This. I think first- present will continue to grow. Social media.
Agree 100%.
Past or Present Tense?
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This. I think first- present will continue to grow. Social media.
Agree 100%.
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True with my Twitter, as well, at least with the posts that actually contain verbs. About half of them are verbless phrases.What? *spews tea everywhere*
I'm scrolling through my Twitter feed, and I don't see a single past tense. I would like to know who you are following
A few years ago, I picked up a book (fiction) written in first person, present tense. I almost put it down because I had to reread the first few paragraphs, but I was able to get into the storyline after reading the first page. It turned out to be one of the better books I've read that dealt with the supernatural (but for the life of me, I can't recall the title or author). At that time, I wrote to her about her choice of using first person, present tense, and she responded that she had to write it that way. It was a page turner and I felt like I was along for the ride as the narrator experienced the other-worldly type goings-on.
Okay, so I'll amble in.
One of the things that I like about past tense, both third and first, is that it gives the dialogue more weight. Dialogue happens in present tense, and since I use a lot of internal dialogue (first person seems to be my default at this time), it helps to distinguish it from the narration.
So really, for every book with dialogue, written in past, it is a mixture of tenses and it's a common, accepted literary device.
I noticed in Hunger Games, which I otherwise quite like, the use of present tense blunted the effect of the dialogue.
Now, all that said, you are writing an epistolary novel, which has different conventions still. My first book was quite similar in some ways. I wrote a biography of an aunt who I truly admire for her ninetieth birthday. I self-pubbed it, because it really was meant as a gift, and I expected a small readership. (I was not disappointed in this.)
The point is, I did it all in the form of interviews. Anyone reading this work would want Ellen's thoughts, in a more documentary version, rather than having it filtered through my perceptions. I put in not a single sentence of description. It was all dialogue, edited with Ellen's input, and there was a reason for this. A good one, I flatter myself, although that is of course a matter of opinion.
Since it was a biography, it came out as a mixture of past and present, because it was a series of reminiscences, and Ellen's thoughts on the same. And it worked just fine, although it was a special case.
So my point is, what's the reason for writing this as an epistolary? And I don't mean your personal one, which can be as simple as it's a challenge that fascinates you. What is the reason your MC is telling his/her story in this form? There should be a reason, and it should be compelling and evident to the reader. As a for-instance, you could tell a story in past tense of a character who dies. That's your twist. But IMO there has to be a reason for it.
Given that there is a compelling reason, present tense is common in tweets, perhaps, but past tense is common in letters and emails. At that point I would ask, are tweets really necessary? What do they say that an email can't express just as well, or better? It would be hard to say the reverse.
One reservation I have is your comment about lack of character consistency, but that you feel it's okay because it's magical realism. (Why on earth do we have to get so obsessively categorical with fantasy?) In any novel, but especially in spec fic, you have to be consistent with your character(s). You are already asking for a major suspension of disbelief with your fairies, zombies, Hogwarts, or personally owned hovercraft. If you ask readers to forgive lapses in characterization as well, I believe it turns into 'how many impossible things can you believe before breakfast?'
And also, as a reader, lapses in character are the one thing that will cause me to hurl a book across the room and never pick it up again. Growth arcs are fine. Lapses are not.
I hope some of this helps.
One of the things that I like about past tense, both third and first, is that it gives the dialogue more weight. Dialogue happens in present tense, and since I use a lot of internal dialogue (first person seems to be my default at this time), it helps to distinguish it from the narration.
So really, for every book with dialogue, written in past, it is a mixture of tenses and it's a common, accepted literary device.
I noticed in Hunger Games, which I otherwise quite like, the use of present tense blunted the effect of the dialogue.
Now, all that said, you are writing an epistolary novel, which has different conventions still. My first book was quite similar in some ways. I wrote a biography of an aunt who I truly admire for her ninetieth birthday. I self-pubbed it, because it really was meant as a gift, and I expected a small readership. (I was not disappointed in this.)
The point is, I did it all in the form of interviews. Anyone reading this work would want Ellen's thoughts, in a more documentary version, rather than having it filtered through my perceptions. I put in not a single sentence of description. It was all dialogue, edited with Ellen's input, and there was a reason for this. A good one, I flatter myself, although that is of course a matter of opinion.
