in Editing
Point-of-view slips and how to catch them
A single sentence that knows too much can pull a reader out of a character's head. Here is how to hear it happen.
Point of view is one of the quieter contracts in fiction. Once a story settles into a character's perspective, readers take in the world through that character's senses and knowledge. When the narration steps outside that frame without meaning to, the effect is a small jolt. Readers may not name it, but they feel it.
What a slip looks like
Say a chapter is in close third person with Maya. She is arguing with her brother. Then: "Maya's cheeks flushed a deep red." Maya cannot see her own cheeks. She might feel them burn, but the colour is something only an observer would register. The narration has stepped out of her head for a moment.
Or: "Tom didn't know it yet, but this was the last time he would see the house." That can be a deliberate choice, a narrator with knowledge beyond the character. But in a book that has otherwise stayed tight to Tom, it breaks the rules the story set up.
The most common slip is thought-reading. In Maya's point of view, "Her brother was furious and felt betrayed" tells us what is inside someone else's head. Maya can infer it from his face or his voice. She cannot know it.
Head-hopping and deliberate shifts
Head-hopping is the term for moving between characters' perspectives within a scene, often paragraph by paragraph. Some writers do this deliberately and well, usually with an omniscient narrator whose voice is distinct enough to hold the shifts together. The trouble comes when a book written mostly in close third drifts into it by accident.
The test is not whether the book changes point of view but whether the changes are controlled. A scene break or chapter break is the usual place to switch. Within a scene, a switch needs to be clear enough that readers are never unsure whose eyes they are behind.
How to catch slips
Read a scene and ask, of each sentence, "Could the point-of-view character know or perceive this?" It is slow, but it works. Descriptions of the viewpoint character's own appearance, statements about other people's feelings and anything that happens out of the character's sight or hearing are the usual suspects.
Pay attention to verbs of perception and knowledge. "She saw", "he realised", "they knew" anchor a sentence to someone. If the anchor keeps moving between characters in one scene, the point of view is moving too.
Revision can shift point of view without anyone meaning it to. A scene first written from one character's perspective and later reassigned to another often keeps traces of the original. Check those scenes with extra care.
Fixing them
Most slips are easy to repair once seen. Turn observations into sensations: "Her face was hot" rather than "her cheeks flushed red". Turn other people's inner states into what the viewpoint character notices: "His jaw was set" rather than "he was furious". Cut foreshadowing the character could not have, or move it to a narrator who is allowed to have it.
A consistent point of view is not a restriction. It is what lets readers settle in.