Head hopping

Head hopping is an unmarked mid-scene jump between characters' thoughts: the narration starts inside one character's head, what she fears, notices and infers, and slides without a scene break into another character's head in the same continuous scene. It reads as an error because the reader has been led to build a single point of view and then feels the floor move; the scene's questions, whose scene this is and whose judgment can be trusted, lose their answer.

The distinction from omniscient narration matters and is often missed. A true omniscient narrator is one consistent, all-knowing voice that visits every mind with the same authority; head hopping is limited narration, written deep in one perspective, that then jumps without that narratorial stance. The practical test is whether you can point to the narrator. The usual carriers are emotion verbs attached to the wrong character and reaction shots during dialogue that report what a closed-off character thinks. The fixes: declare each scene's owner, break the scene honestly when another viewpoint is truly needed, externalize the other minds as readable behavior, or commit fully to omniscient if that is the book. Rotating viewpoints by chapter, marked with the character's name, is not head hopping; the unmarked mid-scene jump is. The full treatment is the head-hopping guide, and the stance being violated is covered under point of view and third-person narration.