question about 1st person narration

[rhymegirl]

When you are writing a novel in the first person, and the narrator speaks in the past tense for most of it (I.e. I walked down the corridor; I entered the classroom), can you use the present tense to convey what is going on in a particular scene, or do you have to stick to the past?

Example: Once the character has gotten to the room and she is sitting there listening to the teacher, can she say something like, "I look around the room and notice that...." or does she have to say: "I looked around the room and noticed that....", etc.

[veinglory]

I think that generally you need to stay in past.

[three seven]

Why do you want to mix your tenses? It's rarely a good look, unless you're describing something or someone that exists beyond the setting/timeframe of the story. In my opinion.

[rhymegirl]

Because I'm mixed-up?

No, I guess I thought it would give more immediacy to the story. She is telling about things that happened in the past, but when she's in the room, she's in the room--making the reader feel he/she is there, too.

[Jamesaritchie]

When you are writing a novel in the first person, and the narrator speaks in the past tense for most of it (I.e. I walked down the corridor; I entered the classroom), can you use the present tense to convey what is going on in a particular scene, or do you have to stick to the past?

Example: Once the character has gotten to the room and she is sitting there listening to the teacher, can she say something like, "I look around the room and notice that...." or does she have to say: "I looked around the room and noticed that....", etc.

I think staying in the past tense is best. Changing tenses in mid-stride can be confusing. If you want to mix the two it's probably best to write everyting in present tense, and drop into past only when necessary.

But first person or third person, past tense generally works best, especially for longer works.

[James D. Macdonald]

I'd say pick a tense and stick with it. Later, after you've published a bunch and know the secret tricks, you can play games.

[Niesta]

I agree with what others have said -- pick one and stick to it -- but as someone else who writes in first person, I understand the impulse. It's easy to slip into present tense, particularly if the narrator has a very distinctive voice. It's how we tell anecdotes to our friends, after all: So I'm going into his office when I hear this crazy noise behind me... It's a VERY casual style.

I think the one exception might be if you have some emphasis that the narrator herself is in the present, telling a story about the distant past, and you want to emphasize who she was then versus who she is now. Her present self could comment on past action in the present tense. However, that really takes the reader out of the immediacy of the action, so I'm betting it's hard to do well.

[TheIT]

Clarification, please. In first person narration, the description would be in past tense but the dialogue would be in present tense, correct? From what I understand, events are described as if they already happened, but spoken words are transcribed as they were said at the time.

I walked into the classroom and sat down next to Mary in the back row.
The teacher turned to us and said, "All right, class, today we'll be discussing the American Revolution. Turn to chapter four of your textbooks."
Mary whispered in my ear, "Wake me if I start snoring, will you?"
"As long as you wake me up first," I said.

[reph]

Clarification, please. In first person narration, the description would be in past tense but the dialogue would be in present tense, correct?
Yes, that's correct. The passage you gave as an example is considered past tense. It would be past tense if the writer used the third person, too. "John walked into the classroom..."

[Jamesaritchie]

Clarification, please. In first person narration, the description would be in past tense but the dialogue would be in present tense, correct? From what I understand, events are described as if they already happened, but spoken words are transcribed as they were said at the time.

I walked into the classroom and sat down next to Mary in the back row.
The teacher turned to us and said, "All right, class, today we'll be discussing the American Revolution. Turn to chapter four of your textbooks."
Mary whispered in my ear, "Wake me if I start snoring, will you?"
"As long as you wake me up first," I said.

Basically correct, in that dialogue is written verbatim, but dialogue is either in present tense or past tense, depending on what is being said. It can also be written in future tense.

For examaple, "Tell me what happened. Just the facts, ma'am."

"Well, there isn't much to tell. He walked in here, stood looking around for a while, and then just pulled out a gun and started shooting. He killed poor Mrs. Wilburfester right off.

"That was it for me. As of this minute, I am no longer working in this store."


Or dialogue might read: "I hated peanut butter when I was a kid. Now I can't get enough of it. Who knows? Tomorrow I might hate it again."

The tense of dialogue depends on whether the action being discussed takes place in the past, the present, or the future.

