FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

You’re writing in third-person and your viewpoint character has become unconscious. However, you want the reader to understand how their discovery and recovery come about, and without head-hopping. Here are 5 ideas for how to tackle it.

Start at the top if you’re new to viewpoint, or jump straight to the solutions if you’ve already nailed it but are wondering what to do about your oblivious point-of-view character.

> Protagonists versus viewpoint characters
> Why an unconscious character can’t be a POV character
> Head-hopping, narration style and number of POV characters
> The setup – a fictive piece of fiction!
> Solution 1: Create a new section or chapter with a new POV character
> Solution 2: Create a new section or chapter and switch narration style
> Solution 3: Unveil through dialogue
> Solution 4: Unveil through data
> ​Solution 5: Use emotional reflection

The protagonist is the person whose experiences drive the story. The novel revolves around them. Readers are usually more connected to them and their outcome within the story than any other character.

• It’s their choices and motivations that affect the direction of the story.
• It’s they who are thwarted by obstacles.
• It’s they who we root for as they attempt to find resolution.

The POV character is the person whose internal experiences drive a scene or chapter.

• Through them we access the detail of a scene.
• It’s through their lens that we perceive what’s going on in the moment – what they see, hear, believe, feel and report.

While your protagonist might often be the POV character, one role doesn’t always equal the other. A POV character can also be an antagonist, a major character, or a bystander who makes but one appearance.
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Your protagonist, however, is always your protagonist, whether they’re in a scene, doing something else somewhere else, or lying in a coma on the beach.

Perhaps your POV character has had an accident, become ill, been knocked out, or drugged. Perhaps they’ve drunk or drugged themselves into unconsciousness.
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As long as they’re unconscious, they don’t know what’s happening. Which means the reader doesn’t either. Their oblivion is ours. And at that point they’re no longer a viewpoint character. They can’t be; they’re busy being unconscious.

However, just because they’re out for the count doesn’t mean the story is. Action is still taking place in the form of physical movement, dialogue, and the passing of time.
If authors need to tell the reader what happens to the unconscious character during their period of absence, it needs to be done in a way that makes sense.

If a character regains awareness, becomes the POV character and reports what happened to them during time out, they need a way to access that information. Otherwise, someone else will report that information, and a new POV character comes into play. 

​What is head-hopping?
When readers are forced to jump from one character’s thoughts and experiences to another’s in a single scene, head-hopping is in play. 

Head-hopping is convenient because it lets readers know what everyone in a scene is thinking and feeling all at once. That convenience is usually a problem in commercial fiction because it rips out the suspense.
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Rather than readers getting in the heads of everyone, they engage with and invest in no one because they are never in one place long enough to do so.

What is third-person limited POV?
Third-person limits readers to a single character’s experience – what they see, hear, feel and think. Readers get to sit in their skin; it’s as if we’re them.

In that sense, it’s not unlike first-person narration, another in-skin POV. The difference is the pronouns – he/she/they/it for third person; I/we for first person. 

The difference lies in the narrative distance – how close the reader feels to the character. With third person, the distance is wider because those pronouns are a constant reminder that the character is someone else. With first person, the ‘I’ personalizes the experience more deeply because we’re reading the same language we’d use if we were talking about ourselves.

Third person is a narration style that most writers find easy to master at the beginning of their journey, and is popular with writers and readers of commercial fiction.

How many viewpoint characters can a novel have?
A novel can have multiple viewpoint characters sharing their experiences through various narration styles such as first person (I) and third-person limited (she, he, they). 

However, it’s conventional in commercial fiction for each POV character to tell their story in distinct chapters or sections. Lumping multiple viewpoints into a single scene is often an indication of head-hopping.

Let’s set up a scene. Our current viewpoint character is Alicia, a private investigator. She’s also the protagonist.

Alicia’s received a tip-off from an old contact that her targets are using a derelict office building on the edge of an industrial estate for nefarious purposes.

Early in the evening, she decides to snoop around. She scopes the place out and enters once she’s confident the coast is clear. Part way through her search, she feels a blow to the back of her head. Next thing she knows, the floor’s coming towards her face. That’s where the chapter ends.

Because I’m the writer, I know the following:

• Alicia was bonked on the head with a frozen joint of beef by someone called Patty (who is one of the targets).
• Patty then legged it, taking with her the evidence of her group’s nefarious activities; she cooked up a roast, and ensured her weapon was eaten.
• Alicia survived. She was unconscious for 13 hours.
• Three kids snuck into the office building to share a spliff and found her.
• They called an ambulance.
• Police officers took statements from the kids, who, naturally, omitted the spliff from the story and said they were just hanging out listening to music and shooting the breeze.

