: Am I changing POVs if I'm describing what two or more characters are sensing (touch, smell, sound, etc.)? Am I changing POVs if I'm describing what two or more characters are sensing (touch,

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It's only a POV switch or "head hopping" if you are close third person or first person. Your examples sounds like 3rd person omniscient. Third person omniscient means the narrator has its own voice and knows everything. You write things from the narrator's viewpoint. Classicly, books were written in third person omniscient, but today the most common viewpoint is third person close. When you write in third person omniscient, it is expected that you will tell people everything that is going on including what is going on in each person's mind. So it can be appropriate but you should stay in third person omniscient for the entire story and this will have consequences that you should be prepared to deal with.

A good example of third person omniscient is the book Dune. In that book you know who the antagonist is and what their plan is from the very beginning. In a single scene you will see the thoughts of every person who is in the room. Instead of relying on mystery to drive the tension you rely on people knowing that everybody hates each other to create tension. The mystery is what people will do not what people are doing. Dune is considered to be a classic. It's sold a lot of books and made its author rich. So you can do this and be fine.

Clearly it would be a problem to move from third person omniscient to another point of view almost as bad as switching tense in the middle of a book. Without clearly defined framing devices switching point of view or tense can make it very difficult to read a book. And if you choose to write in third person omniscient will be writing the unexpected given today's norms. You should be clear about what you're doing if you go this route because even if there's nothing wrong with it there's a price to be paid to do something different.

Good luck.

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