Is there a way to remove this gaping wide space separating the pages?
Impossible to answer since your question is cryptic.
Are you in multi-page ou book mode? In this case, sometimes zoom factor may change view layout.
Have you set a “non standard” page size?
Short: what is your goal ? (possibly related to your screen size vs. page ratio)
And don’t forget to mention OS name and exact LO version (and perhaps document save format in case conversion from alien format may bring its lot of idiosyncrasies).
View → Whitespace