21 July 2026·3 min read
Psychic distance, and why your scene feels cold
There is a dial between your reader and your character. Most drafts leave it in one position by accident.
The name is John Gardner's. He demonstrates it with five sentences about one man in a snowstorm, moving from a camera on a hill to the inside of his skull. Here is the same dial, our example.
It was March, and the ferry was late. A woman stood at the rail. Ruth Halvorsen had never much cared for crossings. Ruth hated crossings. God, how she hated these crossings. Spray, diesel, the stomach lifting with every swell. Get me off this boat.
Same woman, five distances. The first is a camera on the quay. The last is inside her head. Neither is correct in general. Both are correct somewhere.
What goes wrong
Two faults, and they look nothing like each other.
A draft stuck at one or two reads as competent and cold. You are told about feelings from outside the glass.
A draft stuck at four or five has no air in it. No context, and the intensity flattens out because nothing ever changes.
The move that fixes most scenes
Distance should tighten as a scene heats up and loosen when it lets go.
Give each sentence in a difficult passage a number from one to five and look at the shape. Scenes that feel wrong are usually scenes where the numbers jump about for no reason, or never move at all.
Read more
Everything above came out of one of these. If any of it was useful, they are where it gets explained properly, with more examples and more patience than a short piece has room for.
The Art of Fiction · John Gardner
Harder work than the rest, and the only one that explains why the tricks work.
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers · Renni Browne & Dave King
Two working editors. Every rule comes with a before and after from a real manuscript.
These are search bait. I spent about five minutes on each. The letter you get back is nothing like this. Why that is
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