Find out what narrative distance is and why fiction editors and authors need to pay attention to it.
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Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the court-house sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. |
‘I’ plus filter word. Reader’s gaze is inwards, on the how
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Recast: Reader’s gaze drawn outwards towards the what
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I recall the argument we had last week.
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Last week’s argument is still fresh in my mind.
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I recognized the man’s face.
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The man’s face was familiar.
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I saw the guy turn left and dart into the alley.
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The guy turned left and darted into the alley.
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I spotted the red Chevy from yesterday parked outside the bank.
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There, parked outside the bank, was the same red Chevy from yesterday.
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I still feel ashamed about the vile words I unleashed even after all these years.
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The vile words I unleashed still have the power to bathe me in shame even after all these years.
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‘I’-centred introspection
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‘I’-less introspection
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I wasn’t sure if Shami was a reliable witness but I couldn’t afford to ignore her, given what she’d divulged.
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Was Shami a reliable witness? Maybe, maybe not. She couldn’t be ignored given what she’d divulged.
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I still didn’t know who the killer was.
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The killer’s identity was still a mystery.
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I wondered whether Shami was a reliable witness.
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Shami might or might not be a reliable witness.
Shami’s reliability as a witness was hardly a given. Shami’s reliability as a witness was questionable. |
CHARACTER-ROLE KEY
PR = protagonist
MC = major character SC = secondary character |
NARRATION-STYLES KEY
3PL = third-person limited
3PO = third-person objective 1P = first person |
Ch/Sec
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POV char
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Role
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Style
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Notes
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1
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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We start the book by meeting our protagonist, Cal. The first-person narration style places the reader firmly in his head. We’re in his mind, experiencing his thoughts, emotions and senses with him.
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2
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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We meet new viewpoint character, a detective called Barry. His chapters are always narrated in third-person limited. There’s a smattering of free indirect style – third-person narration that has the essence of first person – such that even though the pronoun used is ‘he’, the reader still sees, hears, thinks and feels along with Barry. Multiple chapters are offered from this major character’s viewpoint.
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3
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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4
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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5
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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6
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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7
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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8
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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9
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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10/A
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Monica Gaffney
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SC
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3PO
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The reportage feel of the prose means it’s only just obvious that we’re experiencing the world through Monica’s lens.
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10/B
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Monica Gaffney
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SC
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3PL
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In this section, we’re drawn deeper into Monica’s emotional experience – a third-person-limited narration through which we access her thoughts.
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10/C
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Albert Gaffney
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SC
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3PL
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We shift to a new viewpoint character, that of Albert Gaffney (Monica’s father). The limited narration allows us to access an emotional response (e.g. ‘He steeled himself’).
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11
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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12
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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13
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Trevor Duckworth
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SC
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3PO
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Now we’re in the head of Barry’s son, Trevor. The third-person narration style is objective for the most part, but firmly rooted in Trevor’s experience.
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14
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Brian Gaffney
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SC
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3PL
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The POV character is now Brian, Monica’s brother. The author enhances the third-person limited narration with free indirect speech (e.g. ‘It sure was nice to get out of the hospital. Even though his family had come to see him, the visit had stressed him out.’) to narrow the narrative distance between the reader and the character, and root us in Brian’s head.
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15
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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16
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Cal Weaver
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PR
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1P
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--
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17
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Barry Duckworth
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MC
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3PL
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--
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He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more informative), to comprehend the city, a process which accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile [...]
Two thousand years before, London had been a little Celtic village on the north shore of the Thames which the Romans had encountered and settled in. London had grown, slowly, until, roughly a thousand years later, it met the tiny Royal City of Westminster [...] London grew into something huge and contradictory. It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price that all good places have to pay. After a while, Richard found himself taking London for granted. |
He woke in the morning and turned over in the blanket and looked down the road through the trees the way they’d come in time to see the marchers four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. He put his hand on the boy’s head. Shh, he said. (pp. 95–6)
He wallowed into the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. [...] The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasselled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. (p. 96) |
Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly, the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once. |
There is another faint crunching noise as the body spasms once and then goes limp. Blood spreads blackly from his mouth over the collar of his white shirt and starts to drip onto the pale marble of the steps. [...]
