What is with present tense writing?

MacAllister

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It's pretty exciting stuff, though, when you realize that the Potter books happened to coincide with the first generation that was broadly exposed to the internet, as well -- even if it WAS mostly AOL, via dial-up modem, at least for the first couple of years.
 
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Cobalt Jade

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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.

I think that in YA today, books have become the seed of shared, fan-built experiences, rather than a self-enclosed product, like, say, S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders was. Teens might have read that book and talked about it between themselves in the 70s and 80s, but for something like the Twilight series, there's fanfic, fan art, book discussions all shared across the internet and social media. It's a much larger, more immersive, and nebulous thing. I don't think it's the "joy of reading" so much for teens, or that Twilight and Harry Potter were so well-written and groundbreaking. It's just that reading the book allowed teens to join the club and participate in this wider realm that had accreted for whatever reason, that everyone was talking about, and express their own opinions and artistic and literary desires. It's actually kind of random and awesome.

Current YA also has a freedom of subject matter and themes in it that only used to exist in the wildest, most-out science fiction and fantasy, but without the dryness (Frank Herbert) and pseudo-myth (Tolkien) of science fiction and fantasy, which can be very appealing to readers, especially young readers. If I was 12, I certainly would have read Divergent rather than Dune. It would speak more to my experience as a teen girl than Dune. But in my time, Dune was all that was available.

I would also say that many YA novels, especially dystopias, have come out of the fanfic AU (alternate universe) writing in that they are high concept. There has always been AUs in fanfic, where familiar characters are placed in non-canon settings, often fantastic ones, as the result of plot bunnies or to test them to the limits, but in the late 1990s, this type of story soared as fanfic authors vied to see who create the most out-there scenarios. So you had stuff like Legolas and Aragon transposed to ancient Rome, and the Harry Potter kids all being vampires, or Philip Marlowe detectives, or whatever. Some very inventive stuff came out, that would have never in a million years been accepted by any publisher anywhere, because A) it was fanfic and B) it was just too crazy and strayed out of genre, and often too prurient, even though many of these stories were very well written. But that anything-goes inventiveness did find its way into YA where it found a home.

And that is probably very good for YA writers right now :)
 

KTC

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I write YA. Two of my last three novels were written in first person present tense. For me, it was just the way the story came out. I don't think, 'how am I going to frame this story.' Not at all. I start with the title. Then I write the first sentence and the next sentence. Burn Baby Burn Baby was written in first person present tense---and I'm just guessing here, after the fact---because I attempted in an extremely pointed way to tell the story as the character. It's pretty much as simple as that for me. I did find myself slipping a bit into saids and eds every now and again...but I found that once I got the ball rolling this tense just worked best for the story. I wasn't telling a story that happened, I was telling a story that was happening. I guess that's the same reason I wrote my latest, Pride Must Be a Place, in first person present tense. It wasn't something I wanted to look back on while writing...but walk into. I know it's probably supposed to be about the reader's experience...but for me, it's about how I'm going to get through my weekend marathon while writing the story. As most of you probably know by now, I write my novels in 72 hour bursts and edit later. I am currently writing past tense again...but I found that present tense worked well for the method I write in. But it's not about the method...so I can't write everything in present tense...it's about the individual story you're telling.
 

JHFC

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I don't write YA but I do write in present tense. Not because of any book I've read (still haven't read Hunger Games) but because of the book as a concept. The action didn't happen, it is happening. Unless someone is telling the story about a past event, it isn't in the past. Every time you open a book the plot starts over.
 

cmi0616

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A YA fad? Hardly. It seems to me that most "literary" short stories are written in the present tense these days. I find, for whatever reason, that it facilitates especially lyrical styles quite well.
 

blacbird

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A YA fad? Hardly. It seems to me that most "literary" short stories are written in the present tense these days. I find, for whatever reason, that it facilitates especially lyrical styles quite well.

For good or ill, my observations about "literary" short stories I've seen in publication recently agree with you. I subscribed to Glimmer Train for a couple of years, until last year, and actually tabulated the narrative tense styles. Right around half the stories published there were in present tense.

caw
 

ap123

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Agreeing with JHFC, cmi0616 and blacbird. I love present tense, both for reading and writing. I neither read nor write YA.