​How much of this information I can convey without dropping viewpoint will depend on how many POV characters I have in the novel, which narration styles I feel confident using, and when I decide to reveal this information so that I maximize reader engagement. 

Creating a new section or chapter with a new viewpoint character is perhaps the easiest option if the novel has been structured such that it regularly switches between several characters’ experiences, each narrated in a first or third-person-limited style. 

A word of caution
Those questions will need to be answered eventually. If they’re not – if out of the blue, we’ve been granted intimacy with Patty for the purpose of explaining what happened to Alicia only never to revisit her – the reader will be left feeling that there’s unfinished business, and that they’ve been party to a literary tool of convenience.

That’s a contrivance and a manipulation, and will damage your story. 

To avoid the convenience problem, you could adapt Solution 1 by pulling back and opting for an alternative narration style.

A third-person-objective narration could work. Here, the prose is flatter, more told. The reader focuses on what can be seen and heard, rather than being immersed in emotional context.

This style widens the narrative distance but allows you to tell the facts. And that might well suit the mood of your book now and then.

If your novel has only one viewpoint character, this solution will allow you to unveil what happened, and when, through a conversation.

Your POV character needs to have recovered sufficiently and be able to access the people who have that information and engage in dialogue with them or eavesdrop on a conversation they’re having.

They could be the police or security services, medical staff, an antagonist, the saviour – anyone who knows and can fill in the blanks.

It means the unveiling comes after the period of unconsciousness, which makes it an emotionally rich experience for the reader because we’re discovering what happened to the POV character at the same time as they are. We get to live their life with them in the moment.

Similar to Solution 3, the unveiling of what happened and when during the character’s unconsciousness is revealed later, but this time through files, documents, records, a diary, reports, messages or some other physical repository.

Again, they’ll need to be sufficiently recovered and have a mechanism for accessing this data.

As with the previous solution, the reader is drawn deeper into the POV character’s experience because we’re with them every step of the way on that journey of discovery.​

A fifth option is to use emotional reflection. This contemplation approach might be more suitable if your character has time to reflect.

Perhaps they’re still in hospital or bed-bound or imprisoned and are thinking about what they’ve learned.

You might find it’s a good solution if you want to slow the pace and give the story some breathing room – space for a little recent backstory.

Just because your POV character is out of it doesn’t mean the story of what happened during that time can’t be unveiled while holding point of view.

Experiment with narration style and different time frames for the unveiling, and separate characters’ experiences by giving their scenes distinct sections or chapters.

And don't forget that your protagonist is always your protagonist, even if they're not the viewpoint character because they're unconscious. 

• Author resources library
• Editor resources library
• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
• How to show the emotions of non-viewpoint characters
• Making Sense of Point of View: Transform Your Fiction 1
• ​Making Sense of 'Show, Don't Tell': Transform Your Fiction 3 
• What are expletives in the grammar of fiction?
• What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?
• What’s the difference between a viewpoint character and a protagonist?​

Every novel has a viewpoint character and a protagonist. However, they’re not necessarily the same person, at least not all of the time. Here’s a quick guide that explains the differences.

Stories usually have multiple characters, and often have more than one major character. However, just because a character has a major role does not make them a protagonist.
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Stories can be narrated by different characters in a book. Whoever’s head the reader is in is called the viewpoint character. However, just because a character is narrating a story does not make them a protagonist or a major character.

We can think of protagonists as having a MACRO role.

The protagonist is the person whose experiences drive the story. The novel revolves around them. Readers are usually more connected to them than any other character.
​

• It’s their choices and motivations that affect the direction of the story.
• It’s they who are thwarted by obstacles.
• ​It’s they who we root for as they attempt to find resolution.

We can think of viewpoint characters as having a MICRO role.

The POV character is the person whose internal experiences drive a scene or chapter.
​

• Through them we access the detail of a scene.
• It’s through their lens that we perceive what’s going on in the moment.
• We know what they see, hear, believe, feel and report.

No, the viewpoint character and the protagonist can be different characters. While your protagonist might often be the POV character, one doesn’t always equal the other.

A POV character can be the protagonist, the antagonist, a major secondary character, a minor character, or a bystander who makes but one appearance. As long as it’s their head we’re in, and they who are reporting the scene through their experience of it, they’re the viewpoint character.

Your protagonist, however, is always your protagonist, whether they’re in a scene, doing something else somewhere else, or lying unconscious in some back alley.

I’m using Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot to illustrate the distinction between viewpoint character, protagonist, main character and secondary character.

