Narrative Distance
How close are we to the story?
Add this to the list of things I wish I had known before I started writing my first novel.
“Narrative distance” sounds like one idea, but writers use the term in two ways. Sorting them out will save you some confusion.
Distance as closeness to the character
In the most common usage, narrative distance (often called psychic distance) describes how far the reader feels from the narrator and the character. At the close end, the reader sits inside the character’s experience and sees events through their eyes. At the far end, the reader watches from outside, as if observing a scene on a stage.
Your point of view largely sets the range.
First person and third person limited are deep and intimate, so they call for close distance.
Third person objective stays out of every character’s head and shows only action and dialogue, so distance is naturally far.
Omniscient allows far distance and gives the narrator more room to tell rather than show.
A quick tell for where you are on the spectrum: distancing words like “she thought,” “he knew,” “I wished,” and “she felt.” They put a pane of glass between the reader and the character. In deep POV, cut these filter words, along with excess adverbs and pronouns, and let the experience land directly. Also resist blunt explanations of what a scene means. Trust clear details and a few breadcrumbs to let readers draw their own conclusions.
Distance as one of four
A second view treats narrative distance as only one of four “cardinal distances” you balance in a story:
Psychic distance: how intimate the narrative voice is with the character.
Temporal distance: when the story is being told from. A narrator looking back from the future has hindsight, so use reflective passages sparingly, or they pull readers out of the moment.
Physical distance: what a character can actually see, hear, and know from where they stand. A woman walking under storm clouds can’t see the light on top of them.
Narrative distance: how much the story itself knows about its own theme, even when the characters don’t. Fairy tales state their morals openly. Literary fiction tends to hold back and let readers find the theme in the subtext.
The takeaway
Under the first article’s terms, what the second calls “narrative distance” is psychic distance, and “narrative distance” proper means thematic awareness. Pick whichever vocabulary helps you, but choose deliberately: decide how close the reader should stand, when the story is told, what the character can perceive, and how loudly the theme should speak.
Read the full articles here: