In my little New England town, we had several inches of snow a few days ago, which preceded a shocking drop in temperature. January is the coldest month, traditionally, but this was bitter cold. The combination of snow and cold reminded me of something I taught in my writing classes years ago. I searched through my files and finally found it: John Gardner’s ideas on psychic distance.

Psychic distance is not the same as point of view, although the techniques rub up against each other. Point of view relates to who is telling a story: first person, third person, omniscient narrator. (There is a second person point of view, used infrequently. A great example is Bright Lights, Big City, a novel by Jay McInerney.) Psychic distance is how they are telling the story. Is the narrator godlike, viewing a scene and character from a distance and sharing only meager information? Or is the narrator up close and personal, right inside the character?

In his book The Art of Fiction (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/58230/the-art-of-fiction-by-john-gardner/), Gardner gives five examples of how psychic distance changes what we see and learn about a setting and character:

1. It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
3. Henry hated snowstorms.
4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul.

Gardner goes from stating impersonal facts; to at least giving us the character’s name and a bland piece of information; to being on a first-name basis with the character and using the strong verb hate; then inside Henry’s head (“he hated”); and finally, visceral details of how Henry experiences the hateful snow—and what it does to his soul. If you consider a narrator can be like a camera, Gardner’s begins at quite a distance and keeps moving in closer.

As a writer, you can choose what psychic distance works best, depending on character, scene, and what you want to share with your reader. You can start at #1 to set a scene and then shift to #3 as you focus on one character. Or you can start at #2 for a quick introduction and move in to #4. Just be aware that once you move in, it doesn’t really work to move back out while still in that scene. As an exercise, take something you’ve already written and apply different psychic distances to it, see how that changes the scene and what we learn about the character.

In the meantime, enjoy the snow!