Editor's notes: I know what you're thinking

I'm back to share some more of the common issues I find when I'm editing the work of other erotica authors. Today, it's all about unintentional head hopping. And as I said before, the somewhat dodgy examples are my own; I work with clients in complete confidence.

People have a lot to say about head hopping. I Googled the term and there's pages and pages of discussion about whether you should do it or not. Personally, I'm with Remittance Girl, who gives a comprehensive explanation on why it doesn't work in erotica at her blog, here. Others disagree, and will say it's acceptable as long as you adequately signal the shift between points of view, such as giving each one a separate chapter or, at the very least, a new paragraph. 

Which camp an author falls into is their business - and their readers' - but as an editor I'm interested in the instances in which an author unintentionally head hops. Like this:

He was downing his glass of wine too fast, looking for some kind of courage in the dregs. He realised his left leg had started up that nervous little bounce and consciously stilled it. He wanted her to grab him and pull him to her, push him down on his knees, grasp a handful of hair and drag his face into her pussy. He looked her in the eyes as if he could somehow convey that need telepathically. She gazed back, mulling over her next move.

That last sentence has shifted into another point of view. When I first wrote that, I put it in first-person. But I switched to third (the close-zoom type, known as 'limited third-person', you tend to get in erotica) to make it clear that, even when the narrative point of view is looking on from the outside, we're actually in his experience. And he can't know what she's thinking. If you want to speculate on what's going on in the other person's head, it has to be an assumption or imagining: She gazed back; was she mulling over her next move? or She gazed back; I imagined her mulling over possibilities. And now that I've written the words 'mulling over' so many times, I'd like to advise that you never, ever use that phrase in erotica unless you're mulling wine. Yum.

Another thing to watch out for is describing something your main character can't actually know about - something visual that happens behind them or while they're blindfolded, or a sound that is out of their earshot: Leanne pushed me to the bed, face down, and pushed her fingers into her own mouth, lubricating them. Yeah, yeah, we know what's coming (fnarr fnarr) but actually whoever 'me' is can't see Leanne do that while s/he is face down on the bed. If you want to make it clear she's made some attempt at lubrication because you're considerate like that, you have to do it another way: Leanne pushed me to the bed, face down, and I sincerely hoped that the cold wetness I felt trickle down my crack was lube...

Next time, unwittingly amusing metaphors. And if you find yourself in need of a proofreader or copy editor, my info is at www.tillyhunter.co.uk.