How Close Should Your Narrator Be to the Story?
When we talk about narrative distance, we’re really talking about one of the most underused and misunderstood levers in storytelling. It’s not just “Should I write this in first or third person?” — that’s the surface layer. The real question is: how close do I want my reader to feel to the character’s experience, moment by moment?
The ability to modulate that closeness — whether you’re writing an intimate character study or an expansive multi-threaded epic — is what separates good storytellers from truly masterful ones. If you always sit at the same distance, your story risks feeling flat. But if you can subtly shift that distance to serve your narrative needs, you can control pacing, tension, empathy, and even theme with remarkable precision.
And here’s the thing: many of us think we’re doing this already. But if you look closely at your work, or at many published novels, you’ll often see a fixed, habitual distance. That’s why consciously practicing this technique can open up fresh possibilities — even for experienced writers.
Let’s dig deeper.
The Spectrum of Narrative Distance
We often treat narrative distance as a binary choice: inside the character’s head, or outside observing them. But the truth is, it’s more of a sliding scale — what John Gardner called psychic distance. The range runs from completely objective reportage to being so deep inside a character’s psyche that the narration becomes indistinguishable from their own thoughts.
Here’s the scale Gardner famously laid out:
- It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
- Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
- He hated snow. Damn stuff always got into his boots.
- Get out of this damn wind, he thought.
Notice how each sentence draws us progressively closer. This isn’t about changing POV; it’s about controlling intimacy.
Why It Matters
When we choose where to place the narrator, we’re influencing how the reader experiences the story. Are they watching events unfold from a safe distance? Are they trapped inside the protagonist’s fear during a chase scene? Are they seeing the world with the ironic detachment of an unreliable narrator? These choices impact not only tone, but structure, pacing, and theme.
Take Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The narrative fluidly shifts between external observation and deep interiority, often within the same paragraph. This allows Woolf to present a complex, layered reality where the inner lives of characters feel as rich as the physical world they inhabit.
Compare this to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin writes in third-person limited, but the narrative distance varies considerably. During action scenes, he often zooms in close, giving us sensory overload from a character’s perspective. At other times — especially in political intrigue scenes — he pulls back, allowing us to see the chessboard with a cool, calculating eye. That modulation is part of what makes the series feel so textured and dynamic.
Beyond Focalization
It’s tempting to conflate narrative distance with focalization, but they’re not quite the same. Focalization is about whose perspective we’re seeing through. Narrative distance is about how tightly we’re tied to that perspective at any given moment.
A novel like Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is a brilliant example. The entire novel is filtered through Stevens’ perspective (fixed focalization), but the narrative distance shifts subtly. When Stevens reflects on past regrets, the distance tightens — we feel the raw edges of his repressed emotion. But in his formal accounts of daily life, the narration holds us at arm’s length, echoing his emotional restraint.
Emotional and Temporal Distance
Finally, consider emotional and temporal distance. A story told long after the events (like in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending), brings in a reflective, often unreliable distance. Conversely, a story told in present tense with minimal filtering (Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, for example) creates immediacy but sacrifices the ability to contextualize events.
Likewise, emotional distance isn’t just a function of POV. You can have a first-person narrator who’s emotionally numb, ironic, or evasive — think of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. The distance here is not psychic but emotional, and it’s just as crucial to consider.
Mastering narrative distance isn’t about picking the “right” setting and sticking to it. It’s about developing the agility to move closer or farther as your story demands — and knowing exactly why you’re doing it.
In the next section, we’ll look at some key factors to weigh when deciding how close your narrator should be. Spoiler: it depends way more on what you want your reader to feel than on any fixed writing rule.
Factors to Consider When Choosing Narrative Distance
When you sit down to craft a story, you’re making a thousand tiny decisions about voice, structure, and emotional tone — often without even realizing it. But one of the most powerful and subtle tools at your disposal is how close you position your narrator to the action, the characters, and the reader.
And here’s where it gets fun: there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The ideal narrative distance depends on the kind of experience you want to create. Let’s unpack some key factors that can help guide your choices.
Genre Expectations
First, think about genre conventions. Readers bring unconscious expectations about narrative distance based on what kind of story they’re picking up.
In romance, for example, close psychic distance is often the norm — we want to be deep inside the protagonist’s emotional world. In thrillers, authors frequently oscillate between close, sensory-driven narration in action sequences and a cooler, more strategic distance when showing the broader stakes.
Meanwhile, in epic fantasy or historical fiction, a more flexible or traditionally distant narrator often works better. You need room for worldbuilding, multiple perspectives, and sometimes an almost mythic tone. That’s why you see writers like Patrick Rothfuss or Hilary Mantel using controlled shifts in distance to balance character depth with sweeping narrative scope.
If you go against the grain of your genre’s expectations, that’s fine — but be intentional about it. A close, raw first-person voice in a traditionally distant genre like high fantasy can feel refreshing — or jarringly out of place — depending on execution.
Character-Driven vs Plot-Driven Stories
Ask yourself: what’s driving this story — the inner lives of the characters, or the external events?
For deeply character-driven fiction — think Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels or Rachel Cusk’s Outline — a close narrative distance is invaluable. You want the reader immersed in the characters’ evolving thoughts, perceptions, and contradictions. The texture of their inner world is the story.
