Mary Rosenblum:  Well, our Forum tonight is on Narrative Distance. That was a request from a web regular. This is one of those things that can seem a bit mystical until you get the hang of it. But controlling the narrative distance is really critical. The wrong narrative distance can pretty much ruin your story.  

Think of it as a focus knob. It is the distance between you and the POV character in the story.  If the narrative distance is zero, you have stuck your readers into your POV character and they are sharing that person's sensory input: sight, hearing, touch, taste, etc.  If your narrative distance is very large, you're standing the readers way back from the scene, so that they are observers.
No one narrative distance is correct. It should serve the story.  If you're writing something with a lot of action/adventure and a positive POV character, by all means stuff your readers right into that character's head.  The readers get to ride along and live the adventure with that POV. But say your POV is a slovenly drunk who has a bad history.  He might learn a valuable lesson and recover his humanity by the end of the story, but maybe readers don't want to share that guy's booze soaked head.  So in this story, a larger narrative distance is likely to be preferable. We can watch and sympathize with him, but we don't want to BE him.
As to technique, it's all about description. The way to reduce your narrative distance is to filter the scene through your POV's senses. What does this person see right now?  What does he/she see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Know? ONLY those details are part of the scene. If an axe murderer is standing behind your POV character and he does not turn around, your readers can't see him.  So you'd better have that character turn around fast or it's going to be a short story.
But as you increase the narrative distance, you back away from the character. Now we can see that person, what they're wearing, hair color, etc.
Amelia walked into the living room. The tall girl with blonde hair was tanned dark from the hours she spent working with her uncle's horses. She walked over to the sofa and sat down, waiting impatiently for her friend Cara to show up.
Okay, so where are we standing in this scene?
Living Room?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, but at the edge, right? We can see Amelia, right?

Outside her head for certain
Mary Rosenblum:  Exactly, Dale. So let's put the readers into her head.
Amelia stuck her head into the living room. No Cara. Of course. She sighed and stomped over to flop down on the sofa. When had Cara ever been on time? She tossed her pony tail back over her shoulder and propped her feet on the coffee table.
Mary Rosenblum:  So now we're inside Amelia's head.  We have her thoughts, so we know a bit about Cara from her perspective. Cara is always late.  We don't see her 'waiting impatiently'.  That's not how she thinks of it...I am waiting impatiently.  She just thinks about Cara being late and her body language -- the sigh, the stomp across the room, the flop on the sofa shows us 'impatience'. I chose those words: sigh/stomp/flop on purpose.
But, if it's important, you can show the reader that by having her drum her fingers on the couch arm or kicking her foot, etc. Right?
Mary Rosenblum:  If you need to speck, but don't overkill. I think most people will read impatience from her thoughts and that body language.
Notice we do not know that she has blonde hair or that she is darkly tanned?  Why would she think of that right now? She's thinking about Cara.  And that's the limitation of very small narrative distance. You can't include details that your character would not notice.   Like the living room.  She notices a sofa. She has seen that sofa a million times. Why notice anything in particular about it? Here's what happens when you try to add details that your POV wouldn't notice: Amelia stuck her head into the living room. No Cara. Of course. She sighed and stomped over to flop down on the brocade covered sofa with its heavy blue satin fringe. When had Cara ever been on time?
How about a thought from Amelia's POV: "It was annoying when Cara was late. And she was always late." Granted, that's telling, but I'm trying to stay in her head, does that work, or have we just increased the narrative distance here?
Mary Rosenblum:  But you ARE telling, Dale. Small bits of telling are small bits, but every time you do that, you whisper 'you are not there, this is not real' in your readers' ears.  And the more you do it, the less the story engages them. Remember...giving readers information 'It was annoying when Cara was late' doesn't engage readers. When we figure it out for ourselves, now that engages us. It engages us because nobody tells us what's going on in real life...we have to figure it out for ourselves. So that's how you make scenes 'real'.  You make your readers do the same thing they do in real life. These are subtleties, but you know what? It's the subtleties that matter.  You can find a way to let the readers figure out just about anything that you want them to know, by a deft use of scene dynamics and character actions and dialogue.
Body language gives us emotional overtones and combined with dialogue or bits of thought, reveal a lot so you don't have to tell us 'she was grieving' or 'he was angry about his brother's lie'. Too easy is usually a big mistake. Even if you're using a large narrative distance and we're observing the character from outside. The more you let your readers figure out, the more real the story will be.
It's hard to know when you're telling at first. But ask yourself 'would my character notice this?'. Those sofa details for example. Why would she pay that much attention to a sofa she had seen and sat on a million times when she has Cara's tardiness on her mind?  And remember. you ARE the puppet master here. If you need to make her notice the sofa for some reason, say it's a clue in a mystery, you can.
She's upset that Cara is late, she has other things on her mind. So she stares at the room, feeling like a stranger, as if she'd never been here before.  NOW she notices the sofa pattern and maybe that leads her to think about Aunt June who is part of the problem bothering her and chose the sofa.  Or she's just irritable and suddenly that green sofa drives her nuts. Bad enough Cara is late but now she has to sit on the lumpy ugly green sofa and wait for her! Part of your job as writer...and it can be a hard one...is to make your character do what you need that character to do in order to reveal the story to the readers....but to do so plausibly, without violating characterization and making your character into a plot puppet.
An exercise I sometimes use when I'm doing a writing class is to have students write a scene with a single POV, either first person or third. Then I assign each of them an emotion that is quite different from that which dominates the scene and they have to rewrite it, with a different emotional tone without once using 'he was angry' or 'she was sad'. Now remember....minimal narrative distance is not always the right choice.  There are times when the plot dominates the story....say a punchline story. And there, you may not want your readers in one character's head. You may want to add some authorial narrative to enrich the scene. You'll see that in contemporary literary fiction a lot, and in older fiction, such as O'Henry's short stories. You need to decide where the strength of that story lies and how to effectively tap into that strength.  And you have to look to your own limitations, too. A story from the POV of a schizophrenic or a murderer might be powerful with minimal narrative distance, if you cannot get yourself into that character comfortably, you're not going to create that person realistically for readers. Step back and let's deal with him/her from a distance.
The real key to controlling narrative distance is learning to distinguish showing from telling.  It is not easy at first.  The questions to ask are
1.What is my character physically aware of?
2. What does my character notice right now?
3. What is my character thinking about right now?
Candy grabbed for the cash.
Candy is aware of lunging for that wad of bills. She's aware of what she's doing.
Candy stretched out one long, tanned arm and swept the cash off the table.
Is Candy noticing that her arm is long and tanned right now? Or is she completely focused on grabbing that money before someone else does?
The first is minimal narrative distance. The second is a much larger narrative distance, but we see more. If it's not important that we be very intimate with Candy, if this is not a character-driven story, then maybe the second version is better. It depends on the story. The second version is much more 'told'.  It is filtered through the perception of the narrator (the author or a fictional narrator) rather than through Candy's awareness.

