Tenses in first-person past POV

Kat M

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Well, if I'm writing in first-person past, then it's past tense, right? Right? This should be easy . . . :Headbang:

Here's the scoop: my POV character is telling a story that happened in the past, and part of that includes describing people's habits, skills, characteristics, etc. which is where the tense is tripping me up. For example:

He could do a pretty good cow impression when he got thoughtful.

I don't know whether to use the past tense (the slow chewing incident is occurring in the past) or present tense (the character is still alive by the end of the story and presumably hasn't changed up his mastication habits).

I suspect this is less of a grammar rules case and more of a storytelling craft issue, but I'm new to first POV and lost. Any words of wisdom?

You are magical people and I thank you in advance.
 

MaeZe

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He could do a pretty good cow impression when he got thoughtful.
"Got" isn't the right verb, regardless.

To get is to acquire.
It's not the same as to become.

Do you have a different example or is that a sentence you are trying to use?
 
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Stytch

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So, you may be overthinking this? If it's in past tense, it's all in past tense, probably. There you can make exceptions in individual verbs that might be not in past tense form, but the sentence as a whole has to be clearly past tense. "Yesterday, when I WAS (past tense) walking (present)" but that's also a horrible example because it's passive, I think. "He stood up slowly, wiping his hands on his pants" might be a better example.
Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding. I know in, for instance, Spanish, there's a whole difference tense for stuff that "used to happen regularly" in the past, which is different from "stuff that happened once" in the past. But that differentiation is pretty much non existent in English, as far as "a completely different verb form." Like, we probably have that tense form or whatever it's called in our language, but we don't use, like, an entirely different word to signify the difference.
(sorry, that's a random tangent, but that's what your question reminded me of)
 

RCRichardson

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Well, if I'm writing in first-person past, then it's past tense, right? Right? This should be easy . . . :Headbang:

Here's the scoop: my POV character is telling a story that happened in the past, and part of that includes describing people's habits, skills, characteristics, etc. which is where the tense is tripping me up. For example:

He could do a pretty good cow impression when he got thoughtful.

I don't know whether to use the past tense (the slow chewing incident is occurring in the past) or present tense (the character is still alive by the end of the story and presumably hasn't changed up his mastication habits).

I suspect this is less of a grammar rules case and more of a storytelling craft issue, but I'm new to first POV and lost. Any words of wisdom?

You are magical people and I thank you in advance.

Kat, you probably have a lot more experience at this than I do, but when I write in the first person, I try to allow the narrating character to be human, which means he's not always going to say things the right way. Of course, if he's talking about a character who is no longer alive, I don't think he'd make the mistake of using the present tense ("Joe is a crazy guy"), so I try to catch and correct those errors. But if the character he's talking about is still alive, then it doesn't bother me so much if he sometimes refers to the character in the past tense ("Joe was always kidding around"). That's because the narrator might at that point be speaking in the context of the character's past actions--as I sometimes do when I'm talking about someone whom I have not seen in a while but who is still alive. I suppose it just comes down to whatever is true to the character--or whatever the writer thinks might or might not be annoying to the reader.

What I wrote above might not make much sense, but if it does, then how about explaining it to me? (Ha, ha!)
 

MinaJane

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I write 1st person present, so I may not be the best person to give advice on past tense, but I think that it should all be in past.

I imagine that if, for example, some of the story was told in present and then a whole chunk in past tense because one character is relating a past event to another character, then you could have something like:

He was chewing his salad slowly - he can do a pretty good cow impression when he gets thoughtful.

If nothing links the story to the present present, apart from your characters presumably not being dead, I'd say you stick to past tense.


Again, I'm not an expert, ymmv. :)
 

RCRichardson

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The first book I read that was in the first person present tense was "The Spirit of St. Louis," which was about the first pilot who flew a plane non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. It was written in that tense so that it would have that exciting, "Will he make it?" quality.

However, as he flew the plane, there were passages in which he thought about events that had happened years before, and those passages were written in the first person past tense. It somehow worked out, and years later, when the book was turned into a movie, they kept that same double-tense narrative and it was very effective.
 

Bufty

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I think you're overthinking this, KatM.

If it's a First person POV/narrator telling a story he can use whatever tense he wishes.

It's the same as him or her sitting opposite me and relating whatever it is he or she wishes to relate. Nothing wrong with your sample phrase if that's the way the character speaks.
 
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PiaSophia

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Kat, I wouldn't worry about it too much for now. Just write the story, reread it and see how it works. If it's confusing once you finish the story, you can always change it. Then again, you might only have to change a sentence or two to make it more logical, or a comma here and there. You got this!
 

Kat M

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Thanks, all.

I am overthinking this, especially for a first draft, but my inner editor sometimes won't give me a pass on everything else unless I look into that ONE THING. :Shrug:

Your varied advice (including but not limited to "stop fretting about it and go back to writing") has helped me get past that hump and will be useful when I edit.
 

MaeZe

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I think you're overthinking this, KatM.

If it's a First person POV/narrator telling a story he can use whatever tense he wishes.

It's the same as him or her sitting opposite me and relating whatever it is he or she wishes to relate. Nothing wrong with your sample phrase if that's the way the character speaks.

That makes sense. My book is first person past tense. I have present tense dialogue and direct thoughts. I haven't had an issue with tense so much as reining in my narration so it stays true to first person. It's easy to drift into a narrator's head that isn't my POV character.
 

MaeZe

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I write 1st person present, so I may not be the best person to give advice on past tense, but I think that it should all be in past.

I imagine that if, for example, some of the story was told in present and then a whole chunk in past tense because one character is relating a past event to another character, then you could have something like:

He was chewing his salad slowly - he can do a pretty good cow impression when he gets thoughtful.

If nothing links the story to the present present, apart from your characters presumably not being dead, I'd say you stick to past tense.


Again, I'm not an expert, ymmv. :)
When you change "got" to "gets" it sounds okay to my ear now.
 

Ichabod

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Well, if I'm writing in first-person past, then it's past tense, right? Right? This should be easy . . . :Headbang:

Here's the scoop: my POV character is telling a story that happened in the past, and part of that includes describing people's habits, skills, characteristics, etc. which is where the tense is tripping me up. For example:

He could do a pretty good cow impression when he got thoughtful.

I don't know whether to use the past tense (the slow chewing incident is occurring in the past) or present tense (the character is still alive by the end of the story and presumably hasn't changed up his mastication habits).

I suspect this is less of a grammar rules case and more of a storytelling craft issue, but I'm new to first POV and lost. Any words of wisdom?

You are magical people and I thank you in advance.

Whether you write your story in past or present the reflection of him chewing on a cud is past
I finished a novel last year that I had originally written in present. After some input from a close friend and an editor, I rewrote it in past. Like some have mentioned, if you write in past, you could have inner thoughts in present. I hope that works for you.
 

Chase

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"Bufty ticks all the boxes," Chase said. "Yep, present tense makes good dialog . . . even in past tense prose."