Years ago, I started a book and set it down before I’d finished the first chapter. The precise moment, was when a paragraph began in one character’s head, and ended in another character’s head. Even worse, those two characters were in different countries, so it wasn’t as if it was an omniscient narrator with characters in the same scene.

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That point of view shift killed the book for me, and I’ve never tried anything by that author since.

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If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a point of view shift is when the author shifts out of the point-of-view-character’s head, either into another character, or showing/explaining something that character couldn’t possibly know.

These sneaky little bits are often told prose, and the most common one is when motive is attributed to a non-point of view character. Another common shift is when a non-point of view character observes something about the point of view character.

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Sometimes readers don’t really notice them (we writers are far pickier on this topic than readers) but they usually jar the reader right out of the story because it’s clear the point of view character wouldn’t know that detail.