[maestrowork]

IMHO it may work, if you keep it consistent and set the "present tense" stuff apart. I've seen that done before. After a while the readers would understand why something is written in present tense. Just make sure you're not "mixing tenses" in the same scene. You could do things like:

I hurried to the church, not wanting to miss my own wedding. Things happened. Then more things happened. Then, as I entered the church...
#
Oh my God! Victoria looks so beautiful. I just can't seem to shake it. I'm now shaking like a leave as I watch her standing there. Suddenly, something happens. Then something else happens.
#
That was what happened.

[rhymegirl]

but as someone else who writes in first person, I understand the impulse. It's easy to slip into present tense, particularly if the narrator has a very distinctive voice. It's how we tell anecdotes to our friends, after all: So I'm going into his office when I hear this crazy noise behind me... It's a VERY casual style.

That is exactly the kind of thing I meant. When we are telling someone something that happened in the past, we often speak informally and in the present tense. We might say something like, "So I am sitting in the classroom and I hear somebody say...." or "So I am doodling in my notebook and suddenly..."

The listener understands it's not happening now.

[Jamesaritchie]

IMHO it may work, if you keep it consistent and set the "present tense" stuff apart. I've seen that done before. After a while the readers would understand why something is written in present tense. Just make sure you're not "mixing tenses" in the same scene. You could do things like:

I hurried to the church, not wanting to miss my own wedding. Things happened. Then more things happened. Then, as I entered the church...
#
Oh my God! Victoria looks so beautiful. I just can't seem to shake it. I'm now shaking like a leave as I watch her standing there. Suddenly, something happens. Then something else happens.
#
That was what happened.




I don't know how you would go about setting present tense apart. In dialogue, yes, we sometimes slip into present tense. Not, however, in narration. Mixing tenses in narration is just not a wise thing to do, in my opinion.

Pick a tense and stay with it is good advice. There's just no reason to mix tenses in narration. The only time I can see mixing tenses in narration is if, possibly, you have one narrator set in teh past, and another narrator in the present, and want to differentiate between the two by writing one in past tense and the other in present.

Otherwise, it's confusing, interrupts the flow of the story, and offers no adcantage at all.

Why you writing one scene in present tense and another in past isn't going to be seen by the reader unless you have a strong and logical reason for doing so. I can't imagine what that reason would be in an ordinary novel.

[Jamesaritchie]

That is exactly the kind of thing I meant. When we are telling someone something that happened in the past, we often speak informally and in the present tense. We might say something like, "So I am sitting in the classroom and I hear somebody say...." or "So I am doodling in my notebook and suddenly..."

The listener understands it's not happening now.

As I said in the other post, in dialogue, yes, we sometimes slip into present tense. Not, however, in narration. Mixing tenses in narration is just not a wise thing to do, in my opinion.

And slipping into the present tense, even in dialogue, marks the speaker as a certain type of individual. Not everyone slips into present tense, and for me, at least, it generally marks the speaker as someone with, uh, less education and little knowledge of proper English. Most people I know seldom, if ever, slip into present tense when speaking. I believe this is why, in most novels, speakers who slip into present tense are generally street thugs, uneducated characters, etc.

And slipping into present tense in dialogue is no excuse for doing the same in narrative. Narrative usually needs a consistent tense, and a very strong reason would be needed to justify mixing tenses in therein.

Unless a strong, logical reason for doing so is found, mixing tenses will nearly always come across as bad writing, or at least as a writer who doesn't know the difference.

[Euan H.]

The only time I can see mixing tenses in narration is if, possibly, you have one narrator set in teh past, and another narrator in the present, and want to differentiate between the two by writing one in past tense and the other in present.
I may be misremebering, but I'm fairly sure Card changes tense in Ender's Game. As far as I can remember, he switches tense and POV (3rd to 1st) towards the end of many paragraphs as the narrative voice slides further into Ender's head. I haven't read the book for a while though, so I may be remebering this wrongly.

[reph]

I can see a case, sometimes, for inserting present tense in a character's thoughts when the narrative is otherwise in past.

I woke up with a start. The room was dark, the TV still on. I must have slept through the end of the movie. I put on my glasses and saw a man in an apron demonstrating some flimsy-looking cookware. Oh, one of those dreadful infomercials that you get in the middle of the night when the real programs have stopped. What time was it, anyway? I got up...

[azbikergirl]

Generally, I dislike present tense in narration and wouldn't advise switching back and forth. But the book I'm reading now, Melusine by Sarah Monette (her first published novel) switches from past to present with good effect. She has two POV characters who narrate in the first person. One of them goes crazy early in the story. In his more lucid moments, he writes in past tense; in his nuttier moments, he writes in present. For this story, it works.