• The protagonist is Cal Weaver, a private investigator. It’s his experience that drives the story, his decisions that affect the direction it takes, his journey we invest in. Is he the viewpoint character, too? Often but not always.

• Barry Duckworth is a major character, and he narrates multiple chapters in the book. He is therefore sometimes the viewpoint character but never the protagonist.
• Jeremy Plimpton is a major character and the prime suspect. He is the person Cal is charged with protecting and is often present, yet not a single chapter is offered through his viewpoint. Cal is always the narrator in scenes and chapters where he appears.
• Cory Calder is a secondary character and the antagonist. He pops up more later in the book as the plot thickens. There are three chapters in which he is the viewpoint character, despite his secondary role.

Here's a breakdown that shows you how Barclay weaves multiple viewpoint characters into the first 17 chapters of the book.

It goes on until the final chapter wraps up with Cal’s first-person viewpoint. We are in his head as he recalls critical information that enables him to put it all together and verbally reveal whodunnit to his audience.

There are 65 chapters in total, each with distinct viewpoint characters narrating the scene. As each viewpoint character takes a turn, they show us what’s happening through their actions, emotions, thoughts and senses.

The characters – major and secondary – play a variety of key roles.

• Some, the Plimpton family members for example, enrich the fabric of this fictional world by exposing the dirt beneath the shiny surface, and seeding clues that could provide motive.
• One places obstacles in Cal’s way that thwart his (and our) understanding of who the guilty party is and threaten his and Jeremy’s safety.
• Some are Cal’s allies. They ground the story and provide authenticity. For example, Barry and his police procedural work.
• One – Jeremy, the suspect in Cal’s charge – helps us root for Cal because a deeper exploration of his character enables us to doubt his guilt and support Cal’s quest to discover the truth.

​But there is only one protagonist. It is Cal’s job throughout to discover who did what, and why.

​Even when he’s not in the scene, and therefore not the viewpoint character, he’s driving the direction of the story, the goal of which is to understand how a young girl came to die.

The key is not to confuse the terms ‘major’, ‘protagonist’ and ‘viewpoint’. Those attributions don’t mean the same thing. To summarize:

A novel can have multiple viewpoint characters, each taking a turn to narrate part of the story. Their viewpoints will enrich the tale but their overall goals don’t underpin it. The viewpoint character could be the protagonist, the antagonist, a major character, or a secondary character. As long as they’re narrating, they’re the viewpoint character.

A novel will usually have only one protagonist. They might be the viewpoint character throughout, in which case we only ever see the world through their lens. Or they might be temporarily absent and allow others to tell a part of the tale and share their emotions and experiences.

A novel will usually have other major and secondary characters whose experiences are central to the story. They might get a chance to narrate the story and therefore be the viewpoint character, or their experiences might be narrated by someone else. 

• ​3 reasons to use free indirect speech
• ​6 ways to improve your novel right now
• Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
• ​Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
• Making Sense of Point of View: Transform Your Fiction 1
• Sentence length, pace and tension
• How to write suspenseful chapter endings
• What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?
• ​Switching to Fiction: Course for new fiction editors​​

If you edit or proofread directly in Microsoft Word, PerfectIt is must-have software. This post highlights my favourite features, and explains why I think it's the best consistency-checking software on the planet.

PerfectIt is a sophisticated consistency-checker and style-enforcer. By customizing its built-in style sheets, creating your own, or uploading some of the free ones others have shared, you can define your preferences and let PerfectIt locate variations and possible errors.

PerfectIt comes in two versions:
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• the Windows option, which you download to your device and use locally
• the Cloud version, which works with Mac OS.

 
In this article, I'll highlight the features I find most useful when editing directly in Microsoft Word for independent authors.

Disclaimer: I have a PerfectIt licence and am a long-time user of the software. However, the developer has not asked me to write this review, nor have I been remunerated in any way for doing so. The views expressed herein are mine and based solely on my experience of using PerfectIt on a regular basis.

• It saves me time.
• It helps me return a better-quality manuscript to my clients.
• It does the hard graft faster than I can, which means I can focus on flow, mood, rhythm and context.

To get the best out of PerfectIt, you must tell it what you want it to do. 

That means launching one of the style sheets and taking time to consider the various options (and there are a lot).​ During my early days of using the software, I found it missed inconsistencies and flagged up false positives.

It turned out is wasn't PerfectIt that was functioning inadequately. It was me. I hadn't told it what was relevant to me, so it did the best it could with the information it had. I spent time refining my style sheets to meet my needs, and was rewarded for my effort.

If you don't make the time to customize PerfectIt, you'll get good result. If you do, you'll get great results.

Here's an overview of what the software can do for you when you're writing and editing in Word.