Since it was a biography, it came out as a mixture of past and present, because it was a series of reminiscences, and Ellen's thoughts on the same. And it worked just fine, although it was a special case.
So my point is, what's the reason for writing this as an epistolary? And I don't mean your personal one, which can be as simple as it's a challenge that fascinates you. What is the reason your MC is telling his/her story in this form? There should be a reason, and it should be compelling and evident to the reader. As a for-instance, you could tell a story in past tense of a character who dies. That's your twist. But IMO there has to be a reason for it.
Given that there is a compelling reason, present tense is common in tweets, perhaps, but past tense is common in letters and emails. At that point I would ask, are tweets really necessary? What do they say that an email can't express just as well, or better? It would be hard to say the reverse.
One reservation I have is your comment about lack of character consistency, but that you feel it's okay because it's magical realism. (Why on earth do we have to get so obsessively categorical with fantasy?) In any novel, but especially in spec fic, you have to be consistent with your character(s). You are already asking for a major suspension of disbelief with your fairies, zombies, Hogwarts, or personally owned hovercraft. If you ask readers to forgive lapses in characterization as well, I believe it turns into 'how many impossible things can you believe before breakfast?'
And also, as a reader, lapses in character are the one thing that will cause me to hurl a book across the room and never pick it up again. Growth arcs are fine. Lapses are not.
I hope some of this helps.
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I've read a ton of 1st person present tense YA lately. I think the bonus of present tense in 1st person is that it can help immerse a reader into a scene more thoroughly than past tense (it's obviously more 'immediate'). As someone who usually writes past tense I've recently dabbled with present and have found that that immediacy can sometimes make it a bit easier to develop the narrative voice.
If you started out writing in present but found yourself switching more frequently to past tense then maybe you were trying to force yourself to write in a style you weren't comfortable with (present tense) and so that's why you switched. Go with whatever is most comfortable for you!
If you started out writing in present but found yourself switching more frequently to past tense then maybe you were trying to force yourself to write in a style you weren't comfortable with (present tense) and so that's why you switched. Go with whatever is most comfortable for you!
Hunger Games is first-person, present tense. That's the book that taught me I could enjoy that combination.
I'm glad I found this thread. I've never written a book in present tense before nor one from a first person perspective so that's obviously why I'm doing both in my latest book. I'm flicking back and forth from past to present as the central character is writing a journal and sometimes he's thinking things over in the present. It's working out quite well for me as a writer and I'm hoping readers will enjoy it but I know that I'm going to have to proof read the hell out of it to ensure all the tenses are right and in the right places!
I may be misunderstanding you, but... no? Dialogue is written in the same tense as the rest of the story, typically. Can you point me to an example of past tense writing where the dialogue is written in present?
The narrative framing of dialogue is written in the same tense as other narrative, most often in past tense, but what's spoken often may be expressed as present tense. That's the way we commonly speak, so that's the way characters should often speak. But that doesn't violate the overall past tense of a story.
An example excerpt:
“Get on with it,” the Colonel hissed. “What happened in that saloon?”
“There’s this really big man, just the sort I thought you might be looking for, says something to a thin fellow with a big nose and buck teeth and long mustache, I don’t hear all what was said, but I do hear the word ‘cheat’, and the thin one he don’t much like it. He stands up slow, and says to the big one, ‘Carson, you say that to me again, you won’t leave this place except feet first.’ Carson, he laughs, and says, ‘You think I’m skeered of a puny squirrel like you, Anderson? You cheat at cards same way this geezer does’—pointin’ at me—‘hidin’ things in your sleeve and playin’ all slick-like. I ought to drag your sorry carcass outside and beat the tar out of it.’ So I say, ‘I ain’t no geezer,’ and big Carson turns to me and says, ‘Shut yer trap, ‘fore I shut it for you,’ so I shuts my trap before he shuts it for me, and he doubles over with a groan and goes to the floor on his knees. Turns out Anderson can use a boot purty well, in just the right place.
“Well, by then, everybody in the place is standing up, except me, I’m jist trying to get clear of that table, which is a good thing because somebody throws it over right in front of me, and it seems the friends of Carson are pretty riled at the friends of Anderson, and ain’t nobody friends of me, even with all that whiskey I bought ‘em. I scoot over toward the back door, but the barkeep he grabs me by the collar and shoves me into a corner. By then I see Anderson kicking Carson in the ribs purty good, and three or four other fistfights goin’ on, and I can’t tell much of one person from another. A chair come flying my direction, and it’s a good thing I’m as quick as a jackrabbit, ‘cause I get my skull out of the way just in time, and—“
caw
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Post it on up. We can take a look and see how well you write with each or what suits the story.