[maestrowork]

House of Sand and Fog also has two 1st POVs, switching from past to present and back.

[reph]

An example of a different kind:
I went back to the bar to look for Izzy. I needed to ask him about the truck and the package delivery. It was easy to find him. Izzy spends every evening there, nursing a beer at the corner table. Sure enough, there he was,...

[Jamesaritchie]

An example of a different kind:I went back to the bar to look for Izzy. I needed to ask him about the truck and the package delivery. It was easy to find him. Izzy spends every evening there, nursing a beer at the corner table. Sure enough, there he was,...


This kind of writing is precisely why I hate it when writers blend the two. Past before, past after, present in the middle. Bleech! To me, it reads horribly. It jolts me out of teh flow of teh story, ameks me question everything about teh writer. As an editor, my first thought on reading something like that is "Doesn't this writer know tense? Has he ever heard of the word "spent"? It's right there in the dictionary. Or is he just too lazy to learn tense? Now where the heck did I leave those form rejection slips?"

I know some very good writers get away with the occasional blending in this manner, but to me it reads horribly, and too much of it makes me stop reading. There are too many writers who get tense write to waste times on ones who interrupt my reading by getting it wrong. Writing like this needs an editor who isn't afraid to use a blue pencil. A sentence here and there, I'll just blue pencil. Too many and it's a rejection slip. I won't leave any, I don't care what writer has gotten away with it in what novel.

As for two narrators, yes, I think that's one of the very few legitimate reasons for mixing past and present in the same story, primarily because you do have two narrators and not one.

Even in first person, where narrative is really dialogue, it's all dialogue from a single character, and consistency matters.

Emerson may have been right when he said, "Foolish consistency is the the hobgoblin of small minds," but foolish inconsistency is certainly the cause of a great many rejections.

[Jamesaritchie]

I can see a case, sometimes, for inserting present tense in a character's thoughts when the narrative is otherwise in past.


I woke up with a start. The room was dark, the TV still on. I must have slept through the end of the movie. I put on my glasses and saw a man in an apron demonstrating some flimsy-looking cookware. Oh, one of those dreadful infomercials that you get in the middle of the night when the real programs have stopped. What time was it, anyway? I got up...That's a little better use, but it's there to show an ongoing action or process, past, present, and probably future. It isn't really a true blending of past tense and present tense. I would say that "have stopped" isn't even present tense at all, but "past continuous" tense.

"Have stopped" means something has already stopped, not that they are stopping in the present moment. The shows have stopped, and at present the infomercials are on. The process, however, is ongoing, which means the use of "get" is acceptable, and the past continuous of "have stopped" reinforces this.

But it really isn't a blending of past and present. It's continuous action, past, present, and future. Continuation, not simple grammar tense of past or present. Ah, probably too British of me.

And even doing it this way, Oh, one of those dreadful infomercials that you get in the middle of the night when the real programs have stopped reads poorly to me. I can't see any possible need for it. Again, it jolts, though only partly because of the tense. To me, it doesn't read to me like narrative.

I think teh right way to write such a sentence is to start it as past tense, which makes the ongoing "get" work much better.

Oh, it WAS one of those dreaful informercials. . ." This works, doesn't jolt, and makes all the narrative read as narrative. Consistency.

I think such writing can be used to show an ongoing process, an action or event where time is meaningly, something that happened to you last week, this week, and may happen tomorrow, but I still think you have to tread very cautiously, and past should be past, present should be present, and blending the two should be done with extreme caution, and then usually discarded.

[Jamesaritchie]

I think the ultimate rule is "If you can make it work, do it." But a corollary should be, "Nothing works just because you want it to. Have a good reason for doing anything."

[reph]

That's a little better use, but it's there to show an ongoing action or process, past, present, and probably future. It isn't really a true blending of past tense and present tense....

"Have stopped" means something has already stopped, not that they are stopping in the present moment....

And even doing it this way, Oh, one of those dreadful infomercials that you get in the middle of the night when the real programs have stopped reads poorly to me. I can't see any possible need for it....
True, "have stopped" isn't exactly present tense. You say present continuous; when (and where) I went to school, it was called present perfect. "Get" is the genuinely present verb in the example. To stay in past, one would use "that you got...when the real programs had stopped."

