If I stay Timeline Problems

MJWare · Aug 9, 2014

I normally hang out of in MG land, where we have a thread to discuss MG books we are reading. I didn't see one here, so I'm starting a thread--hope that's Okay.

I read If I Stay a while back and something's bothered me ever since. The book is told in present tense with flashback into Mia's past. The writer does a good job of moving from present to past and back; so we get to watch the events as they unfold. But here's my problem:

The first two lines of the book are foreshadowing:
"Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true."

She's talking about the snow causing the car accident, but the story is present tense and that hasn't happened yet, so how can she know?

Nowhere else in the story does it move back to past tense, except when she's remembering past events of her life. So I see a big gaping POV hole here!

Am I missing something? Or did Forman just take a huge liberty with POV, assuming the reader would not know?

Sage · Aug 9, 2014

We usually discuss books in the What are you reading now thread, but this works too.

It's been a long time since I read IIS, but if you're presenting this correctly (I don't remember how it's set up), I'd say she's just taking liberty with the POV. I'd say it's being presented as if she's telling us something that happened in the past, but she's using present tense to do so. It's an interesting choice in this case, where usually you'd expect the present tense to be used to give us uncertainty about whether she'll go or stay, assuming "go" means "I can't tell you this story anymore." Present tense keeps us in the now so it could end any way. But that one little past tense bit says that she's telling the story from somewhere in the future, whether it's from heaven or it's after waking up. It's an interesting choice to have that tiny tense change, but it had to have been an active decision.

Yeasayer · Aug 9, 2014

Ditto what Sage said. Present tense shouldn't always be assumed to mean "I'm telling you this story as it's happening." Even in real life conversations, sometimes we tell people stories in present tense that happened in the past, i.e. "So, then he says, 'Sorry, I didn't see you standing there.'"

In this specific case, I think Forman wanted a more intriguing, ominous first line. If you cut that bit out, you'd start with: "I wake up this morning to a thin blanket of white covering our front lawn" which isn't terrible, but not great either.

MJWare · Aug 9, 2014

That's pretty much what I thought--artistic license.

Since it's #1 in the Amazon store right now, I guess she got away with it.

what? · Aug 10, 2014

The problem with present tense is that writing a hooking first sentence is much harder.

Generally hooks are created by explaining the stakes. Look at a list of YA opening lines and you will note that a huge number of them contain the words "death" or "kill". And this is not what happens at the beginning of the story, but what the character is trying to avoid (or is fated to do or whatever). At the moment the story starts, the character does not know this yet, which is why you tell the story in past tense. This allows you to hook the reader much easier.

Now, in "If I Stay" there obviously wasn't a useful hook in the beginning. The story starts with the protagonist waking up and there is snow. So what? That does not make me curious and want to read the book. So Foreman used advice number two: if you cannot start in the action, make the beginning ominous. That's what she did, by turning the snow of a shadow of things to come. And she could only do that in past tense, so she wrote it in past tense.

That's all there is to that tense switch: that book needed a hook without being completely rewritten, and those two sentences in past tense were the easiest solution.

If I stay Timeline Problems

MJWare

Kidlit gang, Junior member.

Sage

Supreme Guessinator

Yeasayer

see you on a dark night

MJWare

Kidlit gang, Junior member.

what?