past tense/present tense question

I probably wouldn't switch tenses. It's often jarring to the reader, and can look like you don't know what you're doing. Past tense is the most common way of telling a story, and readers are used to it. Even if it's past tense, it still feels immediate when they read it. Only when the tone has a retrospective style or clearly states that it's being told after the fact, do readers think "this already happened."

I'm with Danthia--past tense doesn't diminish immediacy, and even if you decide to go with present tense, I'd at least be consistent throughout the entire story. I'm sure there are some occasions when changing tenses can be pulled off successfully, but I would not recommend it for starters.

Since you say you use past tense to "set up the story," I see no reason why you shouldn't stick with past tense. It really doesn't take away the immediacy at all. That's just my opinion though.

The first chapter is part of the story, right? It's not just "set up," not just backstory? The story should start on page one, so if set-up vs story is the issue, then that's a much bigger fish to fry than a change in tense. Some authors do changes tenses, sometimes for different POV characters for instance, but don't do it to show set-up vs story.

Pick a tense and stick with it. My suggestion is, don't switch tenses unless it really, really makes sense. More often than not, it's not necessarily.

I'm with the 'do it if it's neccessary' crowd. I've done it a couple of times and think it works, but I've made sure I had a damn good reason for doing so.

I'm confused. What do you mean by setting up the story? I don't understand why you want to switch tense. I agree that switching tenses might be okay (anything's possible), but it has such potential to confuse the reader that I think it has to be handled carefully and you have to have a good reason for it. I'm not sure I understand your reason.

Sometimes "setting up a story" means the story doesn't start the way it should... back stories, info dump, etc.

Perhaps just start at Chapter 2 and ditch Chapter 1 altogether.

Is it possible? By mungo jerry! it’s darned possible. But you have to do it in a way that is completely and utterly natural feeling for the reader, or you’ll likely jar them like a pothole in a cobblestone street, tossing them right out the window of this literary ride.

The bigger question might be: Is it necessary? Most of the time, the answer is: Nope. Not necessary at all.

And I’m curious about what, exactly, you mean when you say that the set up is in past tense, and I’m curious for this reason: if the setup is the snowball rolling down a hill that starts and is stupendously important to the story, then you’re probably okay launching that way. But if that setup is backstory (thus it’s told in past tense), it’s probably better left for later. That is, backstory usually occurs in “chapter two,” chapter one having served to catch reader attention and hold it, chapter two serving to explain a little more who these people are and what’s going on. (And despite using “chapter two” terminology, this info doesn’t always occur there; point being that it simply occurs after the hook, and before we would otherwise get lost wondering who these people are and what’s going on.)