Conversely, in plot-driven narratives — like intricate political thrillers or sprawling space operas — you may need more distance to maintain clarity and control pacing. Constant deep immersion in one character’s head can bog down forward momentum or obscure important contextual information.
That’s why even in series like A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin often pulls back the lens between close moments of character perspective, giving the reader breathing room and strategic vantage points.
Manipulating Reader Empathy
One of the most interesting uses of narrative distance is to shape how much empathy you want the reader to feel for your characters — and when.
A close distance naturally fosters identification and intimacy. Readers feel what the character feels, often without filters. That’s a powerful tool — but also a dangerous one if you want to maintain ambiguity, surprise, or irony.
By pulling back the distance at key moments, you can encourage readers to evaluate the character’s actions more critically — or to notice things the character might be blind to. This technique is used masterfully in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, where the narrator’s emotional restraint forces the reader to do the emotional heavy lifting — increasing impact.
Sometimes you want to deliberately create emotional distance, even in first-person. Think of Holden Caulfield’s ironic detachment, or Humbert Humbert’s calculated seduction of the reader in Lolita. Here, the gap between the narrator’s words and the reader’s awareness becomes a key part of the storytelling.
Control Over Pacing
Another critical factor is pacing. Close narrative distance often forces you into a more granular, moment-to-moment style. This can be thrilling in action scenes or emotionally charged moments — but exhausting if used constantly.
Conversely, a more distant narrator can summarize events, compress time, and provide contextual commentary, which helps modulate rhythm and maintain reader engagement over longer narratives.
The trick is learning to move fluidly between distances to shape the reader’s experience. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, for example, the narrative shifts between hauntingly close psychic distance and broader historical context, creating a rich, layered texture that sustains both emotional intensity and thematic depth.
Worldbuilding Needs
Finally, consider how much worldbuilding your story requires, and how you want to deliver it.
A close narrator limits your ability to provide omniscient exposition without breaking immersion. If your protagonist wouldn’t naturally think about the political history of the empire or the workings of a starship engine, you’ll need to find creative ways to convey that information.
Some writers embrace this limitation — using limited knowledge to create mystery and tension. Others strategically shift to a more distant narrative voice at times, or introduce framing devices, to provide needed context.
Look at how Ursula K. Le Guin handles this in The Left Hand of Darkness. The primary narration comes from the protagonist’s perspective, but interspersed with mythic stories and reports, giving the reader a broader understanding of the culture and world.
How to Shift Narrative Distance Without Losing the Reader
Once you start thinking in terms of narrative distance, you’ll probably notice a new challenge: how do you change distance without jarring the reader?
Here’s where the craft gets subtle — but also really exciting. Let’s explore a few techniques.
Use Paragraph Breaks and Scene Shifts
One of the simplest ways to signal a shift in distance is through scene and paragraph structure.
At a scene break, readers are already primed for a shift in time, place, or tone — so they’re more likely to accept a corresponding shift in narrative distance. Similarly, starting a new paragraph with a broader or more reflective voice cues the reader that we’re pulling back.
Toni Morrison’s use of this in Beloved is a great model. She’ll move from a character’s immediate sensory experience to a larger historical reflection, often between paragraphs — creating a rhythm that supports both intimacy and thematic resonance.
Vary Sentence Style and Diction
Another powerful tool is sentence construction. Short, concrete sentences tend to create a sense of immediacy and closeness. Longer, more abstract or lyrical sentences encourage a more reflective distance.
Look at Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. In moments of terror or physical action, the prose is clipped and sensory-driven. In quieter moments, the sentences stretch out, inviting broader contemplation. This dynamic range contributes hugely to the novel’s emotional power.
Anchor Close Passages with Sensory Detail
When moving into deep psychic distance, anchoring the passage with specific sensory details helps pull the reader in smoothly.
Rather than stating He was afraid, show us how his breath caught, how sweat trickled down his back, how the sound of footsteps seemed unnaturally loud. This kind of grounding makes the transition feel organic rather than abrupt.
Handle Transitions with Care
Sudden, unprepared shifts in distance — especially within a single sentence or paragraph — can be disorienting. A useful guideline is to move between distances in gradual steps, not leaps.
Virginia Woolf often moves from external observation to deep interiority via intermediate stages — giving the reader tiny cues to follow the shift. This creates a sense of fluidity rather than fracture.
Respect the Established Pattern
Finally, think about the overall pattern of distance you’ve established. If your story has maintained a consistently close voice for several chapters, a sudden shift to omniscient commentary will feel out of place unless you carefully prepare the reader.
That doesn’t mean you can’t break pattern — in fact, doing so can be powerful. But it needs to be earned. The shift should feel like an intentional choice, not an accidental wobble.
A great example is the final chapter of The Great Gatsby, where Fitzgerald pulls back to a more reflective, mythic voice — perfectly fitting the novel’s conclusion.
Before You Leave…
If there’s one takeaway here, it’s this: narrative distance isn’t a setting you lock in — it’s a tool you can (and should) use dynamically.
Even seasoned writers sometimes default to habitual distances. But when you start thinking consciously about how close your narrator is to the story — and when and why you might shift that distance — you’ll discover new layers of expressive power.
Experiment with it. Play with contrast. Study how your favorite authors handle it. And above all, trust that your expert storytelling instincts can guide when to lean in close and when to pull back.
I guarantee: your stories will feel richer, more textured, and more alive.