Nora Roberts & head hopping
Tuesday, 11 April 2017
I'm currently listening to the audio of book 1 in the Chesapeake series from my hero Nora Roberts.
God I love the brothers in this story. Book 1 is Cam's story and, sighs, how I love him and Philip and Ethan... and of course Seth.
If you like MF, then this is my FIRST recommendation to you. I can't begin to explain how much I love these books!
But... the head hopping between characters is disconcerting ... and i realized I posted about this in 2013 and what I said then is pretty much what I would say now...
Previous post:
I received a lovely book for Christmas from my sister, a two story Nora Roberts paperback.
I haven't read any Nora for the longest time but her Chesapeake series is on my list of most favorite books of all time. She is my comfort read.
Thing is, I've read about three chapters and have a pointed question.
She head hops like woooahhhh... One minute we are in the guys head, then the girls, then the kid's. We even have a random paragraph in the guy's bit from his dog's POV.
I used to read Nora Roberts all the time, and I love her but I didn't realize how much she head hops. Yet, as a writer, I am told not to head hop at all. Told that a chapter, or at least a defined scene is from one POV and that is it.
Does this kind of single POV writing make us lazy readers?
I must admit where I used to read Nora's writing and follow it perfectly, this book is throwing me out of sorts with it's sudden changes in direction. Is it because head hopping is wrong? Or should we all be writing with as many POVs in our books as possible.
Is it that we have gone too far the other way by restricting our POVs?
Incidentally, look at the cover of the book next to New York Christmas... stock photography FTW... but we got there first.... he he
