Psychic Distance: What It Is and How To Use It

How thinking in terms of psychic/narrative/emotional distance is a game-changer for your writing

If you’ve been around This Itch of Writing for any length of time, you won’t have missed how often I refer to psychic distance. It’s helped more mentees and students than I can count, and been far and away the single most useful tool in my own toolkit for the best part of twenty years - and I even teach specific workshops on it (here on 19th September, for example). So I thought it was time to have a revised and updated version of my main post about it here on Substack.

WHAT IS PSYCHIC DISTANCE?

I first encountered the term and the idea in John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. The idea is that in any narrative of events and characters, the reader can be made to feel either very distant from, or right up close to, the events and characters of the story – and, crucially all points in between.

The closest analogy is film camera angles: we categorise them as long shot, medium shot, close up and so on. But of course that too is really a continuum, from a shot of the earth from space, via a view of the town, to a group of characters talking, and finally a character’s face completely filling the screen.

But in writing we don’t have to stop at the nostrils and tear-ducts; we can take the reader inside a character’s head and body, evoking the physical sensation, thoughts, psychological states and emotions in that character’s own consciousness.

Our shorthand for that, of course, is that we’re in this character’s point-of-view – and psychic distance and point-of-view are intimately related. One reason I make so much of psychic distance is that it takes a whole slew of apparently separate decisions about point-of-view, voice, showing and telling, and so on, and integrates them into one, single, question: how far-in or far-out should we be here?

You'll find similar ideas explored under headings such as these, each of which emphasises a slightly different aspect:

• Emotional Distance

• Narrative Distance

• Narrative Depth

• Perspective

• Relief (as in maps, as described in this post)

Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘DISTANCE’?

Gardner pins down five levels along the spectrum of psychic distance like this:

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, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul… [Note that the ‘your’ is not addressing a separate person, but ‘generic you’: the casual, colloquial way of saying ‘one’, always somewhat implying ‘I’.]

That’s where it all started for me, so let’s have a look at what’s going on.

1. PD1 is remote and objective: It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway. It has a nice ‘Once upon a time’ feel, and the narrator is very much in charge: as a storyteller they are giving us lots of information and context.

   1. But they aren’t conveying any sense of an individual in the story as a person with his thoughts and feelings. If it stays at this level the writer’s scope for exploring how the man experiences the world and himself is limited – and that also makes it hard to get readers involved and caring about what the man does and what happens to him.

2. PD2 is bringing in some particulars: Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms. The narrative is Telling us (informing us) about a place and an individual person, and something about his emotions or personality.

   1. But the storytelling entity, the narrator selecting the words, is still fully in control, so the way it’s written – the narrative voice – makes us read it as the narrator’s take on HJW and his experience.

3. PD3 is more particular, more personalised: Henry hated snowstorms. The narrative is beginning to Show us (evoke for us) a particular character and their experience.

   1. This is, to quote James Wood’s How Fiction Works, ‘standard realist narrative’: the predominant mode of the vast majority of fiction. Henry hated snowstorms is narrative, but Henry probably thinks of himself at ‘Henry’, and ‘I hate snowstorms’ sounds like him. So we can think of this as the level where the narrator’s take on things and the character’s take on things are blended together.

4. PD4 is closer in still, because the character’s voice is beginning to colour the narrative: God how he hated these damn snowstorms. Shorthand for this is that we’re going further ‘into the character’s head’, courtesy of free indirect style, as invented by Jane Austen.

   1. Henry’s thought or speech in the moment – ‘God, how I hate these damn snowstorms’ becomes the narrative itself: God how he hated these damn snowstorms ... When a whole narrative is written like this it’s often called ‘close third person’, for obvious reasons. It’s possible to write a whole novel at this level, but, of course, we lose touch with anything that the character doesn’t see or think. That has practical limitations, but can also become claustrophobic for the reader.

5. PD5 is tight close-up and subjective: almost a brain download: Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul… Thoughts and sensory information are all jumbled up and (apparently) simply transmitted to the reader as they occur.

   1. There’s no sense of the narrator as storyteller here – even grammar, syntax and punctuation are breaking down – and in Wood’s terms this is stream of conciousness. It vividly evokes Henry’s character and immediate situation, but if the narrative stays at this level the reader may have to do a lot of work to figure out what’s going on.

HOW DOES PSYCHIC DISTANCE WORK IN FIRST PERSON?

What if your narrative is in first person? (More about narrative setup and narrators here).

It’s actually very simple: it works in exactly the same way. The key is to remember that even when your character is telling their own story, they have two roles in the narrative: as narrator of the story, and as act-or (a.k.a. character) in the events of the story. I often talk about character-narrator versus character-actor, to keep this distinction clear:

1. It was winter of the year 1853. In Main Street people took shelter in doorways until they had to step out. [pure character-narrator, setting context and scene, but no character-actor in the scene]

2. I had never much cared for snowstorms. [mostly character-narrator, but informing us about character-actor in their context]

3. I hated snowstorms. [50/50 blend]

4. God how I hated these damn snowstorms. [character-actor’s voice beginning to take over the narrative voice]

5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul… [character-actor’s immediate experience taking over the narrative entirely, character-narrator has faded out completely. Again, the ‘your’ is from ‘generic you’.]

HOW DOES PSYCHIC DISTANCE WORK WITH POINT-OF-VIEW?

This was my first lightbulb moment of many, which is best demonstrated by riffing on Gardner:

1. It was winter of the year 1853. A small woman stepped out of a doorway.

2. Jane S. Warburton had always much enjoyed snowstorms.

3. Jane loved snowstorms.

4. God, how she adored these magical snowstorms!

5. Snow. Silver on your shoulders, sparkling on your nose, freezing and tingling in your very soul…

As we get closer in to snow-loving Jane’s point-of-view, we get different words because she does feel differently about her situation.