But if that second scene as written were from the male cashier's POV, that could work, giving us what he notices?
Mary Rosenblum:  Exactly, Dale, although if that was the case, I'd try to use the voice of the male cashier.  Not sure he'd be noticing that arm, teehee. Especially if it was summer and she's wearing a tank top.
Too true :-)
But if her arm were toned and tattooed...
Mary Rosenblum:  There you go.
The chick grabbed her change. Nice tat. Carl eyed the thorny rose stem crawling up her arm and over her shoulder. He wondered how far it went.
Farther than you think." She gave him a wicked grin. "A lot farther, sweetheart." She snatched her bag from the counter, swung it over her shoulder and sauntered out. Nice ass, too. He stared after her and sighed. Three hours before he got off.
Nice--could that last line read "How far did it go?" for more immediacy instead of "he wondered"?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, Dale, it would be a bit sleeker without that unnecessary 'he wondered''. Or not. Would depend on the rhythm of the paragraph.  Sometimes you stick unnecessary tags in just to make the words flow, less choppy.
Then he realizes that he hadn't said his thought aloud. She must have read his mind.
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep.   Although I bet it wasn't hard to read. [snicker]  And that's just is...did she read his mind or was he just so darned obvious that her answer fit his thought? As author, you could play it either way.  If he just accepts it, than the readers take away 'he was staring that obviously.' If he reacts, then readers realize that something is unusual here.
Then his reaction would influence the reader's reactions. Is he intrigued? Spooked? Nonchalant?
Mary Rosenblum:   Exactly. Your character's reactions cue the readers. You use those reactions to either make readers notice something or...mystery writers...to keep readers from noticing something.  You know that sofa in the first scene I used?
The green brocade with the blue fringe?
Mary Rosenblum:   What if the final clue to the murder is a tuft of blue satin fibers at the murder scene? From the fringe.  So when we have that scene, Amelia marches in and is ticked off at Cara for being late, wonders what's keeping her. And picks at the fringe, sort of like drumming her fingers.  And since the readers are focusing on Amelia's thoughts or worries about Cara, they don't remember that blue fringe. But you put the clue there. They COULD have remembered it.
clever
Mary Rosenblum:   And later Amelia can remember it for the revelation. The clue is right there, but the POV is focused on something else and so are the readers.  So nobody notices. I had to plant the clue that allowed my POV to find a well where a friend was going to be drowned.  And I had to have the killer tell her, but readers had to not notice.  So I had to create a scene where she was upset and focused on something else, and the conversation with the killer (she didn't know he was the killer at the time of course) was a distraction that was mildly irritating. Because she was focused on another issue, the conversation seems like a means to simply make the situation worse. So readers didn’t look farther than that.
Greater narrative distance makes that harder to pull off, doesn't it?

Mary Rosenblum:   It can, Dale. If you notice, most mystery tend to use a pretty narrow narrative distance. But mystery is very character dominated.
Don't you have to load every scene with all those little details, to ensure lots of camoflage for the real clues? So that the rythm of hiding clues isn't obvious?
Mary Rosenblum:   You got it, Charie.
So basically, you want to filter your scene description through your POV's eyes/ears/body in order to reduce the narrative distance. Stand the readers at the edge of the scene in order to increase it.
Is there any middle ground, or combination of both POVs?
Mary Rosenblum:    Sure, Charie. It's a scale of 1 - 10 if you will.  You can be inside your character (1) or describing the actions of ten characters, none of which are a POV character (10)  And anything in between.
Ah, the grand epic
Mary Rosenblum:   Yep. See you all Sunday for our casual chat. Have a great Fourth all.