What is with present tense writing?

Sagml John

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The first time I read present tense writing was either Hunger Games or Twilight -- I can't recall which. I had to plow through the first couple of chapters, shaking my head, until I got used to it. Is this a YA fad? I have read a couple more freebees on Amazon that use this style. Is it the wave of the future?

Example: Jeremy notices the shadow of a man who approaches from behind.
Instead of: Jeremy noticed the shadow as a man approached him from behind.

Is it better than the traditional past tense?
 

Maryn

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Better? No. Different? Yes? Trending in YA? Yes. Popular in other genres? Not really.

I suppose the advantages are the immediacy and the narrator not necessarily surviving. A character relating a tale in past tense has to have lived.
 

Chris P

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I'm sure there have been present tense stories as long as there have been stories. I don't prefer them, but I won't let present tense keep me from reading. I will confess, however, it takes a little more convincing for me to give a present tense story a try. I initially (and unfairly) associate present tense with either younger writers, younger audiences or (most unfairly) something not likely to challenge me very much.
 

Cyia

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Twilight is written in past tense. The Hunger Games is written in present tense.

POV, if done well, disappears, like getting used to an accent during a conversation. You'll not likely notice if it's 1st present or past after a few pages. It's popular in YA because it's an immediate voice that puts you directly into the head of the MC as the action is happening. It's also a common writing style in narrative RPG, and it's the way many people verbally recount a story. ("So I'm climbing the stairs at the theater, and then this guy yells at me for talking on my phone.") It's not even a "new" narrative style.
 

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Another advantage in YA is it makes it clear the character is experiencing the story in the here and now, so the narrative voice, knowledge, attitudes etc. are his or hers as a teenager, not their older and "wiser" self (or another external narrator) telling the story from a comfortable distance. Of course, you can create that feeling with past tense narratives too, and many writers do. But present tense naturally lends itself to a deep, immersive narrative voice.

Not everyone loves present tense. My preference is for past, because it was the norm when I was growing up, and it still is in adult fiction (I read a bit of YA, but I mostly read stuff aimed at people who are older than teens). But I've lost myself in present-tense narratives that are so well done that I don't even notice.

Oh, another use I've seen is when a story is taking place in two or more timelines. The one occurring in the present is in present tense, and the parts taking place in the characters' pasts is in past tense. This makes it easy for the reader to be oriented in the "when and where" at the start of a new scene or chapter. I seem to remember Margaret Atwood doing this in some of her books.
 

kuwisdelu

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Another advantage in YA is it makes it clear the character is experiencing the story in the here and now, so the narrative voice, knowledge, attitudes etc. are his or hers as a teenager, not their older and "wiser" self (or another external narrator) telling the story from a comfortable distance. Of course, you can create that feeling with past tense narratives too, and many writers do. But present tense naturally lends itself to a deep, immersive narrative voice.

This is a very good point.

I like present tense, but tend to take its closeness and immediacy for granted after writing in it for a while (because past tense can be close and immediate too) until I read a story with a younger protagonist and an older narrator (written in past tense).

Then I remember why I like erasing that distance with present tense.

Of course, you can do the same thing with past tense, but as a reader I'll always be wondering how much older the narrator is than the protagonist until it's established somewhere.

Present tense establishes that immediately.

Of course, conversely, that means present tense won't work if you want to give the narrator more temporal distance.
 
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Sagml John

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Better? No. Different? Yes? Trending in YA? Yes. Popular in other genres? Not really.

That is kind of what I thought. It seems that YA is where I get it. When I first noticed it, I thought it was just trending--so when I started my first book, I tried it. First person present tense. After half a chapter, I changed it to third person single perspective. I admit that there is a talent to maintaining present tense--sort of like switching to using a mouse with my other hand. I would like kids to read my stuff but I will remain old hat :)
 

kuwisdelu

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I didn't get it from YA.

I started writing present tense after reading Thomas Pynchon.

I'll admit I was in middle school at the time, but I don't think Pynchon is YA.
 

Twick

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I'm currently writing in present tense because that's how my character is telling me the story.

I'm stumped, because I don't generally like present tense either.
 

neandermagnon

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It may be trending in YA currently but present tense stories go back much further. Personally, I thought it was a bit weird, but got used to it after reading about one page of the Hunger Games. I changed my WIP from past tense to present tense about 25,000 words in because I thought it would suit the voice of the main character better. It did, so I carried on writing in present tense. (I saved a past tense version before changing it in case I didn't like it.) It works much better. I could list several reasons why this is, but my point is that you choose what tense suits the story best.

I'm not sure why there's so much of a knee-jerk reaction against present tense. I get that people aren't used to it, but there's nothing wrong with it and it has several advantages. And anything is crap if it's written badly.
 

Maxx

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Twilight is written in past tense. The Hunger Games is written in present tense.

