Mixing past and present tense

remister · Dec 9, 2016

I'm reading an MG fantasy and I find the mixture of past and present tense annoys me. The story itself is told in past tense but when the narrator (it's first person POV) is describing things like her aunt's looks or whatever, it is in present tense.

An excerpt from the book: "I dressed gloomily, wondering what King Kenig wanted now. He consults Aunt Beck once a week anyway, but he seldom bothers to include me."

And: "It is a couple of miles to the castle ... [snip]... I was tired."

I guess it is technically correct since those things that are written in present tense are still true. I just find it jarring/annoying here. Does anyone know of a good book which mixes past and present tense well?

(EXCLUDING stories told in present tense with past tense for flashback).

JulianneQJohnson · Dec 9, 2016

Generally one doesn't mix tenses, unless it's a participle clause. It's perfectly cool to say "Howling like a freak, the rabid wombat ran out of the doghouse." "Howling like a freak" is a present participle phrase that describes the subject, rabid wombat. It might look like mixing tenses, but it's working as a descriptive phrase.
However, that's not what your examples are doing. It could be someone who doesn't quite get how participle phrases work, or maybe a writer who isn't yet able to stick to one tense when writing.
Just my opinion. I am not a grammar or tense expert.

remister · Dec 9, 2016

JulianneQJohnson said:
Generally one doesn't mix tenses, unless it's a participle clause. It's perfectly cool to say "Howling like a freak, the rabid wombat ran out of the doghouse." "Howling like a freak" is a present participle phrase that describes the subject, rabid wombat. It might look like mixing tenses, but it's working as a descriptive phrase.
However, that's not what your examples are doing. It could be someone who doesn't quite get how participle phrases work, or maybe a writer who isn't yet able to stick to one tense when writing.
Just my opinion. I am not a grammar or tense expert.

No... Definitely not a problem of participle phrases in this book or a writer who can't stick to one tense. She only uses present tense for things that would still apply, like how someone usually looks (but not how she was dressed at that very moment in the story) or the location of a place.

This is a book published by Harper Collins. So if it was technically wrong, I think the editors would have caught it.

morngnstar · Dec 10, 2016

I agree. Neither of these are grammatically wrong, but they are jarring and may not mean what the author intended.

remister said:
I dressed gloomily, wondering what King Kenig wanted now. He consults Aunt Beck once a week anyway, but he seldom bothers to include me.

This implies that King Kenig still visits Aunt Beck once a week at the time of telling the story. That might be true, but it gives away too much. For one, it tells you that neither King Kenig nor Aunt Beck will die in this story. Regardless of spoilers, it takes you out of the moment and makes you think about the "present".

It is a couple of miles to the castle ... [snip]... I was tired.

This one isn't quite as bad, since it's not about an action that you step out of the moment to visualize. Generally it's acceptable to talk about unchangeable things like geography in the present tense. "The castle of Montgrey lies forty leagues inland from the Bay of Seals." "Rysis is the fourth moon of the outermost planet in the Barellian system." However in this case the statement seems to be about how far the castle was from the protagonist. This is not stated correctly in the present tense. Presumably the protagonist is elsewhere in the present, therefore the castle is now a different distance than it was. Unless not. If the story is framed in a way where we know where the protagonist is when telling it, and he's in the same place at this point in the story, then it's okay.

It's occasionally okay to switch to present tense when doing past tense POV, but it's almost never wrong to stay in past tense.

Mixing past and present tense

remister

JulianneQJohnson

Ferret Herder

remister

morngnstar