The Most Important Narrative Tool No One Told You About

Narrative Distance, and Saying "No" to the RPG Video Game Camera

Nathan Baugh

and

Eric Falden

Jun 08, 2025

102

“You need to read this,” the text said. I popped open the essay and found myself nodding along. Here was an idea on storytelling I’d never heard before, explained beautifully.

I reached out to the writer, Eric Falden, and he agreed to let me share it with you. I’m a reader of his newsletter, and it’s consistently excellent. You can check out Eric’s newsletter here.

Now, I’ll get out of the way and let Eric take over:

Some stories pack a punch with just a few lines. A heartbeat, a choice, a moment of poignant reflection that hits you in the gut.

Other stories feel like you’re hearing it second-hand: same events, same people, but the impact just isn’t there.

The difference? Narrative distance.

It’s one of the most important considerations for storytelling in any genre, through any medium—but so many storytellers don’t even know what it is.

I’ve even watched very established authors twist themselves into knots trying to describe it, but fail, because they don’t know this single term.

Once you understand it, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

It’s like a secret weapon.

What’s Narrative Distance?

Narrative distance is the perceived separation between the reader and the unfolding story.

That distance is controlled by the narrator, whoever they are.

A close narrative distance is one where the audience sees what the characters see, senses what they sense, understands their emotions, and can read their thoughts. There tends to be vibrant description and a clear sense of place and time.

A far narrative distance is the opposite: this story is from a bird’s eye view, and the reader might know things the characters do not. There will be more summary, and more “telling” rather than “showing.”

On the furthest possible extremes, a close narrative distance describes every detail, every thought, every emotion, every action, and is probably rooted to a particular in-story narrator. The furthest possible narrative distance is an encyclopedia summary.

As someone who writes epic fantasy in 15-minute short stories, I live and die by narrative distance. If I go too close, the story balloons to novels the size of cinderblocks. If I zoom out too far, it reads like Wikipedia…

How do you use it, then?

Close narrative distance is good for action scenes, emotional beats, and moments of big decisions.

But most stories will need moments of “far” distance, simply because time passing in reality is different than what a story’s pacing needs.

Take this (admittedly generic) example:

The next few weeks were tough for Johnny. He laid awake every night thinking about the breakup. But his fortunes began to turn one afternoon when he passed through the door of Neptune’s Diner. He could hear bacon sizzling and smell the fresh coffee. Darlene was behind the register, jabbering with another regular. Johnny plopped his sorry self onto an empty stool. Then, for the first time, he saw her face. In the space of a heartbeat, he already knew he would never forget her.

This passage starts at a very far distance, detached from a specific time and place, and tells the audience only a small amount of information. The distance helps speed things along and sets expectations for the coming scene in the diner (“his fortunes began to turn…”).

But then the distance closes in: we get sensory details, a specific moment. It continues to zoom in until we’re even getting Johnny’s interior movements. The distance closes until the entire narration is linked to his subjective experience.

Far distance is helpful for summary; close distance is helpful for emotional rootedness.

Distance =/= Voice

“Wait,” I hear you saying, “isn’t this just point-of-view? Isn’t this just narrative voice?”

Not quite. But narrative voice and narrative distance are intrinsically linked.

Every story is told from some perspective. You might have a first-person or third-person narrator, and that narrator might have a more limited or more omniscient perspective.

This—plus tense—is the narrative voice.

Narrative voice will, in some way, limit narrative distance.

First-person narration is generally closer than third-person
Present-tense is generally closer than past-tense
A limited voice is generally closer than semi-omniscient or omniscient

There are all sorts of variations and overlaps in between, of course. But even a simple comparison of two of these variables can show how limited or expansive narrative distance can be.

That distance depends on the point-of-view quite a lot.

That’s why it’s important to understand the distance you want in a given story before you settle on a narrator.

Why Go Close?

Stories with a close narrative distance usually rely on a single point of view narrator. We’re locked into one person’s perspective the entire time.

The distance gets even closer if the narrator is also the protagonist (like Katniss in The Hunger Games or Uhtred in The Saxon Tales); but even if the narrator is an observer to the story (like Watson to Sherlock Holmes or Nick Carraway to Gatsby), the narrative distance is still locked in pretty close.

Many stories are third person but still adopt a single “POV character,” whose mind functions as the surrogate camera for the reader.

Why do this?

Emotional investment, that’s why.

A close narrative distance makes it easy for the readers to understand and empathize with that POV character, whoever they are.

Take The Hunger Games as an example again.

The story is told exclusively in first person present, the voice with the closest distance. This means that Katniss, the narrator, is much more likely to resonate with the audience because we understand her fully.

She’s more “real” to the reader than the other characters, whose thoughts we never see.

The third-person-limited POV is really common for this same reason: by experiencing the story through one character's eyes, we instinctively relate to that character and get to learn all about them.

A close narrative distance can also help with immersion, since we’re not passive observers of the world. Instead, we’re walking through it with a character.

So Why Go Far, Then?

If close distance is so great, why use a far distance?

Because a close distance comes with serious tradeoffs. A far distance gives you tools that a close, claustrophobic distance can’t.

Narration Variety: If you’re going to lock the reader in one character’s head, you better hope they like that character. For instance, if you don’t like Katniss, you really really won’t enjoy The Hunger Games.
Dramatic Irony: Do you want the readers to know about the bomb under the table before the hero does? You can’t do that if you’re locked too close.

Concision: A close narrative distance, with more detail per moment, takes a hell of a lot longer. Zooming out = speeding up.
Pacing: More distance allows more summary, so you can move to the next important thing. If a story is in present-tense, for instance, things can only happen “right now.”

That’s only four tools, but many of them are foundational to the structures of the story you want to tell.

To put it another way: some stories simply need a farther narrative distance.

You’re Not Locked In Unless You Want to Be

The other thing to remember about narrative distance is that you don’t need to choose one distance and then stay at that distance the entire story.

Remember Johnny in the diner? That anecdote started far and then zoomed in. The ability to oscillate between near and far is vital for stories set in limited, omniscient, or semi-omniscient perspectives.

The sort of sliding distance is something that most writers will do intuitively anyway, but thinking about it deliberately gives you another tool in your toolbox.

On the other hand, you can be locked in if you want. To look into my forte of epic fantasy: Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones all use a fixed narrative distance.

It’s popular for a reason: emotional investment, depth of world, clarity of character.

But let’s be real: those stories are LONG. That fixed, close distance makes it hard to skip, condense, or jump. There’s no flexibility.

Experiment with narrative distance. Learn how to zoom in and out. Find the best distance for your story.

Then, choose wisely.

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