POV, if done well, disappears, like getting used to an accent during a conversation. You'll not likely notice if it's 1st present or past after a few pages. It's popular in YA because it's an immediate voice that puts you directly into the head of the MC as the action is happening. It's also a common writing style in narrative RPG, and it's the way many people verbally recount a story. ("So I'm climbing the stairs at the theater, and then this guy yells at me for talking on my phone.") It's not even a "new" narrative style.

Not "new" ...It seems to have had a burst of popularity in the tough-guy, actual Nazi, you-are-right-there action story in the 1940s. You know those hunks of prose that get quoted but not read much as in:

"Ubersturmfuhrer Horst Voss stands up next. He is flushed with horror. The next commie into the trench blows his head off. Horst's head, not his own. Horst's head comes to rest next to Gebursttagamtfuhrer Heinrich. Heinrich pulls out his machine gun pistol and blows his own head off....et. etc. etc." LOTS OF ACTION
 

Glass Valkyrie

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I've been thinking about this. I am working on revising an old MS of mine. One of the thoughts I had was to change it to present tense, thinking this would probably work really well for this particular story. The only problems are 1) I have a prologue (which may get scrapped anyway since I'm hearing a lot of bad things about them lately) where it starts essentially at the end of the book. Problem 2 - The book goes through my MC's life so would it be too disorienting having her be different ages throughout the book using present tense?
 

2gregory

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All quiet on the western front
Handmaid's tale
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Etc.

Everything old is new again!
 

JLCarver

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All quiet on the western front
Handmaid's tale
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Etc.

Everything old is new again!

Yeah, Margaret Atwood writes a few of her stories in present tense. Cat's Eye is also in present tense.
 

Cobalt Jade

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Joyce Carol Oates has written some stories in present tense. Of course, they're intended for adults and not YA. One is set inside the mind of a schozophrenic serial killer (Zombie.)

I admit I don't like present tense in YA. For one thing, who the hell is the narrator telling the story to, and how the hell are they telling them the story AS IT IS HAPPENING? I picture a tiny camcorder sitting on their shoulder, or something. It just throws me out of the narrative. (With the Oates story, the narrative was insane, so he was talking to his own inner demons.)

I actually don't like first person in YA that much either, but with a framing device it's tolerable, like it's a diary, or the narrator telling the story from a later time.
 

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Pynchon had reason to express Gravity's Rainbow in the present tense. He had to deal with a chronologically disjointed book while depicting the pervasive fear that a populace hostage, as well as presenting the setting in a way that wasn't a foregone conclusion looked back upon from our own context. Not to mention, describing a rocket falling somewhere is just that; a rocket that fell. There's nothing fear inducing about a rocket that fell. It's horrifying, not fear inducing. I was mortared while I was in the military--the moment you're most scared isn't the moment the mortar hits. It's in all the moments leading up to it. His is one of the few books that potrays that.


With Bleeding Edge, he was trying to do something new. Whether he succeeded is... Debatable. Much its criticism cites his [attempt at] using the present tense to depict the literal present, as well as simply a tense. Again, debatable success.


When JCO wrote Zombie in present tense, she did it for many the same reasons as Pynchon did.


Atwood's Cat's Eye used it to juxtapose her as an unreliable narrator viz memory, with her narration of the present (as opposed to her present narration of the past).


All of those are present tense as a literary tool. The all-too-prevalent present tense in YA is mainly because YA authors think it's cool, and their works don't go through the same editors. If the Sam Gottliebs and Bertha Krantzes of the world edited YA, it wouldn't have that sort of affect. Of course, we also wouldn't have Twilight, Fifty Shades, or any of the groundbreaking effects they had in the publishing world. It's dismissive of the unique and unusual nature of YA to compare its use of the present tense to Atwood, Pynchon, Oates, etc. It's used for different reasons and to different effect. YA has done things with writing that we have never seen before, and has paved roads that didn't even exist until recently.
 

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I'd rather not, I put it ambiguously as possible.

As it happens, someone pointed out to me the error of my ways. I'd go back and edit former posts, but why hide from mistakes?

I've probably never even read any of those books and have no idea what I'm talking about. Forget it ;-)
 

Helix

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I'd rather not, I put it ambiguously as possible.

As it happens, someone pointed out to me the error of my ways. I'd go back and edit former posts, but why hide from mistakes?

I've probably never even read any of those books and have no idea what I'm talking about. Forget it ;-)

:Shrug:
 

MacAllister

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If you'd asked *me* that question, Helix (and I know you didn't, but it's a quiet evening, so's I'm just gonna jump right in anyway) I'd probably answer that YA, since the advent of the Harry Potter books -- which, although initially marketed as MG, enjoyed a ridiculous amount of crossover success with other age groups -- books by an author so fiercely loved and followed by an entire generation of young people that she nearly single-handedly created a generation of readers hungry for MORE: more heroes and heroines they could identify with, more whimsy, more magic, more adventure, more TEXT for them to absorb, and reread, and share with their friends, and talk about and write fanfic about, and stand in line at bookstores all night waiting for the next release to drop.

