Distance

An Element of Fiction

The only writer who seems to have pondered Distance as a fictional element is John Gardner, and I’ve included his quotes below.

As Gardner says, the fictional distance is the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story. [My Italics]

Take it away Mr. Gardner:

“Words seem inevitably to distance us from the brute existents (real trees, stones, yawling babies) that words symbolize and, in our thought processes, tend to replace. At any rate, so philosophers like Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Heidegger have maintained, and our experience with punsters seem to confirm the opinion. When a man makes a pun in a social function, no one present can doubt — however we may admire the punster and the pun — that the punster has momentarily drawn back, disengaging himself, making connections he could not think of if he were fully involved in the social moment.

“By psychic distance we mean the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story.

“When psychic distance is great, we look at the scene as if from far away — our usual position in the traditional tale.

“As distance grows shorter — as the camera dollies in, if you will — we approach the normal ground of the yarn and short story or realistic novel.

“In good fiction, shifts in psychic distance are carefully controlled.

“The subtle writer is likely to use psychic distance, as he might any other fictional device, to get odd new effects.

“The point is that psychic distance, whether or not it is used conventionally, must be controlled.”

Amen to that.

Some storytellers do stream-of-consciousness fiction really well and more or less vacuums you into his or her universe, that’s closing in.

Then we have Tolstoy describing battles, talk about distance.

Although fictional distance is not much pondered, I still think it is something we keep in mind and be aware of as you write.

© Wolfstuff