• Abbreviations: Checks they're rendered consistently and defined according to your preferences.
• Capitalization: Checks that headings, words and phrases are capitalized consistently and according to your style preferences.
• Dashes: Checks hyphens and dashes in words, prefixes, compound phrases, fractions, compass points and and number spans, and makes them consistent according to your style preferences.
• Spelling: Checks for spelling variations, whether numbers are spelled out or rendered in numerals, and flags common mistakes.
• ​Stylistic control: Allows you to customize onboard and imported style sheets to ensure a document is on brand.
• Tables and figures: Checks heading style and numbering.

Here's what I love most about PerfectIt. These are the checks I carry out routinely and why I think it's must-have software for the editorial freelancing pro.

1.  Wildcard searches
​2.  Missing brackets and quotation marks
3.  Oxford/serial comma
​​4.  Italic text
5.  Dashes and non-breaking spaces​​
​6.  Heading format
​7.  Custom style guides

PerfectIt allows you to harness the power of wildcard searches using exactly the same terms you’d use in Word.

I love this feature because it means I can work more efficiently – I don’t have to run a set of find/replace searches in Word and then go and do a bunch of other stuff in PerfectIt. I can consolidate all my wildcard searches in one place, which saves me time.

Plus, Word can get a little grumpy with wildcards if we're editing with Track Changes on, which is essential for the kind of work I do.

This is a gem for those work on academic projects with lots of brackets (e.g. author/date citations or quoted matter) and those of us who proofread and edit fiction (e.g. dialogue).

The debate about whether the Oxford comma is useful or unnecessary rumbles on in the world of words.

No matter – editors and proofreaders often find themselves instructed by their client to use it or bin it (except where enforcing the preference would lead to a lack of clarity). PerfectIt allows you to set a preference either way.

If your client has insisted that a particular word is italicized (or not), you’ll love this function. PerfectIt already has a built-in list of words that can be styled, but you can add your own.

If you  work on documents riddled with hyphens that should be spaced en dashes or closed-up em dashes, or you want to ensure that all those space-separated numbers and measurements aren't going to fall over the cliff at formatting stage, you’ll adore this function.

We can fix this problem with Word’s find/replace tool, but being able to consolidate the search within the PerfectIt platform is another time-saver. The fewer programs we have use to get high-quality consistency within the framework of a client’s brief, the more time we save and the better our hourly rate.

PerfectIt enables us to harness the power of Word’s styles palette. You can set your preferences for several different heading levels, e.g. sentence case, initial caps on significant words, upper case, or all initial capitals.

You can build your own style sheets or grab one of the fantastic freebies that have been created and generously shared by other editors. My three current favourites are:
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• Conscious Language Check, created by Sofia Matias 
• CMoS with Compounds (Chicago Manual of Style), created by Tasha Rebekah Bigelow
• Author's proofreading companion, created by Andrea Kay and based on my free booklet Formatting in Word: Find and Replace

Join the PerfectIt Users Facebook group and click on the Files tab to access the style sheets.

How often should you run PerfectIt it? It's up to you. I like to run it three times: at the start of a project, in the middle and at the end.
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• The first run-through helps me build my custom client style sheet.
• Round two helps me mop up lots of distracting inconsistencies now that my style choices are in place.
• The final run is a quality-control check to pick up inconsistencies introduced as I've edited.

There are three more things I love about PerfectIt's functionality.

• PerfectIt is stable. I work on novels and need software that can handle large files with multiple corrections without crashing. It can.
• PerfectIt is fast, even more so since Version 4 was launched. Every minute I don't spend waiting for software to do what I've tasked it to means a better hourly rate.
• ​Perfect does the finding. Do you like editing for consistency? Me too! However, finding what needs to be edited is a time-sucker I can do without. I let the software do the sleuthing so I can focus on the thinking. 

That's the thing about PerfectIt and me – we're partners. It does what software's good at so I can do what humans are good at.

Fancy trying it? Visit the Intelligent Editing website. If you've bought one of my courses or books direct from this website, log in and grab your special discount code.

>  Author resources library (includes links to free webinars and writing tools)
>  Editor resources library (see in particular the Editing Tools section)

Give your novel a sentence-level workout. Here are 6 common problems, and the solutions that will improve the flow of your fiction and make the prose pop.

​Review your novel for 6 common problems. None involve major rewriting, just relatively gentle recasts that will improve your prose significantly, and make your reader's experience more immersive.

