So I've been pulled up on this before now and was wondering if you lovely souls could shed some light? For example, I'm writing at the moment and started off with the husbands perspective, then when he leaves the room, I tell it through his wife's eyes until it switches back to him. Is this wrong? Does this even make sense? It flows perfectly naturally to me, but then I am a wee bit of a novice when it comes to writing. :/
There's a thing called "head hopping" that's generally considered to be a flaw in writing (although quite a few successful writers do it) - it's when the author switches POV without sufficient clarity or structure, making the experience kind of disorienting for the reader. It's hard for anyone but you to decide what's "sufficient" in terms of clarity, though. A more vague overall risk from switching POVs is that readers may not have the chance to really settle in and inhabit your characters, which could make the reading experience less immersive and satisfying. Again, though, it's a judgement call...
Welcome to the site! The First Rule of Writing, you do not talk about there are no rules of writing. There are only suggestions to be rejected if you know the reasons for them well enough to know that you disagree In my Doctor Who fanfic, my 5 POVs were easy enough for me to keep track of because 1) I used third-person limited so that the first sentence of each passage featured the POV character's name, 2) I used asterisks to separate sections, and 3) each chapter title was the list of POV characters *** In my novella that juggles first-person POVs, I still use asterisks, but I also introduce the character with their name underlined and italicized between the asterisks and the text. This worked because POVs didn't change as quickly as they did sometimes in my Doctor Who story: the passage of my fic where Shanjik's POV lasts for paragraphs, Kyra's POV lasts for a few sentence, and Shanjik's POV comes back for paragraphs would've been a lot more distracting if Kyra's name had headlined such a small piece of the narrative.
If writing in 3rd person, I use scene changes to change POV. If writing in 1st person (i.e. multiple 1st person POVs), I use a new chapter to change POV (also, if writing in multiple 1st person POVs, one must make sure the voices of narration are distinctly different from one another).
As a reader I wold probably get distracted by that, I always jump in my seat when I come across such a head hopping. One easy way to handle these transitions is to have a blank line when you change perspectives. When the husband leaves, you make a new scene and go on with the wife perspective. That way the reader is prepared that something has changed and I think it also makes more sense that the voice of the character might shift. Otherwise it would seem like some omniscient pov, but that way you might lose the chance to make their unique voices different.
Ah thank you all for your replies. My story is in 3rd person and I'm fairly sure it's not confusing to the reader so am happy to stick with it. I just wasn't sure if it was a major 'no no' in writing. Thanks again. I have a lot to learn!