People are irked and jerked by different things. To me, "get" and "have stopped" sound all right because they're in clauses that describe events that still go on. The narrator is in the present, recounting recent past events: she woke up, the TV was on,... She wants to say that infomercials are always (still, now) on at that hour, not just that they were customarily on at that hour during the time she's talking about.

If a narrator tells a story from the more remote past and mentions some condition that existed then and doesn't now, I wouldn't go to present tense, but to have her say you got infomercials when the programs had stopped makes her seem more distant from the action she describes, as if it happened long ago and she's had years to think it over.

[Mistook]

Past progressive is the way to make the reader feel "in the moment" without breaking tense.

[brinkett]

I can see a case, sometimes, for inserting present tense in a character's thoughts when the narrative is otherwise in past.
I see this done all the time. I'm reading a book now (Iris Johansen) that does this frequently. And the present tense thought(s) isn't in italics. Readers aren't stupid, they can follow along.

[Mistook]

Example: Once the character has gotten to the room and she is sitting there listening to the teacher, can she say something like, "I look around the room and notice that...." or does she have to say: "I looked around the room and noticed that....", etc.

I should've given the example of progressive yesterday...

"Looking around the room, I noticed that Bob wasn't paying attention. He was drawing something in his notebook..."

That was Past Progressive. Most of the narrative should be in Simple Past. If it is, then when you move into a passage of Past Progressive, the change in verb tense will cause the reader to feel more in the moment. Looking, paying, drawing, all indicate that the action is still taking place.

Jumping from Simple Past to Simple Present doesn't constitute an alternative way to do this. All it says to the reader is that your understanding of verb tense is too "simple" to shift into 'Perfect' or 'Progressive', or 'Perfect-Progressive' as necessary to indicate temporal relationships.

And this isn't a bunch of grad-school mumbo jumo either, anybody with a decent command of the language should know how to use these variations of verb tense instinctively.

[LightShadow]

I'm not fond of 1st person as a reader, though I have read many great books written in the first person. I find it limiting to the narration. As for an education regarding the command of written language, I've taken classes, mostly in college, and I did well, but writing properly comes naturally because I am a voracious reader - - so if you ask me the rules for this or that, such as simple past and simple present, etc etc, I won't have a clue, but I'll write it properly without ever realizing why it's proper. Strange, huh?

[darkgraysheep]

An example of a different kind:I went back to the bar to look for Izzy. I needed to ask him about the truck and the package delivery. It was easy to find him. Izzy spends every evening there, nursing a beer at the corner table. Sure enough, there he was,...
This kind of writing is precisely why I hate it when writers blend the two. Past before, past after, present in the middle. Bleech! To me, it reads horribly. It jolts me out of teh flow of teh story, ameks me question everything about teh writer. As an editor, my first thought on reading something like that is "Doesn't this writer know tense? Has he ever heard of the word "spent"? It's right there in the dictionary. Or is he just too lazy to learn tense? Now where the heck did I leave those form rejection slips?"




But wouldn't this be okay if the story takes place in the recent past and Izzy is still alive today still spending his nights at the bar?

What about in this case:

Jenny walked in the room and sat down in one of the child-sized chairs. She is over 6 feet tall, so it wasn't an easy thing to do.

If you said instead, "Jenny was over 6 feet tall" it imples that she is either dead or has shrunk.

-dgs

[maestrowork]

Jenny walked in the room and sat down in one of the child-sized chairs. She is over 6 feet tall, so it wasn't an easy thing to do.

If you said instead, "Jenny was over 6 feet tall" it imples that she is either dead or has shrunk.

-dgs

No it doesn't. It just meant you were describing her in a past event when "we" saw her. Mixing tenses like that drives me crazy.

Jem lost his legs in the war. He got through the day by walking on his hands.

It doesn't mean that Jem is dead or he doesn't walk on his hands anymore. All is in the contest and the time frame of the story you're telling. If your story happens in the past, stick with past tense through and through.

The only time, I think, you could use present tense mixed in with past tense is when you quote a saying or somethng:

Jem lost his legs in the war. As they say, life is full of surprises. He learned to walk on his hands.

[scarletpeaches]

The only time something like that would work, would be in the first person, and the narrator was talking directly to the reader. But that would feel a bit gimmicky, to me.

Sort of...

Nichola* was just over five feet tall. She still is, reader. She hasn't shrunk. But she still managed to bump her head on the door frame.

*(Anything to get my name into print)!