her ability to take a moment, calm down, collect herself, or avoid an awkward conversation that’ll likely happen anyways.

She also has the same trait of staying busy and stretching herself thin: working two job (Holla, I hear that), navigating her own survival, and taking on the world—in a more literal sense than I do.

Let the apocalypse reign, so long as we can still have our cups of joe.

Can you survive without your flavor of caffeine? What’s the one thing you couldn’t survive without?

Guilty of Goal Goldbricking.

Tags

back on track, get shit done, goals, guilt, NaNoWriMo, procrastination, tips, writing, writing goals

Let’s talk about goals.

I made a lot for this month, and I tried for the first half to keep on track, but as usual, I got caught up with life and my family, and now, I’m behind. A thousand-words-a-day behind.

But let me say something about goals and procrastination. The only thing that will keep me from finishing this is me. Getting behind doesn’t mean giving up, and I’m happy, frankly, that I’m getting anything done, as I’d let this story sit dormant for almost a year as other projects took over. I’m okay with the other three sitting and waiting for this one to get done, since it, too, will have to sit and wait to be edited afterwards.

Nanowrimo, for me, is designed to kick my rear back into action so that I can get my own creative work done because the rest of the year will be devoted to editing.

So, as long as I keep going, I’ll get my shit done and meet my goals.

Without the guilt of not getting it done sooner.

Are you participating in Camp Nanowrimo? Link me to your project below.

Not participating but still have massive goals to meet? Tell me about them and your tricks for staying on track.

Reading as an Editor

I am doomed. I can’t seem to finish reading most of the books I pick up. I can’t do it. And I used to read between fifty and one hundred books a year. Last year, I started thirty and completed four.

I get shit sometimes for reading multiple books at once. But I’ve always had the belief that all books require a certain attitude or mood. So, I’ll start something that speaks to me, and if I can’t struggle past the first few chapters, I’ll put it down for another time.  Once, I finished a book four years later, sporadically struggling through a few chapters at a time. As it turns out, the book developed into quite the story by the end. The last seventy-five pages flew by, and I was glad to stick it out.

The majority aren’t so lucky, and I often wonder what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I read?

Then, those books come along that sucker punch you right in the kidneys. The Hunger Games was one. Divergent was another. The Testing, Cinder, The Clockwork Scarab, and Feed, etc. They have a rather distinct theme—young adult, satirical, dystopian fiction. This is my brightest of geek buttons, and if I ever decide to go for my PhD, this is what my dissertation will focus on. Ask me for a book to read, and most of them will be in this niche. Just saying.

Anyways, the reason for the massive DNF pile is my equally large list of pet peeves: dialogue tags and adverbs—especially together—passive voice, vague words, and missing Oxford commas. Believe me, the list is rather extensive.

Instead of wallowing on this inability to read, I need to learn to focus on those moments when a writer can capture me despite the faults I might find in their style or grammar—ones that remind me that my voice is not the only voice—ones that make me throw away my editing pencil for the cats to play with and feel the adrenaline of being surprised by a story.

I had two of those moments this year, and I’m concerned that it’s already June…maybe the two-day train ride without my laptop will help.

Anyways, the first was Red Queen, which I’m almost finished with and will review soon. Man, this had character and a world I’m not used to seeing. A mix of mutants, future dystopia, and a medieval system. Plus that snarky, quick-witted, and rebellious female lead that I love all too much. *Coughs* Ria*Coughs.* Since I first wrote about this in my March newsletter, I’m still almost done with the novel. I ran out of steam again, and I don’t know why, but I’ll get there.

The second book that gripped me probably harder than a book has in the last few years was Like Clockwork, and I had the privilege of publishing this novella. Before you know it, this story has its nails in you, and it drags you, stumbling behind, until the very last word. And by the way, I read the story at least seven times, and the layers Ali needed to deliver the blow that he does grew more and more complex with each read. He truly did a brilliant job.

So, tell me, do you read more than one book at a time? How do you overcome reader’s block?

The Past Life Paradigm

Tags

atlantis, Broken World, Ever After, goddess, past lives, Pride and Prejudice, reincarnation, Sale, thirteen

Hello, lovelies.

I wanted to talk about Ria. Oh, Ria. That poor girl had no chance at a normal life. Between her abnormal birth, sharing a soul with her mother, and being the reincarnation of the Atlantean goddess, Meleia, it’s no wonder Ria’s got a shit storm to work through.

