head hopping

[jennickels]

I'm reading this book: Swipe by Evan Angler. It's meant more for middle grades (the main characters are 12 and 13) so the story is kind of... unbelievable but if my 11yo son read I think it's the kind of thing his age group would like.

Anyway, it's not the weird storyline that is annoying me. It's the author's insistence on head-hopping all over the freaking place. I've heard that this can be a stylistic thing, being able to see into everyone's head (omniscient 3rd person). But I was taught it's just sloppy writing. I keep hearing my junior high English teacher telling us you stick with one person's POV per section (like a chapter or whatever).

I've gotten used to books that take place from several people's POV (even in the 1st person which was different) with each chapter getting inside a different person's head. But this isn't like that.

Sometimes a whole chapter will be fine from the main character Logan's POV. Other chapters will suddenly introduce the thoughts of another character in the middle of a chapters. And worst of all one chapter went from being in Logan's POV to suddenly being in Erin's for almost half the chapter then suddenly switched back to Logan's. There's no transitions. It's like a sentence will be talking about what Logan's thinking and end with Erin's thoughts and continue on with her POV. UGH.
 
Even at 11-12 years old (the target audience) this would have annoyed the crap out of me.

It just pulls you right out of the story and leaves me feeling almost no connection with the characters. They're just there. And then half way through the book they start introducing other characters' POVs, sometime for just a couple paragraphs for what seems like no real reason.

There's also supposed to be some kind of romantic feelings developing between Logan and Erin but I just don't see it. Erin treats Logan like he's an idiot redneck. Logan is pathetic in his attempt to get Erin's attention. And then half way through his whole personality changes. He started out timid, afraid of his own shadow, paranoid, sure someone is following him (there is). Then he suddenly becomes super brave and outgoing not only confronting Erin about how she treats him but going into the bad part of town looking for the person he thinks is following him (Logan thinks the guy wants to kidnap and murder him). Huh? The kid is 12 for crying out loud. Not to mention the two of them go all over the place, break into what amounts to their version of the FBI to steal surveillance equipment in the middle of the night. The parents of both kids are completely clueless, lol. I suppose that's what kids want to read about so I let it slide but still... the kid does a complete 180 in just a couple days time. 

Still, I'll finish the book and the sequel because I have both of them here. I am curious to find out why the guy wants to kidnap Logan, and now his best friend, Dane, too (which came right out of left field). I just wish the head-hopping would stop. The whole idea of seeing what everyone is thinking at all times makes no sense to me. It kills the suspense. I could never write like that.

Comments

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

The YA & juvenile genres are no excuse for shit writing. Kids deserve high-quality reading material.

I can't stand incompetent head-hopping, either. When it's stylistically unmotivated, it's FAIL. There's a way to rock it, especially if a story deals with schizophrenia, or altered mental states, or a dimensional remove, or... you get the picture. There needs to be a reason for it, or the story will feel disconnected and random. (Unless that's the desired effect.)

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I feel: disconnected. The story really falls flat when the perspective suddenly changes. It doesn't add anything.

It's really jolting and headache inducing. It'll be going along great from Logan's POV and I'll really get into the story (I'm almost done, I read most of the 2nd half in the car waiting for Patrick to get done with his doctor appt) and then BAM suddenly I'm in Erin's head or her father's or some other random person that appeared out of nowhere and I'm left feeling like I was just hit with the literary equivalent of an 18-wheeler.

Then I have to reread and try to absorb this new information and try and figure out WHY the shift in perspective was needed (usually there is no good reason). Then I have a hard time trusting the narrative again and it takes forever to get back into the story. So... headache.

I just can't believe this made it through a professional editing process.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

Woah. It doesn't sound like the sort of book I'd set out to read in the first place, but I really intend to avoid it now. I've locked it out of my dialing computer!

I'm astounded that some editor thought that this was suitable for young adult fiction. Less experienced readers are more dependent on the cues that traditional structure and form bring, not less. They get confused enough about POV and other such things even when all the signs are there!

I can remember being in Eleventh Grade Honors English, having read the Emily Dickinson poem that goes:

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

A classmate of mine, a bright enough kid, argued insistently that this was a poem about Jack Frost. What clinched it for her was that "zero at the bone". It's the frost on the grass that is unbraiding as it melts in the sun, she said.

Now if a sixteen or seventeen year old kid can get that far off-base and defend it, how is a kid Owen's age going to deal with a situation where they constantly have to go back and rework their mental framework seeking the logical clues that they need to make sense of what they are reading? Most kids I know that age would quit in disgust long before they got to the end.

Ickkkkkk!!!!

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm not even sure kids today would notice anything wrong with the head-hopping. I don't think they spend a lot of days working on creative fiction any more. I learned all this stuff in junior high. Man, I hated every time my English teacher would tell me, "show, don't tell." I hated her because I really didn't get it. Took me until college to finally understand why she kept writing it all over my papers, lol.

But judging on the way some of these kids write fanfic... they have no beginning knowledge of writing. No basics to build on. Which... is fine as long as they want to learn. But none of them do. God forbid you give some creative criticism to help them.

I guess I find it utterly sad that as a people, Americans have become increasingly proud of their ignorance. They wear it like a badge. Too much teaching to a test and not enough critical thinking any more. Kids forget all the crap they learned for the test and never learned the thinking part so they grow up to be the kind of people that have no use for grammar, write in text speak all the time and get pissed if you ever point out their errors. Sad.

My husband is like that. His writing is atrocious. He writes like a barely literate 11yo. I cringe every time I look at it but if I try and correct him or give him some advice (this was for his resume and some other important things) he gets mad and acts like I'm being superior. His whole family is like that. They all sound like they barely have an 8th grade education (a crappy 8th grade education). I find it amazing anyone from that town ever makes it to college because all the kids I know there (my nephews, their friends) are all idiots and proud of it.

That kind of went on a tangent. I did finish the book last night, head-hopping and all. I think I got kind of used to it so it wasn't as jarring. Mostly my brain would just skim over it and go "la-ti-da, I'm not going to think about it." The story was still way unbelievable but it's probably something 11 and 12 year olds would like. I told Meagan about it the other night and yesterday she got home from school and demanded to know what else had happened in the book, lol. I told her to read it herself but that would be too much effort for her. Grrr.

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

I do POV switching in first person (yes, I know, and I'm sorry). Question the strength of my voices all day long, but even I know you can't switch in the middle of a chapter. And you plot stuff makes me wish I coukd make my story YA, but I think it's too violent. I'd definitely have to edit out a ton of f-bombs.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

I don't mind if there are several POVs in a book. Even in the 1st person (I've read some) as long as it's done well.

I read like 90% YA and have moved into contemporary stuff and you'd be surprised what is in there. I haven't read too many serious things (the kind dealing with real life issues), mostly I read lighter stuff. But even those have swearing. Even the F-word. One was from the perspective of an 18yo boy and when he was hanging out with his friends they cussed all the time.

One of the last ones I read was about a girl that unintentionally blames the most popular guy in school of raping her. (He just insulted her so she was crying AFTER she fell and cracked her head on something and someone saw her and assumed the worst). But she does nothing to stop the rumor which gets way out of control.

At one point the boy confronts her in the hall by screaming, "What the FUCK is you problem!" (or something to that extent) and then calls her a fucking liar several times. Of course there's a teacher there so he gets into even more trouble.

It all depends on the audience. To write for younger teens (12-15) you usually have to stay away from aggressive swearing. But for the older teens... just about anything goes. These books even got great reviews from the School Library Journal Review.

But the violence might have to be toned down. Just saying.