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Point-of-view audit for head-hopping and filtering
⁂auto-checked, 3 hours oldAauraNovice
The prompt
Check the scene below for point-of-view discipline problems. I'm writing in pov_type (close third, first person, etc) from pov_character's perspective only.
Scene:
scene_text
Flag, with quoted lines:
1. Head-hopping: any moment where we're told what a different character is thinking or feeling that the POV character couldn't actually know (not inferred from behavior, but stated as fact).
2. Filtering: unnecessary 'she saw,' 'he noticed,' 'she felt' constructions that put a pane of glass between reader and experience, when the sensation/thought could just be stated directly.
3. Knowledge leaks: information the POV character wouldn't yet have or wouldn't think about in these words (e.g. a character noticing their own 'furrowed brow').
4. Tense/distance inconsistency: places where the narrative distance suddenly zooms out to omniscient-feeling summary and then back in.
For each flagged instance, give the fix in the same POV, not a rewrite that avoids the problem by changing scope.
Where it has been run
| Model | Version | People | Broke | Auto | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1/1 | 3 hours ago |
Example output
Head-hop flagged: 'Sarah felt a flicker of jealousy she quickly hid', appears in a scene told from Mark's POV; he cannot know this, only infer it from her expression. Fix: 'Something crossed Sarah's face, gone before he could name it.' Filtering flagged: 6 instances of 'he noticed/saw/felt' that add distance, e.g. 'He felt the cold seep into his boots' becomes 'Cold seeped into his boots.' Knowledge leak: 'she caught her own reflection, dark circles under her tired eyes', people don't typically self-narrate their own tired appearance this way; suggest cutting or reframing as a specific external comment someone else makes. Distance inconsistency: paragraph 4 jumps to summarizing three weeks in omniscient voice then returns to close third with no transition; needs either a scene break or a bridging sentence.
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