Going the Distance
Setting Your Narrator’s Focal Length for Greatest Effect
Do you hear the cicadas scream? Screaming the song of angry locusts? I do. It is fading, but slowly. This is my third go-round with Brood X. I like to think they have been sent by a supervillain for purposes as yet unascertained. Perhaps Elon Musk.
Surprise, today’s article is not an article about how writing is like running sprints and marathons, although it could be, because that’s definitely a thing. It’s not about that Cake song from the nineties that is about to be stuck in your head all day you’re welcome for that. Today’s article is about narrative distance, a concept I don’t think I have given one single thought to my entire life until recently. And then, since recently, way too much thought. That’s how it goes. I didn’t learn everything at school. Get out your measuring tape, we’re going on a deep dive.
If you’ve ever used a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera for more than point-and-shoot operation, then you know about focal length. Perhaps you know what it is and what it does without really understanding it, as I do. In short, focal length is the distance from the optical center of the lens to the part of the camera where the image is captured—the film in a traditional SLR or the sensor in a DSLR.
The focal length of a lens governs the angle of view, meaning, how much of what your eyes can see is going to be captured in the photo when you look through the lens. That is why a wide-angle lens like a 35mm lens captures more of a scene in front of you but with everything in it smaller while a telephoto lens like a 135mm lens captures less of the scene before you but with everything bigger. The longer focal length of the telephoto lens brings your point of view closer to the details.
On one end of this equation is your subject, whatever you’re taking a photo of. On the opposite side, the far end of the equation is your medium, whatever you are using to capture the image (eg, film). In the very center, the lens.
In writing, the narrator is your lens. The narrator is the owner of the voice that captures your subject—your story—and fixes them in the medium (the page). Your narrator exists in the space between your story and your reader. You could also look at your narrator as the middle point between you, the author, and the reader.
In this metaphor, the narrator is the lens and the book is the film and you are the camera’s operator and your story is a selfie of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, happy National Selfie Day! (It was yesterday.)
Narrative distance is funny because as far as I can tell, nobody can quite agree on whether it means
The distance between the reader and the narrator; or
The distance between the narrator and the characters.
Regarding this point, I think it’s fair to examine both and take the narrator as a middle point between reader and character, who may be speaking to us from any point in that space between—closer to the reader than to the character, or closer to the character than to the reader, or right in the middle. And additionally, separate from the concept of where the narrator stands in that space, is the concept of how large the space itself is. So there are those factors to consider.
Further, it seems undecided—at least as a general rule—whether
Narrative distance should or must be fixed for the duration of a story; or whether
Narrative distance can be mutable and changing.
Fortunately in this as in all things I don’t really care what anyone else thinks so we can do our own impartial exploration. I’m simply outlining the prevailing wisdom, or in this case lack thereof.
Narration, narrative voice, and point of view are things I haven’t talked about very much in Shelf Life and it stands to reason those are all topics that should come before this one, but I like doing things chaotically and out of order. It’s just how I am. Never forget, Shelf Life exists to contain whatever it is I’m thinking about in a twice-weekly essay so my friends don’t have to pick up the phone in the middle of the night and listen to an impromptu TED Talk (you’re welcome Jess).
The narrator of any story is the person who tells the story to the reader. It might be a character speaking in their own voice (a first-person narrator) or it might be a narrator who is outside the story (a third-person narrator) or a story might rarely be told from the reader’s point of view (a second-person narrator), as in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins, for example, which begins, “The day the stock market falls out of bed and breaks its back is the worst day of your life.”
Third-person narrators come in all sorts of varieties, including objective (aware of actions and events but unaware of thoughts or feelings about them or motivations that cause them) limited (some knowledge of the thoughts and motivations of the characters) and omniscient (aware of everything going on inside and outside the characters’ minds).
Narrators may also be trustworthy or they may be unreliable. A narrator may be unreliable because they are lying to you (Amy Dunne), or because they are unwell (Humbert Humbert), or because their understanding or interpretation of events is limited or incorrect (the narrator from Fight Club).
Theydies and gentlefriends, there you have it: Everything you need to know about narration in fewer than 300 words. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Elon Musk will speak next, on the topic of attaching tiny flamethrowers to your locust army.
All of the above things are things I’ve thought about over the years and discussed ad nauseum in many an English class. I don’t recall ever—even once—discussing narrative distance except as a function of whether a narrator was omniscient and therefore inside a character’s very skull, versus limited or objective and therefore outside it.
I have a very hard time with narration in writing. I don’t mind telling you it’s my worst skill. I have a well-developed voice when speaking as myself, Catherine from Shelf Life, and any other narrative voice I use is not distinctive or interesting in any way. It’s something I am actively working on.
Even when a narrator is omniscient, they may be closer to or farther from the character they are talking about and the reader to whom they are talking. As I said above, it depends upon how much distance they are bridging and where they stand within that distance. Consider this passage:
The next day he had almost forgotten about Gandalf. He did not remember things very well, unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Gandalf Tea Wednesday. Yesterday he had been too flustered to do anything of the kind.
