Writing a Novel in Present Tense

Present tense is perfectly fine. If it works for your book, great!

Just note that some genres are stylistically more conservative than others, and some readers in those genres who are prejudiced against present tense narratives just because. A little market research will tell you if that might be a concern for your book or not.

What is your reason for using multiple tenses, flashbacks and sub-flashbacks, and other fancy techniques? If you can't put into words why these things are making your story better, you might want to stick to more traditional techniques.

Note: "It feels right" doesn't always produce the best results.

In these days of indie publishing you may use whatever tense suits your style.

But if you plan to sub this to the commercial market and want to hook an agent it will be a very hard sell. One of my friends penned this, explaining the process:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/pn-e...nt-tense-and-your-first-sale/295178347841124/

Gillhoughly said:

In these days of indie publishing you may use whatever tense suits your style.

But if you plan to sub this to the commercial market and want to hook an agent it will be a very hard sell. One of my friends penned this, explaining the process:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/pn-e...nt-tense-and-your-first-sale/295178347841124/

Click to expand...

It completely depends on the genre though. Using the present tense is pretty much accepted in crime/thriller/psychological suspense and also YA. They are plenty of debuts in present tense that I have hooked agents and been published for the commercial market and have been bestsellers so not very hard to sell for the correct genre. A few recent examples:

AJ Finn's The Woman in the Window
Clare Empson's Him
Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party
Rory Power's The Wilder Girl
Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling
Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train
Laura Marshall's Friend Request
Angie Thomas The Hate You Give

Gillhoughly said:

In these days of indie publishing you may use whatever tense suits your style.

But if you plan to sub this to the commercial market and want to hook an agent it will be a very hard sell. One of my friends penned this, explaining the process:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/pn-e...nt-tense-and-your-first-sale/295178347841124/

Click to expand...

All of us writing in present tense:

Gillhoughly said:

In these days of indie publishing you may use whatever tense suits your style.

But if you plan to sub this to the commercial market and want to hook an agent it will be a very hard sell. One of my friends penned this, explaining the process:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/pn-e...nt-tense-and-your-first-sale/295178347841124/

Click to expand...

Whaaa?? That is just bizarre.

Elle. said:

It completely depends on the genre though. Using the present tense is pretty much accepted in crime/thriller/psychological suspense and also YA. They are plenty of debuts in present tense that I have hooked agents and been published for the commercial market and have been bestsellers so not very hard to sell for the correct genre. A few recent examples:

AJ Finn's The Woman in the Window
Clare Empson's Him
Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party
Rory Power's The Wilder Girl
Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling
Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train
Laura Marshall's Friend Request
Angie Thomas The Hate You Give

Click to expand...

^^This. A great list of successful debuts in present tense.

With respect, I think “don’t write in present tense” is outdated advice. There are way too many successful debuts written in present tense for them to be an anomaly.

Putputt said:

With respect, I think “don’t write in present tense” is outdated advice. There are way too many successful debuts written in present tense for them to be an anomaly.

Click to expand...

As has been stated several times in this thread, it varies a lot between genres. Some are much more conservative than others. Frex, in some corners of SFF and romance present tense narrative is still regarded as a questionable novelty, & readers still give it the stink-eye.

benbenberi said:

As has been stated several times in this thread, it varies a lot between genres. Some are much more conservative than others. Frex, in some corners of SFF and romance present tense narrative is still regarded as a questionable novelty, & readers still give it the stink-eye.

Click to expand...

Hang on. Gillhoughly didn't say anything like "preferences vary between categories and genres, so maybe check current trends before deciding on a tense." He gave blanket advice (here and elsewhere) of (paraphrasing) "it's almost impossible to get published as a debut using present tense so you should write in conventional past tense." Which is patently untrue.

/returns to lurking

be frank said:

Hang on. Gillhoughly didn't say anything like "preferences vary between categories and genres, so maybe check current trends before deciding on a tense." He gave blanket advice (here and elsewhere) of (paraphrasing) "it's almost impossible to get published as a debut using present tense so you should write in conventional past tense." Which is patently untrue.

/returns to lurking

Click to expand...

^^ Yep. Apologies for not being clear. I wasn’t refuting that there may be preferences within different genres, just the blanket statement that present tense is bad and will screw your chances with agents, which is simply wrong.

I wrote a lit fiction/magic realism mss a few years back in present tense. Didn't result in an offer, but I did have a really good request rate based on query/opening pages, which were clearly in present. I would think if it were an absolute nope-don't-do-it because of the tense, I wouldn't have received those requests.

While there are plenty of present tense novels out there, interestingly several of the most recent ones I've read are mixed past and present. At least in historical, I see present tense quite a bit. Frequently, it's used as part of a framing device or with dual narratives. Those books came from somewhere, so it doesn't seem that present tense is a definite nope with agents or editors.

Present does seem to lend itself to a more "literary" tone.

As a side note, (and not a very important one except possibly to screenwriters trying to write a novel) here's where it has been a problem in the excerpts I've seen:

When someone trained in screenwriting first tries to pen a novel, (tap a novel?), it can, in my experience, read like a screenplay.

Emily enters. "I need the car."
Mary sets her newspaper down. "After last time? I don't think so."

A local guy who finds himself in this situation is working through his story, bit by bit, to 'novelize' the screenplay feel out of it. Putting it in past tense did make a huge difference in his case; it wasn't enough, but it helped and he's getting there.

I see plenty of present tense out there in the world as well (Matt Haig being one fave author of mine who dances all over the place in his narrative style from one book to the next). I don't pay attention to whether something is debut or not.

I think that's not how it would be written.

Winter comes and I book a trip to Paris.

It could be that any difficulty in writing the tense properly leads some agents to more readily reject such manuscripts; i have no idea.

railroad said:

There is something logically inconsistent about it. How can time move forward and be in present tense at the same time? For example, "The following winter I book a trip to Paris."

Click to expand...

This is actually a mix of future and present tense. Patty's example is more consistent.

Patty said:

It could be that any difficulty in writing the tense properly leads some agents to more readily reject such manuscripts; i have no idea.

Click to expand...

In fairness, it is pretty uncommon, although hardly unknown.

I do think present is less tolerant of things like filtering and POV distance, which makes it harder to pull off (at least it has been for me!).

lizmonster said:

I do think present is less tolerant of things like filtering and POV distance, which makes it harder to pull off (at least it has been for me!).

Click to expand...

^^^ THIS.

Filtering is more natural to pull off in the past tense because the POV character had the possibility of reflection and hindsight and looking back at things and feeling. But in the present moment, it's pretty much all action so no time to reflect, hence harder to pull off.

railroad said:

Well what I had planned is something along the lines of: "I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to me long ago blah blah blah" and then a few asterisks and then jump into present tense. "It's 8 am on such and such date and this is happening blah blah blah". So the reader is being asked to suspend disbelief somewhat, as while it is written in present tense it is obviously something that is not happening in the present time. If that makes any sense. Or I could just abandon the whole idea. I don't know. I've been working on this for nine years and I can't get it right . . . .

Click to expand...

So this sounds like a 4th wall break - your narrator is speaking directly to the reader? Then I think what you've got above works.