Psychic Distance

[RoughWriters]

Today we focused on the level of distance between the reader and the character.

The first paragraph represents a high level of distance.
The second represents a very close connection to character.
The third represents a mid-point between these two.

[RoughWriters]

It was a dark and stormy night on the Appalation Mountain Trail. A young woman walked down the pathway crouched over and shouldering a large pack. She had a withered appearance and a dirty look. As a bolt of lightning flashed, she tripped over a tree root in the path and fell to the ground for a while. Her leg was broken against the rock and she cried out in pain.

A myriad of pain and cursing sprang out, “Son of a Motherless Goat!” She would have felt guilty instantly for the outburst, except that the pain numbed the clarity of her thoughts. Another sign of God’s fury ravaged the sky and cast a sheen over the blooded water that swirled around her. She wept and shuddered in horror at the thought of being left here.

Jane could no longer wait to be rescued. A surge of bile rose within her as she stood, grasping the wound on her knee. She would push on, despite the loss of Fluffy, down the mountain trail that would bring her closer to the new land. A place where she could live off the sweat of her brow and not on the charity of her father. There was no pain in that vision, and that is what carried her.

[Sarah]

The bitter wind whipped through the air as the peaks of the mountains rose like giants into the sky. A man and woman could be seen walking side by side. One might wonder why they would be doing so in this blustering weather. A storm was coming in, and anyone in the right mind would not be walking through the mountain pass. It was completely insane. Flowers waived in the wind, petals floating through the sky, their colors floating across the landscape like paint on canvas.

I know people think I am crazy for walking through this pass. But my love for her burns like ten thousand suns. It gives me warmth and strength to press on. The road is hard and long, but I will prevail. I must prevail. If I don’t, she will be destroyed, never to be seen again. I cannot lose her. Tears are trailing down my cheeks like water in a stream; I think of what it would feel like to lose her. She is my light, my strength, my whole world. I must keep going. I cannot fail. If I fail, I’m failing her. I must plod on, down the long dark road.

Sorin walked on through the mountain pass, a look of determination on his face. Colors swirled around him as he continued on his trek. The woman beside him smiled up at his face. He looked down at her and smiled. Joy and sadness clearly written on his face as he looked back at the path ahead of them. Determination still apparent on his face, now sorrow joined it, in a vibrant fight for dominance.

[tiffany]

The bow quivered in Aelfgar’s hand as he lifted it high and drew the arrow back to his cheekbone. The buck that stood before him thingyed its head curiously at the elf’s strange behavior, then slowly began to walk toward him. The elf bit his lower lip as the bow shuddered violently in his grasp.

Tears welled up in Aelfgar’s eyes, a desperate cry of, “No!” echoing in his mind, threatening to explode from his lungs. He had already lost his wife, his sons…everything. The animals of the forest were all he had left. So why? Why did he have to lose them, too? But hunger tore at his stomach. He had no other option.

The elf drew in a sharp breath as the buck stepped closer toward him. For a moment, he let his grip on the bowstring sag, a stream of tears rolling down his face. Then, quick as lightning, he brought the arrow’s fletching back up to his cheekbone and let the arrow fly.

[Edward Cheever]

Distant:

In the long Murrand summers, many dangers besieged the people of the city Faultash. These hazards are the result of a curse laid upon the descendants of Faul, the Conqueror of the North, by a wizard of ill repute who had been forced from the area centuries earlier. In the year of Hammond, 773, one such danger, a gigantic snake, wrapped itself around the city walls. The men fought the creature from the tops of every wall. Under the pressure of the coils, the walls cracked and began to break. Eventually the walls fell and the snake made quick work of the people inside. No one would settle the land again for many more centuries yet.


Super Close:

The heat of the sun pulsed along Scarra’s scales and fueled the blood that pulsed along his powerful body. “The rush, the rush! The power!” The beast felt in a haze of red and heat. It didn’t know what drove it and it didn’t care. The taste of blood was in its gaping jaws, and he had been decades since he had last fed. He felt the tension in his scales as he slithered over the last hill. There it was. The sweet meat within the rocky shell. He felt a rumbling hiss build in his throat and venom dripped from his mouth. The heat grew and his vision narrowed behind the curtain of veins in his eyes.


Middle:

The creature known as Scarra, a beast awaked from its long hibernation under the mountains, slithered in a blind, hungering rage toward the unknowing city of Faultash. Promoun’s magic had finally manifested in full, and it drove the gigantic snake onward. Vengeance had come to the descendants of Faul. The great beast hissed when it topped the last hill before Faultash, a sound as cold as a Wayrand winter, and a sharp contrast to the searing heat of the sun. With a speed that belied its vast size, Scarra slid forward, pushing past trees half his height along the way.

[glen]

The sun beat down on the young man’s back as he struggled up the side of the sand dune. Sweat glistened on his sunburned skin as his long legs pumped up and down in a futile gesture to move his tired body through the shifting sand. He glanced up at the blue sky and the white hot sun. The sun continued to punish him unmercifully.


His breath came in ragged gasps, but Igor’s mind was not on the torture he was going through. He bit his lip and threw himself into his efforts to climb the sand dune. Why had she left him here, he thought. After all they had been through. After all the promises he had made her. A black beetle crossed the sand before him, and he paused to watch it scurry from left to right before reaching out and crushing it between thumb and finger. That’s what she had done to him. He was but a black desert beetle in her eyes. He began to sob.


Igor knew rationally that he would die in the desert furnace if he didn’t keep going, but he struggled to care. He tried to think of something that would motivate him to continue on, and eventually he thought of his mother. She had written him a letter only last week. She had told him that she looked forward to seeing him again someday soon. It was enough; it would have to be enough. He stood on top of the burning sand and looked out over and endless ocean of heat and dust.