Head Hopping

By Janice Seagraves

Hi, my name is Janice Seagraves. I write erotic romance in various genres, but my first book Windswept Shores is an erotic contemporary.

When I first starting writing, I head hopped like a mad woman.

Example:

Ted walked into the room and slammed the door. He glared at Betty, thinking how he’s like to strangle her.

Betty glared back, wondering if he had it in him to hurt her. “What do you want, Ted?”

~*~

It’s not the greatest of example, but you can see what I mean. We’re in both characters’ heads.

As I continued to learn the craft of writing, I found out that this really annoys the crap out of editors. So the best thing to do was to stop this habit. And habit it was. I found it’s really hard to stop head hoping.

But I got help from my mentor Faith Bricknell-Brown, who gave me some excellent advice: one scene one POV. If you keep to that you won’t go wrong.

Example:

Ted walked into the room and slammed the door. He glared at Betty, thinking how he’s like to strangle her.

Betty glared back. “What do you want, Ted?”

Of course now I’ve kicked the habit. No head hopping anymore.