Narrative distance

Narrative distance is how far the narration sits from a character's consciousness, from a wide, cool overview down to the character's own unspoken words, and it can change from one sentence to the next.

John Gardner demonstrated it in The Art of Fiction with a ladder of sentences about the same man, each rung closer than the last. He called it psychic distance:

1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
3. Henry hated snowstorms.
4. God, how he hated these damn snowstorms.
5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes.

Nothing about the point of view has changed. Only the distance has.

What moves the distance

A handful of choices set where a sentence sits on that ladder:

• Names. The full name and a description are far out; a first name or he is closer.
• Vocabulary. The narrator's words are far; the character's own words (damn, God) are close.
• Tags and filter words. He noticed that it was snowing is further out than It was snowing again.
• Abstraction. Summary and general statements are far; physical sensation, like snow down inside your shoes, is close.

When to be close and when to pull back

Good narration moves along the ladder on purpose: wide to establish a place or summarise a stretch of time, close for the beat that has to land. The move itself carries meaning, so pulling back at the moment of grief reads as a character refusing to feel it.

Tom read the letter twice. Then he folded it, put it in his pocket, and went out to feed the horses, the way a man does when the day still has to be got through.

Why it works: the letter is bad news, and instead of moving in, the narration steps back to a man. The distance tells us Tom will not let himself feel it yet.

Common mistakes

• Unmanaged drift. A scene opens close, wanders out somewhere in the middle, and the emotional climax arrives from a long way off. It is one of the most common notes in a developmental edit.
• Stuck at one rung. A whole book at rung two reads polite and cool; a whole book at rung five is exhausting.
• A jump with no step. Going from rung one to rung five in one sentence can jolt. Take the steps in between.

Frequently asked questions

What does narrative distance mean?

Narrative distance means how close the storytelling sits to a character's mind. Far out, the narrator describes the character from outside; close in, the prose sounds like the character's own thoughts.

Is narrative distance the same as point of view?

No. Point of view is whose perspective the story is told from, such as first person or close third. Narrative distance is how close the narration gets to that person at any given moment, and it can change within a single paragraph without the point of view changing.

What is psychic distance?

Psychic distance is John Gardner's name for the same idea, from his book The Art of Fiction. Most writers use psychic distance and narrative distance to mean the same thing.