Head-hopping and crisis reading

Man Ray’s 1924 portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse.

Ah, the joys of an unprecedented global pandemic.

COVID-19 officially reached my town a few days ago, and the library where I work responded by temporarily shutting its doors on Tuesday. Now I, like so much of the world, am practicing social distancing and self-quarantining as a means of keeping both myself and others healthy.

In addition to the requisite stocking up on canned/dried foods, pet supplies, and, yes, toilet paper, I also prepared for the long isolation by picking up some extra books from both the library and local indie bookstore. I wanted things that felt fresh but would also tick off some boxes for my 2020 Reading Challenge. As a result, I’m currently reading authors who are largely new to me, even though some of them are quite famous within their genres.

Before I go on, I should admit that I’m probably a particularly difficult reader right now. Whether I’m turning pages at home or listening to an audiobook during a walk around my neighborhood, the story I’m consuming is always, on some level, in competition with the stir-craziness and anxiety constantly floating around the edges of my consciousness. So I’m trying extra hard to not make too many judgements about the authors or books I’m currently reading, and definitely won’t be naming names for any complaints I may have.

That being said, there is one issue that’s come up enough I felt I had to write a post about it, since it’s also something that can plague all writers. And that issue is head-hopping.

For those unfamiliar with the term, head-hopping just means jumping between characters’ perspectives within a single scene and usually applies to stories written in third person. Although there are still writers who will defend it as a stylistic choice, most industry professionals don’t agree. Many agents will even use the appearance of head-hopping as a means of identifying writers who are not yet ready to go professional.

Honestly, I’ve found that as reader I don’t always mind head-hopping, at least when it appears sparingly and in scenes with very few, well-differentiated characters. As an editor, however, I always point out head-hopping when I come across it—usually with a note about the degree to which it impedes my ability to follow a scene—because I know it can be a huge turn-off to industry professionals and many readers. In fact, I often encourage writers to start a new chapter when they switch perspectives, just to be as consistent and clear as possible.

So it’s been a surprise this week to come across not just one but several instances of head-hopping in a recent, well-regarded book by a best-selling author.

Far from being benign and easily understood, the hopping in this case truly is a hinderance to reader comprehension in part because the novel and its various scenes have MANY characters whose voices are not always radically different. Head-hopping in these instances, then, makes it difficult to determine whose perspective I’m reading and the story overall harder to follow. The fact that both the author and their editor either missed this or made the conscious decision to not take the time to change it is a little mind-boggling.

This kind of double-standard between what most writers are told they can do and what superstar authors actually do drives many a writer crazy. It can also lead new authors to believe they should be able to get away with the same mistakes as their heroes. And it is frustrating.

However, when I come across these issues in a published book by an otherwise solid writer, I always end up feeling bad for the author. Why? Because I know what I’m seeing is probably the product of industry-required speed over care. Once popular, an author and their editorial team can be under tremendous pressure to churn out new stories quickly, not giving them enough time to perfect their work before it hits shelves. And invested series readers will be willing to overlook a lot if it means getting more of their favorite characters faster. But once a book is published, that’s it. Authors then have to live with the errors of their novels and the way those errors may reflect back on them.

So my advice is this:

Always strive for perfection and clarity in your own work, but be gentle in your judgements of others.

Avoid head-hopping.

And, above all, do what you need to do to stay healthy, safe, and sane during this weird and difficult time.

Current mood. Photo by Alejandro Salazar.

Pep talk: Why writing and writers matter

Photo by Kevin Maillefer.

In my previous post, I wrote about how creating the worlds, characters, and stories that resonate with you is the first step towards developing novels that feel believable to, and engaging for, your prospective readers. During this season of good cheer, I want to shift that focus to the importance of writing, full stop. After all, nearly every writer, whether aspiring or published, must grapple with the doubts that plague creatives: Why am I doing this? Does what I make matter? Does the world really need more novels (or art or music)? Should I have become a doctor like my parents wanted?

Photo by Kevin Goodrich.

Putting that last question aside, here are a few things to keep in mind when doubt (or existential dread) hits, especially during the long nights of winter.