With that in mind, I wanted to give y’all a peek at Ria’s past lives as they are a major part of her story. So here is the quick list:

Meleia—goddess of chaos (8100 BCE)

Isura—Mesopotamia (5512 BCE)

Bianca—Italy (4027 BCE)

Niabi—Japan (1377BCE)

Colista—Greece (184 CE)

Sura—Germany (481 CE)

Benny—Spanish (714 CE)

Valarie—French (933 CE)

Zyanya—China (1212 CE)

Sophia—Ireland (1416 CE)

Layla—Scotland (1632 CE)

Dashay—Jamaica (1799 CE)

Tatiana—America (1969 CE)

It’s a long list. Thirteen past lives in all, which is linked to the chaos from her original form, or maybe because thirteen is an unlucky number. Either way, it’s my favorite. (I’m a serious lover of Friday the thirteenth—the day, not the movies. Although…)

Now, the author honesty. I don’t know much more about these women than I’ve created them in the books. Well, with a few exceptions. Ria’s mother, Tatiana, is forming herself in my fire story, featuring Ria’s father. I know a bit more about Bianca and Colista and Layla than I’ve let y’all in on.

I feel as though Layla is my most interesting of the women—the most independent and vulnerable. Maybe it’s because she reminds me a bit of Cinderella—of Drew Barrymore’s version in Ever After—and of Lizzie from Pride & Prejudice. She takes on her role as the eldest-daughter-turned-mother when her parents died in the Great Plague of Edinburgh along with two of her siblings.

At thirteen, she had to navigate a devastated city to feed her three remaining brothers and sisters. And for the next four years, she struggles to do so every day, until she meets a man who eventually takes care of her…but he vanishes a decade later.

If you haven’t guessed it, and maybe you haven’t because you don’t know Ria’s story, but that man was Gene (whom I like to think of as my Mr. Darcy), and Layla is the spitfire that pops up when the two of them are fighting.

This is because of the fire in Layla from the life she was dealt and her ability to adapt. Ria has a lot of the same characteristics but could learn a lot from Layla still.

Before I turn this into some twisted circle of babbling, let me wrap this up.

Want to know more about these past life connections? Feel free to ask me questions!

And check out the first novel in my series, it’s on sale for 99 cents to celebrate my upcoming installment in the series on May 9^th.

Did You Know…About Imprinting?

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blood phoenix: imprinted, book trailer, Freud, Honan and Delsa, Laurell K. Hamilton, mormon, necromancer, paranormal romance, Stephenie Meyer, vampires

Imprints seem to span further than the notable reference to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga. First, they imply a biological connection between the sex of a parent and the gene passed down, which results in learning and development.  If you want to know more of the science, check this out, but I’m no expert. I merely gleam some reference to Ria and her past, especially her connections with her mother.

Second, we have the psychological imprint. The two types of psychological imprints refer to bonding with one’s parents or parent-like figures. The sexual imprinting suggests the stage of our development commented on by Freud, that we favor our opposite-sex parent and often create a template for future partners based off of them. Whereas, bonding imprints take place in new born creatures that bond to the types of animals they’re surrounded by at birth, thus they pattern their behaviors in a similar fashion.

I once again find connections between Ria and Boden’s relationship and what the term imprint implies. When her powers were budding, Boden used his influential magick on her—beginning their imprint. A few hours later, he drank his blood, deepening their connection, and shit got crazy from there.

Third, the newly famous theories from the paranormal romance world focuses on shifters, or werewolves, and their strong bonds with humans. Stephenie Meyer’s books popularized this involuntary lifetime attachment with her werewolves. Their imprints mean the werewolves protect and please their mates for the remainder of their lives. But she wasn’t the first to use this type of connection. Laurell K. Hamilton used this in her Anita Blake series between both the shifter characters and the main human female, and a link between this woman, a necromancer, and newly risen vampires. Sherrilyn Kenyon also creates a bond between her shifter characters in her Dark Hunter and Were Hunter series, where shifters mate for life, literally marking them for their mate and their mate only. The men cannot cheat, and the women cannot reproduce without their mate. Their bond is ultimate and complete.  Even further back, the story of Honan and Delsa created this type of bond as the characters transverse the before, the life, and the afterlife together, fated to find each other again and again. In fact, this is theorized to be Meyer’s inspiration as a Mormon story. This guy writes about it more in depth. Interesting stuff.