1. Assess invasive adverbs
2. Remove redundant filter words
3. Take the spotlight off speech tags
4. Pick up dropped viewpoint
5. Trim anatomy-based action
6. Turn intention into action

​Not all adverbs and adverbial phrases are bad. Suddenly, slightly, slowly, nervously, calmly, quietly can be effective if used now and then.
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However, overuse is often a symptom of an author telling us what’s already been shown, which means the adverbs are repetitive and cluttering. In the two examples that follow, they can be ditched because 'fidgeted' shows the nervousness, and the apology in the dialogue shows the regret.

​Even when adverbs are telling us something new, consider elegant recasts that use stronger verbs but still keep readers in the moment.

When readers are told of doing being done by a viewpoint character, filtering is in play. Realized, knew that, wondered, thought, saw, and decided are just a few examples.

The reader is already experiencing the story through a viewpoint character. For that reason, we often don’t need to be told that they realize, see, think or feel anything. We’re already in their heads.

​It’s telling what’s already been shown.

​Filtering pulls us out of the deep, limited viewpoint. Worse, it’s repetitive and obvious. Jane has already looked at the screen so we know her eyes are doing the work; telling us that she saw as a result of her glancing is redundant. 

In the example where Matthew’s the narrative viewpoint character, we needn’t be told he feels the thumping in his temples, since if he weren’t feeling it he couldn’t report it. Nor do we need to know he’s thinking about that third glass because we’re already in his head.

'Said' is almost invisible when it comes to dialogue tags. A smattering of 'asked', 'replied', 'whispered', and 'yelled' can also work well.

Sometimes tags aren’t even necessary because it’s obvious who’s speaking. Other times, we can replace a tag with an action beat than conveys movement and emotion.

Readers should be focused on the dialogue. If a showy tag is necessary to convey a character’s voice or mood, the speech might need a rethink.

In the examples below, the speech tags do the following:

1. tell what the punctuation’s already shown
2. tell what the dialogue’s already shown
3. tell us what the dialogue could have shown but doesn’t
4. express non-speech-related behaviour

Narrative viewpoint is a big topic so I’ve focused on two common sentence-level slips:

• The viewpoint character reports what they can’t know.
• The reader is given access to non-viewpoint characters' internal experiences.

The viewpoint character reports what they can’t know 
Reporting what can’t be known often comes with filter phrases such as 'could tell (that)' and 'knew (that)'.

​In this example, John is the viewpoint character. We experience the story though his senses.  

Actually he can’t tell any such thing. It might seem that way, but for all John knows, she could be hiding it because she has another agenda. Telling us that’s not the case removes any underlying suspense – stops us asking the question.

This might seem like a small slip but it’s the kind of thing that turns over all the power of a limited/deep viewpoint to an all-knowing narrator and rips apart the tight psychic distance between reader and the viewpoint character.

Here are two recasts that avoid the viewpoint drop:

Non-viewpoint characters’ internal experiences
Here we’re talking about head-hopping. It’s when readers are able to access emotions, mood and thoughts of a non-viewpoint character. In the example that follows, Reja is the viewpoint character.

The solution is to recast the text so that these emotions, mood and thoughts can be inferred or accessed externally – for example, through movement or speech – by the viewpoint character only. Here’s a possible recast.

Prose is more immersive when readers aren’t told what they can assume is being done by body parts that are associated with particular actions – holding with hands, gazing with eyes, standing to their feet, kneeling on their knees, nodding heads, and shrugging shoulders.

In the example below, we might remove the obvious body parts and focus more specifically on the part of John's legs doing the kicking and the impact of his action. As for the gun-toter, the hands have been ditched.

Sometimes the reader needs to know what a character wants to achieve from a particular action. This is about the why of an action.

However, when an author means to show the how of an action but tells of intention to act, there’s a problem. The red flag to watch out for is 'to'.

We can check whether the focus is on point by asking a question: What action do we want to show the reader (via Jane)?

​​If we want to show the reader that Jane can lift her wrist – because that’s what the first example below is showing us – we can leave as is.

​However, that's rather dull; it's more likely that we want to show that Jane is checking the time, and so a leaner alternative is more effective.

None of these 6 tweaks are rules! Think of them instead as suggestions to consider, ideas that can help you smooth and tighten up your prose.

And don't worry about them at first-draft stage. Use that space to get the words on the page. Put your sentence-level editing craft in play with a later draft, and once your story's structure, plot and characterization have been fully developed.

Want to develop your line-editing skills? Check out these resources:

• Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
• Making Sense of Point of View: Transform Your Fiction 1
• Making Sense of Punctuation: Transform Your Fiction 2
• ‘Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?’
• ‘Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions’
• ‘What is anaphora and how can you use it in fiction writing?’
• ​'2 ways to write about physical pain'
• 'What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?'