You go downstairs and walk through the kitchen, where the two women sit tied to their chairs; you leave via the same window you entered by, walking calmly through the small back garden into the mews where the motorbiked is parked. You hear the first faint, distant screams just as you take the bike’s key from your pocket. You feel suddenly elated. You’re glad you didn’t have to hurt the women. |
Cited sources and related reading
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What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head
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What’s visible and audible to the viewpoint character
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Pain
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They grimace; clutch a part of their body; wince; howl
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Shock
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They jump back; gasp; stumble; put a hand to their chest
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Nervousness
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They fidget with a zipper; pick at their nails; shred a beer mat; stutter
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Embarrassment
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They blush; avoid eye contact; their breathing is shallow; they speak faster than usual
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Nausea
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Their complexion is tinged a different colour; they gag or retch; their voice is flat
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For almost a minute that was that. Shirley could feel her watch ticking; could feel through the desk’s surface the computer struggling to return to life. Two pairs of feet tracked downstairs. Harper and Guy. She wondered where they were off to. (Dead Lions, p. 17)
His mum pushed past him, bringing a cloud of thick night air seasoned with salt and something he couldn’t place. A perfume perhaps, but not his mother’s normal scent. (Time to Win, p. 321) The blurred figures at the far end of the long corridor seemed almost liquid, or smoke. There, but insubstantial. Fleeting. Fleeing. As she wished she could. This was it. The end of the journey. Not just that day’s journey as she and her husband, Peter, had driven from their little Québec village to the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal, a place they knew well. Intimately. (A Trick of the Light, pp. 1–2) |
Amos Decker trudged along alone. He was six-five and built like the football player he had once been. He’d been on a diet for several months now and had dropped a chunk of weight, but he could stand to lose quite a bit more. He was dressed in khaki pants stained at the cuff and a long, rumpled Ohio State Buckeyes pullover that concealed both his belly and the Glock 41 Gen4 pistol riding in a belt holster on his waistband.
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The Chevy jumped like an old dog that had been kicked and plowed away the hi-test pump. It snapped off and rolled away, spilling a few dribbles of gas. The nozzle came unhooked and lay glittering under the fluorescents. (p. 8)
“Clock went red,” the man on the floor grunted, and then began to cough, racking chainlike explosions that send heavy mucus spraying from his mouth in long and ropy splatters. Hap leaned backward, grimacing desperately. (p. 11) She walked softly up behind him and laid both hands on his shoulders. Jess, who had been holding his rocks in his left hand and plunking them into Mother Atlantic with his right, let out a scream and lurched to hit feet. Pebbles scattered everywhere, and he almost knocked Frannie off the side and into the water. He almost went in himself, head first. (p. 16) |
His size fourteen shoes hit the pavement with noisy splats. His hair was, to put it kindly, dishevelled. Decker worked at the FBI on a joint task force. He was on his way to a meeting at the Hoover Building.
He was not looking forward to it. He sensed that a change was coming, and Decker did not like change. He’d experienced enough of it in the last two years to last him a lifetime. He had just settled into a new routine with the FBI and he wanted to keep it that way. |
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the court-house sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. […]
We lived on the main residential street in town – Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment. […] |
They’d used blue and white tape to create a cordon which began at the front door and blocked off the stairs. I wasn’t sure how they would deal with the neighbours on the upper and lower floors. As for me, although I hadn’t been questioned, a woman in a plastic suit had asked me to remove my shoes and taken them away. That puzzled me. ‘What do they need them for?’ I asked Hawthorne.
‘Latent footprints,’ he replied. ‘They need to eliminate you from the enquiry.’ |
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