Literary fiction improves emotional intelligence and may promote empathy

As reported in Scientific American, a 2013 study by social psychologist Emanuele Castano and then-PhD candidate David Kidd at New York’s New School found that subjects were more capable of interpreting and understanding other people’s emotions after reading excerpts of literary fiction than those participants who read genre fiction, non-fiction, or nothing.

According to the researchers, this is probably because literary fiction, which uses ambiguously written characters and focuses on the complexities of psychology and relationships, often forces readers “to fill in the gaps to understand [characters’] intentions and motivations.” In contrast, popular fiction is typically populated by clear, consistent characters that lead those stories through exciting journeys to predictable ends. As a result, genre fiction rarely forces the reader to work to understand characters’ minds and tends to confirm, rather than challenge, our assumptions about behavior.

Because the abilities to identify and understand emotions in others are key components of empathy, Castano and Kidd’s study may also be interpreted as showing how literary fiction does, in fact, promote empathy along with success in navigating complex social relationships.

Of course, these conclusions are a little hard on genre fiction, which contains a wider range of psychological subtlety than this study reflects. For writers, it might be more helpful to think of the results this way: forcing readers to think deeply and critically about complex characters’ motivations and states of mind fosters greater interpersonal understanding in the world at large. And our world could definitely use more empathy.

See the researchers’ in-depth article on the relationship between literary fiction and Theory of Mind, originally published in Science (October 2013), here.

We all need a little escape sometimes

Alright, so literary fiction improves the world by making its readers better people. Cool. But where does that leave popular fiction?

Well, first off, fiction of all kinds offers readers something everyone needs: an opportunity to de-stress. According to a 2009 study summarized in the Telegraph, reading is actually the best way to relax, even beating out walking and listening to music. And the result is physiological as well as psychological. Reading for as little as six minutes relieved tensions in the muscles and heart.

According to cognitive neuropsychologist Dr. David Lewis, "It really doesn't matter what book you read, by losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author's imagination.

"This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness."

At this point, we all know how seriously chronic stress can affect our health, leading to disease and even premature death. So consider this: your novel could help people cope with their stresses and thereby help extend their lives.

Empathy, the sequel (or, Genre fiction strikes back)

A 2014 study with elementary, high school, and college students reported in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology under the title, “The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice,” successfully demonstrated how reading Harry Potter “improves attitudes toward stigmatized groups,” specifically immigrants, homosexuals, and refugees. Essentially, by portraying otherwise marginalized peoples in sympathetic ways and making prejudice a major characteristic of the series’s villain, the books fostered empathy in their readers towards these marginalized groups. As such, Harry Potter not only illustrates a way in which genre stories can contribute to fostering more inclusive societies, but also exemplifies the importance of incorporating thoughtfully-written diversity—and the consequences of prejudice—in our books.

Fiction makes us smarter

It should be a no-brainer that reading improves vocabulary and our understanding of language. Like other forms of cognitive activity, it also improves memory, and helps to reduce memory loss and other forms of cognitive decline later in life.

But more impressive is the way reading fiction (again, even more than non-fiction) can improve other cognitive functions. According to the authors of a 2013 study from the University of Toronto entitled “Opening the Closed Mind: The Effect of Exposure to Literature on the Need for Closure,” the “need for cognitive closure has been found to be associated with a variety of suboptimal information processing strategies, leading to decreased creativity and rationality.” By assessing the participants’ need for cognitive closure after having them read either short stories or short non-fiction essays, the researchers found that those who read fiction “experienced a significant decrease in self-reported need for cognitive closure.” These results were most significant for those subjects who were already habitual readers. The researchers therefore concluded that reading fiction “could lead to better procedures of processing information generally, including those of creativity.”

Photo by Jakob Owens.

So, in summary, fiction—YOUR fiction—has the ability to make those who read it healthier, smarter, kinder, more rational, and more creative. In so doing, our books can help form a better, more inclusive and empathetic society. If those aren’t good enough reasons to keep writing, well, your standards might be too high.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Christmas is almost upon us, and I have work to finish, gifts to wrap, and New Year’s resolutions to make.

Happy Holidays!