The Power of Psychic Distance

Psychic Distance: the fiction writer’s secret sauce

Over the years Emma has found that learning to work with psychic distance – often called narrative distance or emotional distance – is the game-changer for her students.

The thing is, novels are the only narrative form that can go deep inside fictional characters’ heads and see the world through their eyes. Sometimes you may want the reader to be deeply involved in your protagonists’ subjective perceptions, sometimes you might want the reader to have a wider and more objective experience of what’s happening in your story, and why. But when should you do which, and how do you do it?

 By bringing together point-of-view, showing and telling, and narrative voice into a single, simple question, psychic distance can and will transform your storytelling. In this practical session we’ll start by exploring how psychic distance works, then try our hands with the new tool, and finally expand our sense of possibilities with some real-life examples by different writers.

There will be time for questions, and by the end you should have a new set of tools in your tool-kit and an understanding of why they can make such a huge difference.