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I don't usually talk that way unless I'm trying to talk that way. I could have said that entire story in past tense, as in...
"Guess what happened to me..."
Then all the above verbs would be past tense. When I used to tell my husband about my day, I'd say...
"Well, you will never believe what happened in school today. Joe Clary spilled acid all over his books and Mary Smith started crying during the video on broken bones. Had to send her to the school nurse. Then we had a fire drill and half my class ran out into the woods. Go figure, I had to go round them up and by the time we got to the back doors, they were locked and there was the school principal, waiting for us."
Now I could say all that in present tense, too. But I don't usually tell a story that way, even in dialogue. It all depends on context, the mood, the way you want to tell a story, your audience, etc. I used to tell my students funny stories, mostly about my mother, and yes, I'd use the present tense sometimes as in, 'and then my mother grabs the shotgun to shoot the dang woodchuck.'
Or I could say, 'And then my mother grabbed the shotgun, etc...'
But the way we speak is always in present tense? Sometimes, but not all the time. Not at my house.
Just from personal taste. . .I hate reading present tense and usually end up putting the book down. If you keep falling back into the past, better just to keep with it, because obviously down-deep writing in the present is probably awkward for you.
I seem to be in the minority here, but I prefer present tense. When I read past tense I feel that things have already happened and I have to play catch up with the story. For myself I read the same way I watch a movie, I see it in my mind and it works better (for me) in present tense. I find many people write in past tense although everything they are stating has present tense connotations. Meaning everything is happening now, but they only write as if it was the past. Past tense narrative should be highly insightful since hind-sight is 20/20.
I prefer to write in present tense so I can mention something that may happen in the future or something that happened in the past easily. If I wrote in past tense it would be more difficult for me to figure out the proper wording.
For third person narratives it is less of an issue. If the main character's life is at risk anytime during the story and it is written in first-person-past-tense then you have already told the reader that the main character survives.
Bottom line, write how feel most comfortable, but be consistent, with reasonable exceptions. In the end people don't remember the tense your story is written.
I prefer to write in present tense so I can mention something that may happen in the future or something that happened in the past easily. If I wrote in past tense it would be more difficult for me to figure out the proper wording.
For third person narratives it is less of an issue. If the main character's life is at risk anytime during the story and it is written in first-person-past-tense then you have already told the reader that the main character survives.
Bottom line, write how feel most comfortable, but be consistent, with reasonable exceptions. In the end people don't remember the tense your story is written.
I wrote my first story in present tense. Strangely enough I only read past tense novels, and I didn’t know the difference. The dialogue tags were the only things written in past tense, because I remembered quite clearly that detail from reading.
I grew tense savvy at some point. I replaced all ‘he said, she said’ with ‘he says, she says’.
I should note my second story was changed from present tense to past tense. So I’m not a past-tensist. I dig both.
I grew tense savvy at some point. I replaced all ‘he said, she said’ with ‘he says, she says’.
I should note my second story was changed from present tense to past tense. So I’m not a past-tensist. I dig both.
Am I the only one who has never really strictly associated "past tense" with "happened in the past". I mean, sure if I write Jane opened the door that has already happened, but it could have happened ten seconds ago. We could be getting a play-by-play that's just lagging slightly behind the real action. It comes down to how "in-the-moment" the prose feels. Jane opened the door. It was a decision she would come to regret for the rest of her life. is obviously very removed from the actual action of the story, but something like Jane opened the door. Oh crap. she thought It's him. feels very immediate to me despite the tense. I think this has to do with the fact that past-tense is so ubiquitous in writing that it's almost invisible, in the same way dialogue tags are. Or maybe it's just me.
As far as the OP...I don't mind present tense. My entire WIP is present tense third person, though, so I could be biased. I feel like present tense is harder to pull off than past, though, and it's much easier to sound stilted and affected in present tense.
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I think past tense is probably a better idea. I don't remember ever reading a book that was written in present tense (though granted, I don't read books a whole lot, lol)
Completely agree. I was a little surprised that some people read tenses so literally.
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