Let’s put aside the fact that Bilbo keeps an engagement tablet (Hobbits! They’re just like us!) and examine the narrative voice. This limited third-person narrator is close enough to Bilbo that they have information from inside his head about how good his memory is or isn’t, and his feelings (flusteration) regarding a strange wizard barging into his house yesterday. Unsurprising, since (as we know from external sources) the manuscript is being told from Bilbo’s point of view at a later time, a recollection of events he participated in. This reads almost like an objective chronicle of events, but with the addition of some of Bilbo’s own thoughts. This is a distant third-person narrator, who is using the narrator’s own voice to describe Bilbo’s thoughts and feelings.
Now another passage:
Fascinated, Harry thumbed through the rest of the envelope's contents. Why on earth did Filch want a Kwikspell course? Did this mean he wasn't a proper wizard? Harry was just reading "Lesson One: Holding Your Wand (Some Useful Tips)" when shuffling footsteps outside told him Filch was coming back. Stuffing the parchment back into the envelope, Harry threw it back onto the desk just as the door opened.
This is also being told to us by a limited, third-person narrator who has access to the inside of Harry’s mind. This narrator, however, is much closer to Harry than the narrator of The Hobbit was to Bilbo. Bilbo’s narrator tells us offhand that Bilbo was flustered. Harry’s narrator relays to us questions from Harry’s own mind as he is asking them, and also describes for us what Harry is doing (thumbing through the envelope, reading lesson one). It reads like the narrator is standing inside the room and telling us what Harry is doing, while also giving us access to some of Harry’s thoughts. This is a moderately close third-person narrator, who is using a mix of the narrator’s own voice to describe Harry’s actions and Harry’s voice to describe his thoughts.
Now a third passage:
Of course they were wrong, Inej considered as she crossed the bridge over the black waters of the Beurskanal to the deserted main square that fronted the Exchange. Every act of violence was deliberate, and every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show. Kaz always had his reasons. Inej could just never be sure they were good ones. Especially tonight.
This limited, third-person narrator has access to the inside of Inej’s mind and everything we’re getting is from inside her skull. This narrator is speaking from behind Inej’s own eyes, not only telling us what she’s thinking in this moment as she’s crossing a bridge, but also giving us an account of what she knows and believes as general truths. This is a very close third-person narrator, who is using Inej’s voice to describe everything, but using third-person language.
Before anyone tries to call me out on the difference between limited and omniscient: If you have read Six of Crows, then you know that it has more than half a dozen different third-person limited narrators, each with a view into the thoughts of one character—which is different than having one third-person omniscient narrator with a view into the thoughts of many or all characters at once.
Each narrator in Six of Crows has a similar level of closeness to the character they follow. (Or, if you prefer, you can think of them as one narrator whose limited perspective shifts from character to character. The critical thing is we only get the story from one character’s point of view at a time.)
So let’s say you’ve picked out your narrator already—whether they will be a first-person narrator or a third-person narrator, and if a third-person narrator, then you’ve chosen whether they will have a limited point of view or an omniscient point of view. Perhaps you have also given some thought to the reliability of your narrator. Personally, I don’t feel we have nearly enough unreliable narrators in fiction.
There are well-documented storytelling reasons for all of the above. When you decide from which point of view you will tell your story, for instance, there’s a concrete reason that you may know consciously or subconsciously—how much information does your reader need to understand the story you are telling, and which characters have that information. For instance, if you’re telling a story from a first-person point of view, you hold information back from the reader and you can use that to surprise them—the reader can only know what your character knows and learns new information as she learns it.
What, then, is the methodology for choosing narrative distance. When deciding how much distance to keep between your characters and your reader, and where to place the narrator inside that space—what factors come into play? What’s the rule of thumb, the jumping-off point? Let me break it down for you in the simplest ever way.
Use a close third-person narrator for stories that are primarily character-driven.
Use a moderately close third-person narrator for stories that balance the importance of character and plot.
Use a distant third-person narrator for plot-driven stories with less emphasis on character development.
Picture a spectrum with “plot-driven story” on one end and “character-driven story” on the other end. Wherever your story falls on that spectrum, a good starting distance for your narrator can be found on a matching spectrum with “distant narrator” lining up with “plot-driven story” and “close narrator” lining up with “character-driven story.”
If you look at Tolkien’s work, he’s about the most plot-driven guy around. There is very little meaningful character development in his books. When there is character development, you get told about it by the narrator instead of seeing it happen—“Aragorn didn’t want to be the king but now he’s willing to be the king.”
Conversely, in a highly character-driven series like Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo has to write from exceptionally close to each character’s thoughts and feelings because all of the story’s action is driven by them. Yes, lots of action happens, but all of the action proceeds from the thoughts and feelings of the six main characters.
Then you’ve got something like Harry Potter in the middle: A lot of action happens and is driven by forces outside of Harry and his social group, but there is also a fair amount of coming-of-age character development. It’s a mix.
How do you figure out whether your story is plot-driven or character-driven? That’s a story for another day.
Listen, I had a question to ask you in this space here but I have forgotten what it was because I’m very tired. I have been promising an article on sentence diagramming for figuring out whether your most complex sentences are solid, but that is a labor-intensive article because I will have to draw diagrams and photograph them. I’m going to try to have it for Thursday. I will also try to remember my question before then.
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