But if we’re really working psychic distance, as her voice first colours and then takes over the narrative, not only the words but the voice begins to change, because she doesn’t just feel differently about her situation, she has a different personality.

1. It was winter of the year 1853. A small woman stepped out of a doorway.

2. Jane S. Warburton had always much enjoyed snowstorms.

3. Jane loved snowstorms.

4. What was really delicious in Chicago was these magical, mystical snowstorms!

5. Like cherry-blossom carved from frost, the snow’s tingly-sharp on nose and lips, a point of memory – Mutti and Papi, happiness like diamonds – until Henry…

Notice how, as the voice changes, the reader is intuitively drawn into that point-of-view and held there. The more strongly the narrative is coloured by the viewpoint character’s voice, the more firmly we’re involved in their subjective experience.

But the more tightly we’re held inside a point-of-view, the more work you’re asking the reader to do, to read between and through the lines to other ways, more objective ways, to understand the story. That’s the key to irony, which is why the supreme ironist, Jane Austen, invented free indirect style: for the readerly joy, ‘the desirable difficulty’ of the gap between what a character says and thinks, and what Austen wants us to think about it all.

Psychic distance is also the key to one way to move point of view: essentially, just make sure you move the narrative in stages out of Alex’s head, to the levels where the narrator is in charge, then move in stages into Bob’s head. I won’t go on here, because I have a whole post about moving point-of-view.

WHAT HAPPENS TO DIALOGUE?

Gardner doesn’t really talk about this, so I draw on James Wood’s analysis from of How Fiction Works. He makes the distinction between ‘standard realist narrative’ where speech and thoughts are directly quoted, and Jane Austen’s technique of ‘free indirect style’ which integrates speech and thought into the narrative itself. And finally in Wood’s taxonomy there’s the modernist ‘stream of consciousness’ as unmediated download.

I’ve had a go at integrating the two sets of ideas, which gives you something like this:

1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway into Chicago’s Main Street.

2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms, but they were a price he was willing to pay to live in Chicago.

3. Henry hated snowstorms. Though it’s worth it, most of the time, he thought, and said suddenly to his wife, ‘After all, I’m living in the heart of America, aren’t I?’ [standard realist narrative]

4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms! Though it was worth it, most of the time, of course. After all, he was living at the heart of America, he declared suddenly to his wife. [free indirect style]

5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul – but still, Main Street. The heart of America – the beat of the streets – cold and wet and life itself! [stream of consciousness]

To imagine a first-person version, just swap in the pronouns: it works the same.

HOW DOES PSYCHIC DISTANCE WORK IN PRACTICE?

Gardner’s point is not that one distance is better than the other: just as good novels, even thrillers, have a rhythm of action and reflection, so they have a rhythm of intimacy and distance. Not only would they seem very even-paced and monotonous without the changes of pace and involvement, the movement to and fro adds dynamism to the prose.

It’s difficult to discuss a spectrum without pinning some points on it, but it gets a bit silly to keep on fretting about whether a sentence is PD3½ or PD4¼. So in my own writing, and with students, I usually talk in terms of ‘very close in’, or ‘fairly far out’, and so on, and that’s good enough.

• For examples of real writing making use of psychic distance, very probably without having that term in mind at all, click here.

• If you’re reading all this and thinking that of course the closer-in levels are the only ones worth bothering about, try this post. And David Jauss’s take on distance and point-of-view is also very helpful, though he doesn’t use the term psychic distance.

• Take some of your reading-like-a-writer time to look for psychic distance in operation. Don’t forget that there is always something going on, regardless of whether the writer thought in those terms or not.

  • When are you taken close-in? When far out? How far out and how close in does the narrative ever go? (I think of this as ‘psychic range’)

  • How does the writer make those moves? How often do they make them, and how swiftly?

  • What words and phrases are making you feel each of these effects?

  • How does that affect your experience of the story?

  • Why might the writer have made that decision here? Does it work? How could they have done something different? What difference would that make?

• Showing and Telling interact with psychic distance.

  • At the farther-out distances where a broad view and context are key, things tend to be more tell-y and inform-y: summarising and explaining.

  • At the closer-in distances where the story is coming to the reader through the viewpoint character’s immediate experience, things will often be more show-y and evoke-y: channelling the moment and presenting things unexplained.

  • But not always! You can still make your Telling Showy, and in real life we do often think in a Tell-y, summarise-y, explain-y way. More about all this here.

• Decisions about past or present tense involve psychic distance, because that gap between narrator and character’s consciousness operates differently depending on the tense and whether the narrator is internal or external. More about this in that link.

• In your own writing the key question is ‘How close-in or far-out do I want the reader to feel at this point?’ Things to think about include:

  • Do you want to give the reader the broad picture? For context and setting that will often use the farther-out distances, though don’t forget you can still make sentences and paragraphs of information and context Showy.

  • Do you want to get the reader still involved while still keeping the story moving? The middling distances do this nicely, which is why most of modern fiction spends most of its time sliding around in the PD2-PD3-PD4 levels.

  • Do you want us and the character to have lost perspective and context so much, that we’re just present in the moment? Candidates for this PD5 level are often altered states: sex, mental or physical sickness, drink, drugs, grief, joy. But it can also simply be the narrative mode, as in Jane Gardam’s ‘The Great Grand Soap-Water Kick’.

  • Remember to keep things dynamic: far-out distances for a long stretch of time can get very dull and unengaging; staying at the closest-in distances for a long stretch of time can very claustrophobic. Practice moving to and fro along the spectrum, and you’ll gradually get command of the psychic distance toolkit.

This is a revised and updated post of the original on Typepad.