Writing in present tense (should I...)

Most of my first-person narratives are in present tense these days. I find that once you get used to it, it actually is easier to write in than past tense, and the reason is that there's a lot less confusion about things that are constantly happening and it's very clear cut how to write about things that happened in your story's past. But because most novels are written in past tense, the initial transition to present tense is difficult, and as Harlequin points out, you'll be unable to allude to future events because your POV character only knows what is and has happened, not what will happen.

For some reason, to me, third-person present tense feels like I'm reading a young kid's writing, but probably I haven't met the right 3rd-person-present story yet.

No matter what tense you're used to, changing some writing from past to present or vice versa will feel off during the transition. Everything will seem clunky and wrong as you go. But when you're done and after you give it some time before coming back to it, it will read perfectly normal.

If I see past and present tenses in the same novel, I expect two different time frames.

I don't think that having a mix of tense will appease the people who don't like present tense, if your goal is to have some past tense in there to make them happy. The present tense will still turn them off. Readers who are not used to present tense need to read it for a while until the tense becomes invisible to them, so if your book is compelling enough to be picked up by someone who doesn't like it, they'll never get the chance to get used to it because you're going back and forth. And if they would put down your book for using a tense they don't like, they probably really wouldn't like the idea of two tenses.

You can't please everyone. If it wasn't the tense, it'd be something else. But if you're too worried it's a problem, write in past. If the book reads better in present, write in present. Using both won't make you or the present-tense-haters happy.

I don’t really like first-person, present-tense narrative. It always takes me out of the story a little, as I wonder, “who is this person narrating to, and why?” I’m not saying it’s an instant put-down-the-book, nor that I’ve never encountered a story written this way that I enjoyed (though I cannot think of one, at the moment); only that I find it a less natural way to receive a story.

But, I am just one reader. And I don’t read very much SF/F, or very much YA, which comprise what at least the plurality if not the majority of AW writers write. And those categories tend to have different voices and styles from the sort of thing I do tend to read.

The upshot is, write your story the way it feels most compelling to you, and find beta readers you trust, beta readers who like the genre you’re writing in, to tell you whether it feels compelling to them.

Lakey said:

I don’t really like first-person, present-tense narrative. It always takes me out of the story a little, as I wonder, “who is this person narrating to, and why?”

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Just out of curiosity, why do you think you don't get that question from first-person, past, which is the literal same narrator?

Also, do you not get that question from third person, when the narrator is not named as in most first-person POVs, but is some usually-unnamed person or entity? Or do you just take the author as the narrator, even if it has a distinctive voice that might not be the author's?

Obviously, how you feel when you read it is how you feel, but I just wonder why the narrator seems clear in those cases, especially as to me, the third-person narrator is less clear (but that doesn't bother me when I read unless something else is going wrong).

ETA: I missed the "to" in your question, and I see it now, lol, so the above may seem confusing. Also, I admit that question makes a lot more sense to me than without the "to" But, still, either way, they're narrating to someone. Who is it?

Sage said:

ETA: I missed the "to" in your question, and I see it now, lol, so the above may seem confusing. Also, I admit that question makes a lot more sense to me than without the "to" But, still, either way, they're narrating to someone. Who is it?

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When the story is in the past, it's in the past - it's a lot less inherently strange that a person would reflect on and recount (to a reader) something that happened in the past. Whereas in the present, that person would be experiencing the story, not narrating it, reflecting upon it, describing it to someone else.

Perhaps it would have been clearer if I'd phrased my question as "why on earth is this person narrating their present experience to anyone, rather than just living it?" When I am in the midst of a heightened emotional moment or a violent struggle, I'm not typically also recounting it in carefully crafted sentences with insightful metaphors.

It's all fairly artificial; all crafted narratives are, and so it is rather fine and probably an overstatement to say categorically "I dislike present-tense, first-person because X and like past-tense, first-person because Y." As I said, I wouldn't dismiss a story out of hand because of this one thing. But I tend not to find in such narratives the immediacy that some experience; rather, I experience a heightened sense of detachment, and I can only suppose it's because it makes no sense that a story would be narrated this way, as it happens, by the person it is happening to.


ETA: Here's another thought. Jane Eyre, one of the most effective and affecting first-person narratives I know of, is mostly narrated in the past tense, from the perspective of a decade or so on, after all the turbulent events of the book have settled in their contented end. But there are a few places where the narrative leaps into present tense for a paragraph or two. And in those places, I do experience the immediacy - it's very affecting, and it ups the pace and the urgency of what is happening in those moments.

But it's only a few paragraphs, for effect. I don't think the effect would be nearly as powerful if the narrative were told entirely this way. Indeed I think it would be exhausting. One needs the distance of time and reflection to tell a story about something transformative that happens to oneself.

Once again, only my opinion, and not at all categorical - you all should tell your stories as they seem most powerful to you, and trust your readers to come along on your journey. Also, I'd be delighted to be bowled over by a counterexample, and if it happens, or if I think of one, I promise to come back to this thread and acknowledge it.