The Malkovich

Every now and then when I am getting a piece critiqued by one of the Fairfield Scribes I'll see the comment, "Malkovich". 

We started using this comment after the movie Being John Malkovich came out. In it a puppeteer (played by John Cusack) finds a strange portal that takes him right into the back of actor John Malkovich's head.

What they are telling me is I have created an unnecessary distance between the writer and the story. For example, say you are reading a drabble that has, 
"Jane went to the gym. Jane watched as her ex, Richard, sat on the ab crunch machine she wanted to use and ate a donut."
With the first sentence the author has already put the reader inside the perspective of Jane. There is (usually) no need to tell us "Jane watched" in the second sentence. The first issue is the author wants to limit their drabble to 100 words. Those are three "filler" words that are not adding value to the story that could have been better used for something else. The second issue is it distances the reader from Jane. You want the reader feeling like she is Jane, not feeling like a puppeteer who is watching  Jane watch Richard.

So whenever you feel like your character is a bit distant in your writing, look for any "observer" words that are making your reader feel like they are being John Malkovich.

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