Writing in Present Tense

[keyan_bowes]

"We find present tense often pretentious," said the submission guidelines of an admirable new webzine, "and second-person point-of-view always annoying." I gave it the Internet nod... yeah, true.

Uh, wait. Not quite. While my default writing mode is past tense, several of my stories are in present tense. Many of them didn't start that way; I wrote them in past tense, then converted them. And something about that conversion worked; it's true of a disproportionate number of the stories I've sold.

I think rewriting in present tense does three things to my stories:

1.  Often, It makes it shorter, so it reads tighter. Partly, this is because contractions sound more natural in present tense. It doesn't shave off many words, but in flash fiction - one of my favorite forms - every word counts.

2. It makes it more immediate, as though we're walking along with the character as events unfold. My story- voice becomes less formal.

3. It makes it easier to switch between the "now" of the story, and flashbacks to an earlier time-period.

An example from my recently-published story, Lena:

At first, Rajan thinks he’s imagining her.
He’s a four-hour hike from the main gate of the nature sanctuary and not expecting to see anyone except perhaps an occasional villager illegally grazing his scrawny cattle. Certainly not a woman in an impractical silk sari...

In past tense, this becomes:

At first, Rajan thought he was imagining her.
He was a four-hike from the main gate of the nature sanctuary, and was not expecting to see anyone except perhaps an occasional villager, illegally grazing his scrawny cattle. Certainly not a woman in an impractical silk sari...

To me, anyway, the story feels more distant in past tense. And that version has two extra words. If I needed to go into back-story, it would be simpler from first person.

Oh, and on the matter of second person: I haven't written anything very much in second person. But only yesterday, I was reading a neat flash fiction story written as a "Choose your own adventure" - Hard Choices, by Tina Connolly, in Brain Harvest.

Comments

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I remember reading writing books that said new writers shouldn't be using first person. All tenses and all points of view have their place. You just have to know (or figure out) when to use which.

I roleplay online where the roleplay is in 'real-time' (more or less) and we use present tense. So it's really odd when someone comes onto our game with the habit of posing in past tense. In that situation, past tense actually sounds pretentious! Perhaps because it is more distancing. Or maybe it sounds more 'literary'.

I'm used to present tense in my roleplaying and past tense while reading fiction. Either is jarring when it's out of place.

For second person, I think you just have to be very careful about what you're assuming about your reader, aka your audience. For a facile example, the Choose Your Own Adventure type books often presumed you were a young boy. And I know there was a time travel series I loved that must have also been assuming I was white. Because in many situations, only a white boy would've gotten away with the stuff the author had me doing. American Revolution, Civil War, etc.

In some stories, the 'you' isn't really the reader, it's just the audience the narrator is addressing. In which case, the writer can go right ahead and assume all they want about that audience. Addressing a race of intergalactic world travelers with sponges for heads, whatever. Then the writer is inviting the reader to pretend that's who they are for a short while, perhaps. But at least the reader knows the writer knows they're not. Rather than the writer assuming the readers are white males just because they haven't thought twice about it.

Maybe a matter of specificity versus generality. If you're specific about who your 'you' is then the reader can go along with pretending. 'Okay, this isn't me, but I can pretend it is and go along for the ride.' If you're trying to be general or generic, then the reader might get tripped up when suddenly she finds she's carrying a full grown man around on her shoulders or enjoying a delicious BLT.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

Yes, all true.

On second person: The example I mentioned does exactly that - it assumes the reader is a teenage boy. But since it's for comedic effect, it works beautifully.

I also agree with cases where second person is used as a specific, fictional audience. Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life worked like that; the protag is addressing her daughter.

There's yet another use of it: A distancing first person. As it "You'd think they would learn" meaning "I think they'd learn." Carrying off a whole story in that voice would be tough, though.