So, you’ve written your book and sent it off to critique partners, beta readers, or editors and one of their feedback is that they are not connecting with some of the scenes because there’s too much psychic distance. If you’re anything like me at the start of my writing journey, you may scratch your head and wonder what on earth is ‘psychic distance’.
Not knowing the term might inadvertently prevent the reader from having an immersive reading experience. But what is it and how much should you care about it?
What is psychic distance?
Psychic distance is how close or far the narrator is to the characters and therefore, it is how close or far the reader feels to the character. You should care a lot about it because, when done correctly, it creates an immersive reading experience by bringing the reader deep into the story, the character’s psyche, draw them into the tension. Without it, the writing may feel cold and objective; more textbook than a page-turning fiction.
Five levels of psychic distance
To best illustrate the different levels of psychic distance. On one end of the spectrum, it starts of with an objective point of view and is the furthest away from the character’s inner thoughts, and on the other end of the spectrum, it is subjective and reveals the character’s inner thoughts.
Let’s walk through an example to understand this better:
“It was the first Sunday of the month and the woman was dyeing her hair. Emma squirted the dye on her hair as she bent over the basin. Emma hated her monthly ritual just to keep up with society’s expectations. The damn ritual grated her because it was such a waste of time. The black dye runs down my elbow and drips onto the floor but I don’t care.”
Level 1
“It was the first Sunday of the month and the woman was dyeing her hair.”
This is an objective point of view and is the furthest from the character’s being or inner thoughts. This line ‘tells’ the reader what’s going on without providing any clues about what the woman is going through.
Level 2
“Emma squirted the dye on her hair as she bent over the basin.”
By revealing the woman’s name, we get a snippet of personal information, which brings us closer to her. However, it is still distant and objective though we are slowly zooming in on the character.
Level 3
“Emma hated her monthly ritual just to keep up with society’s expectations.”
This becomes more subjective because an opinion is being stated: “hated her monthly ritual”. The psychic distance is also closer because we need to be privy to her thoughts to know that she hated dyeing her hair.
Level 4
“The damn ritual grated her because it was a waste of time.”
The use of words such as “damn” shows an injection of the narrator’s voice. It provides colour to why Emma hated dyeing her hair. “Waste of time” is also subjective.
Level 5
“The black dye runs down my elbow and drips onto the floor but I don’t care.”
This is written in first person, which brings us closer to the character. It is subjective, revealing her inner thoughts, which is an area that the camera can’t access. The closest psychic distance from a point of view perspective is first person because the narrator is the character him / herself. Having access to the direct thoughts of the character also reduces the psychic distance.
3 tips to optimise psychic distance
3.1 – Permission to vary psychic distance
The idea is not to choose one particular distance and stick to it for your whole story. Instead, you should “zoom” in and out as appropriate. It depends on what works for your story. E.g., how intimate do you want the reader to connect with the character, what emotions are you trying to evoke from the reader?
However, while you can shift the psychic distance through your story, don’t jump from one to another without some sort of bridge. For example, don’t start with, “Emma hated her monthly ritual just to keep up with society’s expectations” and conclude with, “It was the first Sunday of the month and the woman was dyeing her hair.” It will confuse readers and / or disrupt their flow as one moment they are following Emma’s actions and next moment, they are ‘zoomed out’ to the broader environment.
3.2 – Point of View (POV)
Apart from the third person omniscient or objective narrator point of views, if you write something that the character does not know, it will increase psychic distance because the narrator would be telling the reader what is happening instead of the character experiencing the moment. For example, if Emma cut her hand while she was opening the bottle of dye and she doesn’t know about it but the narrator points that out to the reader, we would not be in the moment with the character but watching her from afar. Also, you shouldn’t inject the narrator’s thoughts or judgement into scene if it’s not part of the character’s thoughts or judgement.
3.3 Filter words…
…are words that explain the character’s action instead of showing the action and therefore increase psychic distance. For example, “Emma thought the TV was too loud.” This could be reduced by simply writing, “The TV was too loud”, because we are already Emma’s POV and therefore any narrative would be experienced by her. We don’t need to write that she thought the TV was too loud.
