Supercharge Your Writing: The Secret of Narrative Distance

REGISTER NOW    $25 | Fiction, Nonfiction

Learn how to make every sentence do multiple jobs–and make your writing sing!

When a writer has trouble controlling narrative distance, many craft problems arise. But creating that distance is a subtle art, one many writers don’t even know about. Too much–or too little–narrative distance can make dialogue feel forced, confuse readers, make characters opaque, and conceal the sources of dramatic tension. 

But when you fully grasp how to write “close” to your point-of-view character (in first person or third!), that’s the moment your prose will come fully alive. The story immediately becomes three-dimensional. Myriad intractable craft problems fall away immediately. It’s as close to a miracle cure as exists in the art of writing.

 In this webinar you will…

• LEARN the subtle but astonishingly powerful art of “free indirect style”–a fancy way of saying you’re getting close to your point-of-view character. 
• DISCOVER how to layer subtext into every sentence you write, so that the reader is always learning about your main character, even when you’re not talking about them. 
• EXPLORE the ways to infuse interiority into your scenes, and what this interiority can accomplish. 
• WATCH a sample passage of third-person writing transformed from “two dimensional” to “three dimensional” by shifting to close third-person. 
• LEARN how “closeness” varies between third-person close and first-person (it’s not the same!).

This webinar is ideal for…

• Writers whose readers report being confused, losing interest, or struggling to understand what the main character/narrator is thinking/feeling. 
• Writers struggling with dialogue that feels wooden or expository. 
• Writers who struggle with loosely defined protagonists.

Closed captioning is available ✔
All registrants receive the recording ✔

YOUR PRESENTER

Peter Mountford is the author of the novels A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism (Washington State Book Award), and The Dismal Science (NYT editor’s choice). His work has appeared in the New York Times (Modern Love), Paris Review, Southern Review, The Atlantic, The Sun, Granta, and The Missouri Review. He teaches at University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe’s MFA.  His next book, a collection of stories called Detonator, will be out in late 2025.

Questions? Please email info@craft-talks.com