That's the generation that promptly read the Percy Jackson and Bloody Jack books, and was absolutely ready for The Hunger Games, and Divergent books, and they're ready for text that's more immediate and challenging than the standard third person narrative that was so longer standard for kids and YA books -- Hell, they're reading pretty much anything they can get their hands on. Kids who hunt each other with bows and arrows. Kids who go to magic schools. Books about cancer kids, and books about kids who cut, and have sex, and use drugs, and live real lives.

They're also kids who go through metal detectors and have cops stationed in their local high schools, and do shooter drills. These aren't the Bambi, Heidi, Trixie Belden, and Hardy Boys kids.

Personally? I suspect they're more sophisticated readers than their predecessors, in some ways. And they're hungry to identify with the protagonists, and first person present provides that sort of immediacy that helps them scratch that itch.
 
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be frank

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The first time I saw first person, present tense was Hunger Games. Couldn't make it past the first chapter because it read so weirdly. But then I went back to it not long after and honestly, by the time I was a few chapters in, I'd stopped noticing it at all.

I've read so many books since in present tense, it now jars when they're in past tense.

My current WIP is present tense because it's a thriller. I find present tense makes things more well, tense, not only because you don't know whether the MC is going to survive but because the action feels more immediate. So yeah, I'm a convert.

FWIW, the only POV I can't get used to is 2nd person. It's just ... wrong. And it makes me feel like I'm 8yo and reading a Choose Your Own Adventure ...
 

Helix

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Thanks, Mac.

I haven't read much current YA, so I'm ignorant about contemporary works. But I did read a lot when I was a teenager, back in the...well...a few decades ago now. (I don't think it was classified as YA then.) Books like Alan Garner's The Owl Service and Red Shift have stayed with me.

ETA: I forgot to mention the important bit -- the reason for first person present tense. Yes, I can see why that would work for a reader.
 
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MacAllister

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I read all the S.E. Hinton books, and remember making some profound personal and emotional connections with those characters -- but we didn't have a TV, either, let alone the internet and X-boxes and what-have-you. Even then, I didn't know anyone else reading all the stuff I was reading. I'd have LOVED to have books that were a cultural phenomenon, that I could have talked to peers and classmates and friends and even strangers on the internet about.

I wonder how much the intersectionality made possible by the 'Net has changed the shared cultural experience of fictional phenomena like The Hunger Games?

I also wonder how much texting and FaceBook, etc, has changed modern expectations and experiences of text? Are target demographic status updates on Twitter and FB typically in past or present tense? Has anyone looked? (Off to do just that...)

But I ALSO see people getting confused about the differences between things like First Person Present, and Conditional Subjunctive, just as an additional muddy-the-water observation.
 
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MacAllister

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If you'd asked *me* that question, Helix (and I know you didn't, but it's a quiet evening, so's I'm just gonna jump right in anyway) I'd probably answer that YA, since the advent of the Harry Potter books -- which, although initially marketed as MG, enjoyed a ridiculous amount of crossover success with other age groups -- books by an author so fiercely loved and followed by an entire generation of young people that she nearly single-handedly created a generation of readers hungry for MORE: more heroes and heroines they could identify with, more whimsy, more magic, more adventure, more TEXT for them to absorb, and reread, and share with their friends, and talk about and write fanfic about, and stand in line at bookstores all night waiting for the next release to drop.

Huh. I notice y'all are too polite to mention that the above sentence, for all of its parenthetical clause, em-dashes, colon, and thirteen commas, actually completely didn't get where it had been originally intended to go. One of the drawbacks to being the boss? No one says "Mac, umm, huh?"

Lemme try it again:

I would posit that the Harry Potter books, in particular, created an audience of YA readers that are both generous and ravenous for more good books.

The Harry Potter books, although initially marketed as MG, enjoyed a ridiculous amount of crossover success with other age groups. Everyone read 'em: Parents, kids, teenagers, boys, girls...didn't matter. I was in grad school, working part-time in a book store when the first three or four came out. I've still never seen anything like the line out the door, waiting for the hardback sequel releases.

This series, almost all by itself, was so fiercely loved and followed by an entire generation of young people that Rowling nearly single-handedly created a generation of readers hungry for MORE: more heroes and heroines they could identify with, more whimsy, more magic, more adventure, more TEXT for them to absorb, and reread, and share with their friends, and talk about and write fanfic about, and stand in line at bookstores all night waiting for the next release to drop. And now THOSE kids are having kids of their own, and reading to them, as well.

(Phew. That's a little more intelligible, anyway -- thank you for your indulgence, everyone!)
 
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