In the example I attached, I'm trying to get the hair away from the ear. I want some of the hairs to fall in front of the ear and then go over the back of the shoulder. To get the 3 followers out of the ear, the guide has to pulled way out where it doesn't belong. Is there a way of adjusting the space between the hairs so as to avoid this, or is it just left up to post work?

Thank you...

You may need to work with a smaller hair group in this instance.

Start with the hair very short. Make sure "constrain length" is not selected. Take the falloff slider almost all the wait to the tip. Then use the translate tool to define the path of the hair. This gives you the most control.

I can't tell if it's the case with your image but another thing is that if you have guide strands in the same group that are very different in length, it will make the followers do some unpredictable things.

you can lift them higher up so the hairs don't interfere with the ear and head. Then you run a real dynamic simulation and let gravity do the job (head and ear as collision targets).