Beware of Hopping Heads

I've been blogging about how to write more literarily.  This one is actually how to write more like modern literature rather than traditional literature, with a focus on modern YA literature.  There was a time that the distant, omniscient narrator was the way of all writing.  A writer could tell you what was happening in John's head one paragraph, Sylvia's the next, and their garbage man a third.  The writer could play a wild game of checkers, with pieces in their command moving however they wanted. 

Now, readers, as a rule, prefer the intensity of learning the interior world of one, two, or a select few characters.  They like first-person or third-person limited.  Readers, especially young readers, like a book like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series in which we follow the ins and outs of one character in first-person.  They also like Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series, wherein there are multiple perspectival characters, but we follow in third-person one character for a chapter or a few chapters then switch to another for more chapters.  Or, they like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series in which we never leave Harry's head.  He may observe Voldemort through his dreams, but we're still firmly in Harry's mind. 

Older literature, even children's literature, hops heads all the time, without chapter changes or even section changes.  If you pick up books like Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant series or even Roald Dahl's Matilda, among several others, a narrator can hop heads two, three, four or more times a chapter.  At the time, this was the norm, just how they did it.  Now, a writer is advised to avoid such random head-hopping. 

If you want to hop heads, it's a rule of thumb to make at least chapter or section divisions.  If I want to appeal to a modern reader and editor, I'll no longer write, "John looked at Sylvia and marveled at her beauty.  She looked back at John and wondered when he would take a shower."  Instead, I'll write, "John's longing eyes turned toward Sylvia's lovely face only to catch her nose wrinkle and eye roll as she leaned away from him."  I see her response to the world through her body language but firmly remain in his head, at least this chapter.  Next chapter, I can hang out in her head a while.  Or I can just stick with John the whole book, reading the world through his eyes. 

Go through something you've written recently.  Is there any section in which you're intentionally or unintentionally jumping from head to head like on the 90's series "Quantum Leap," without changing sections or chapters?  Is there a time in the middle of one section where your character, mind-reader like, magically knows what someone else is thinking or what actually motivates another WITHOUT having telepathy?  If so, it's time to tweak your writing to avoid head-hopping.  Your reader will thank you for it. 

Figuratively Speaking

I've been writing about how to make any kind of writing more literary.  My student posed a question I'd never heard before, one which seemed like it could lead to some interesting discoveries for writers. He pondered the comparison and contrast between the similar concepts of simile, metaphor, hypocatastasis, pataphor, anthropomorphizing, and ideasthesia.  I figured these terms wouldn't be hard to differentiate, but it turns out there's a reason people struggle with these terms.  They're not your garden-variety kinds of words.  

Some of these terms are commonly understood.  Most people know a simile is the comparison of one thing to another, pointing to a resemblance between two things.  "That guy's like a baby, the way he uses his hands to eat and throws a temper tantrum every five minutes."  Most students who have spent some time in an English class can tell you a metaphor ties image with thing closer together, representing one thing by another, basically like a simile without the word "like."  "That guy's such a baby."  I had to do research for the third one, hypocatastasis.  I didn't even know there WAS a third level to this.  Apparently, it's not even in some copies of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Hypocatastasis, as it turns out, ties these things even CLOSER together by simply implying one with the other.  "Baby!" (Spoken to the guy.)  I can imagine using all of these techniques in writing.  

Pataphor, meanwhile, is a metaphor that is fairly all-encompassing.  It is two steps removed from non-metaphoric language.  Here is an example given on pataphor.com: 

Non-figurative     -Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line.

Metaphor    -Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line, two pieces on a chessboard.

Pataphor     -Tom took a step closer to Alice and made a date for Friday night, checkmating. Rudy        was furious at losing to Margaret so easily and dumped the board on the rose-colored      quilt, stomping downstairs.

      (The pataphor has created a world where the chessboard exists, including the                        characters who live in that world, entirely abandoning the original context.) 

Pataphor is described as "an extended metaphor...which occurs when a lizard's tail grows so long it breaks off and grows a new lizard."  Basically, it's a comparison that creates a new world wherein the metaphor becomes almost a new reality.  

Anthropomorphism/personification is simply a kind of metaphor in which an object or animal is ascribed human-like traits as in "her painting spoke to my heart."  Obviously, a painting doesn't literally speak, and hearts don't have ears.  However, such a personification may make the painting seem more powerful.  

These concepts were easy compared to the next one.  I had to research multiple sources to even comprehend the definition.  Ideasthesia is not necessarily a method of creating imagery but the philosophical concept that experiences evoke visceral responses in the human mind.  Red evokes anger and passion.  Blue evokes emotional or physical coldness.  It's more a response to a stimulus than a way of writing.  This is more like metaphor or simile in action.  If you understand how this works, how the human mind processes a stimulus, you may be able to create a more effective and unique metaphor, one that evokes the same response the actual thing does.

Figurative language can make a piece more powerful.  It's one thing to say that something happened.  It's yet another to turn a simple event into a visceral and emotionally-charged moment through language.  Find a straight-forward piece of writing or simply WRITE a scene in which someone makes a sandwich or plays volleyball.  Now, try to include each kind of figurative language in turn.  Advanced challenge: try employing all of these forms of figurative language in one paragraph.  Now, use these in your writing to make them more meaningful and literary.