Psychic Distance in Writing

hello I'm Hannah I make videos on this channel every Thursday about writing subscribe may I introduce you to the worst shirt I have ever owned today we're talking about psychic distance also known as narrative distance I'm going to talk about what it is how it's used and how to use it well in your own writing simply put psychic distance is how close your narration is to your character there are multiple levels of psychic distance you can have a very far off objective view of the character take this sentence a woman Sprint's through the forest who is she what's she doing what's she thinking was she up to we don't know we don't know anything about her this is a far-off view of the character on the other end of the spectrum that same scene might be rocks and moss slip under my feet as I run through the forest like an ethereal gazelle are there gazelles in the forest I don't think there are she doesn't know that it's called characterization welcome to writing in the first one we are very far off objective observers of this woman and in the second example we are the woman a psychic distance point between those two examples might be Carol runs through the forest so it's still third-person we don't know her thoughts but we know her first name psychic distance is a spectrum with endless points they range from very far from your character to very close to your character but I'm gonna pick out four kind of Tears within it to explain it a little bit better so let's say that tier 1 of psychic distance is objective observation tier 2 is indirect thoughts here 3 is direct thought and tier 4 is going to be like a stream of consciousness I'm gonna give you an example of a paragraph that has like zooming psychic distance it starts wide and it gets narrow the woman walks into the forest Carol has always loved trees they're so quiet and non opinionated filtering harsh Sun into a kinder glow cutting ones to a gentler breeze inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling calm the woman walks into the forest is objective we're not in the characters thoughts we are simply observing the world for what it is Carol has always loved trees is an indirect thought you're in the characters thought but you're still in a narrators perspective they're so quiet and unaffected maybe has a little subtext maybe Carol just had an upsetting conversation with her overstepping bestfriend we are in the characters thoughts and then stream-of-consciousness filtering harsh sun into a kinder glow cutting winds to a gentler breathe inhaling carbon oxide and exhaling column this has removed the narrator's voice and we're feeling what the character is feeling so we started wide and ended narrow what if we reversed it trees felt our harsh Sun into a kinder glow cut winds to a gentler breeze and hail carbon dioxide and exhale calm trees are so quiet non opinionated carol has always loved them the woman steps into the forest that is not as satisfying of a reader character relationship we didn't know that those were perilous thoughts because we had no context for her you want your reader to gradually get closer to your character not further away you don't start very close and then no less however you will hop around with psychic distance for your narrative especially if you're not a first-person perspective but one aspect you shouldn't change is the closeness with what you refer to your character once you are on a first-name basis that is where you stay the biggest way that I see new writers mess up with psychic distance is hopping around with how they refer to their character so new writers will often call a character by their name David and then they'll use some kind of synonym in the next sentence like the man the prostitute we already know his name is David this zooms in and zooms out of the character for no reason and I think that they do it for like two main reasons one is to avoid being repetitive with the character's name and another is to like remind the reader that they're blond by calling them the blond neither of these are good reasons to regress on psychic distance some don't that's one like rule to psychic distance it's how you use a character's name but psychic distance is a really fun tool for like dynamic narration you can use in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons but you need to decide what distance is going to be most impactful for whatever you're trying to accomplish and that sentence or in that scene as an example of purposely using different psychic distances think of how you set a scene you start wide to establish your setting where are we what time is it what's the weather like and then we zoom into what the character is doing so a wide psychic distance is used to establish setting in context a tighter one is for when we're close to our character know what they're feeling so there's a time in a place for different distances so boiling it down you can zoom in and out with the distance of how you view your character but you cannot zoom in and out of the distance with how you know your character for knowing them you start wide and you get smaller for viewing them it can go back and forth does that make sense there are no hard facts about what to do and not to do and writing but you have to know the rules before you can break them or you're gonna look like an idiot that really is the thesis statement of this channel so be aware of where your psychic distance is use it intentionally use it to your advantage it's pretty fun once you've named your character call them by their booking name that is really one of the top 10 biggest stamps of an amateur writer for me as if I'm reading their story and they call the character by some descriptor other than their name after we are intimately familiar with that character good luck you're gonna do great let me know if you have questions in the comments buy my book bye thanks for watching and thank you to my patients for sponsoring this video Carla published a collection of poems it's called the itch for honesty and you should check it out I'll link it in the description Thank You Carla

Channel: Hannah Lee Kidder - Writer

Views: 4,167

Rating: 4.9692307 out of 5

Keywords: writing, how to write, writing tutorial, psychic distance, writing lesson, little birds, hannah lee kidder, prose, poetry, fiction, novels, short stories

Id: fmBhdX4yd2Q

Length: 5min 12sec (312 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019