Fourth, paranormal investigators theorize that because we are made of energy and leave almost undetectable traces everywhere we go, we thusly leave an energy stamp, like a fingerprint, in places we spend a great deal of time or energy.

This is the final nail, so to speak, is their transfer of powers—when both the imprint and her newly acquired glamour explode in a coffee shop. It takes an elemental to sort it out, but traces are left. Too much of their energy swapped.

Ultimately, I called it an imprint for a lack of a better word. Boden and Ria formed this bond without my intent and not really with theirs either. Unless you take Boden’s cackling as any sort of sign.

In book three of Ria’s story, Blood Phoenix: Imprinted, we explore their bond more deeply, but the name refers not only—just majoritively—to Ria and Boden. It also refers to her past selves, and thus, her connections to her parents, her soul, James, and Gene.

 

Want a free look into the Broken World and access to more super secret book stuff? Download “Maiden of the Underworld” here.

 

BONUS CONTENT: The Official Blood Phoenix: Imprinted book trailer is live. ❤

Daydreaming in Ink

Tags

addiction, bujo, bullet journal, daydreaming, do it yourself, ink, inspiration, planners, project planning, tracker, washitape, writing

I may be a wee bit addicted to planning and notebooks…and pens…and paper…and markers…okay, I’m just a big kid who likes to daydream in ink.

But I’ve finally found a way to make it work in my favor.

See, the internet has blown up with this new planning market in the last few years—for real, go check out YouTube or Pinterest or Instagram and drown in the bombardment of it. I love every bit of it, too, and probably consume more of it than I should, but that’s not really the point…is it?

No, seriously, it’s not. Step off my walnut.

So, I’ve been planning for the last year, mixing a multitude of formats and systems to make sure I break down my big plans and don’t forget any of those small steps…you know, the ones that come back and bite you in the ass at the last second.

Without any further side-tracking, hopefully, let me show you.

Here are three examples of my main project tracker, the one that shows me the entire project from start to finish in one page. It reminds me of my important tasks and allows me to track my progress and mark things out.

The simple ability to fill in my word count or how many chapters I’ve edited in a manuscript helps me feel like I’m accomplishing something even though I know I have a long way to go.

And these babies are new to me this year, after months of struggling to balance my tracking, so I’m excited to finally complete one of these. (Hint: the green one, Blood Phoenix: Imprinted should by full by the end of next quarter, to include publishing and promotion and giveaways and a whole lot of jazz. Squee.) You can see I have a whole lot sitting there in one place.

Here’s another way I help track from month to month to be sure I’m completing the tasks from my project list.

This I took from Lisa Jacobs. I bought her workbook, Your Best Year 2017, and this allows me to take the chunking from my project plans—in conjunction with my marketing and publishing outlines—and implement them into each week of the month so I know when I need that little shit done by to stay on target.

Let me be honest, I don’t always stick to this. Life happens, shit gets shifted around, but now, I know when I’ve missed stuff and can figure out how to finish those things and keep moving forward.

It also lets me know when I have to let some tasks go. I have big dreams and big plans, and I pile a lot onto my own plate. So when I miss something consistently, I know it’s not meant to happen for a particular project. And that’s fine. I’ll try it next time.

Well, that’s it. That’s how I’ve made my tendency to goof off and doodle and journal into a productive and rewarding practice. Best of all, I really love doing it.

What do you do to plan out your creative projects? Do you have creative energy that you channel in your favor? Tell me about it.

After Happily Ever After: Editrix and Author Alisha Costanzo Talks Secret Agents and Creative Impulses

claudia quint

After Happily Ever Cover by Dean Samed, banner by Rohit Sawant

If you haven’t heard about the After Happily Ever After anthology, this interview series is a front row seat into the creative minds of the authors who have re-envisioned the fairy tale world beyond the final credits. However, as we reach the close of the series, we now have the opportunity to turn our attention to the guiding forces behind the anthology — the editors themselves!

Welcome author and editrix Alisha Costanzo to the blog!

Editrix and author, Alisha Costanzo

How did you begin your writing journey?

Honestly, I always have a hard time pin-pointing a beginning, and I wonder if other authors feel the same way. I’ll start here. I had sixty-seven imaginary friends before I started public school. My mother made me a cocoon in the far corner of the living room to hide and read Goosebumps

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