LOL, well that's alright then!

Yes, I hate Marmite and I find present tense hard to read at length, partly because of exactly the breathless and-and-and effect which Colin harnesses beautifully in his example. I think it works when it's harnessed properly like that: it doesn't work when the writer thinks it'll do the job for him/her of building proper narrative tension. If you really want that, fine, but often, actually, it just means there's no variation of pace, or any sense of the narrator's position in relation to the events they're narrating.

Helen Dunmore uses it a lot, and she does it so well I can almost forgive her. Two out of three strands of my WiP are present tense, but there's a lot of slithering about in time and flashbacks. I needed to make the distinction clear between the past and the don't-know-where-we're-going-next present which the past is shaping.

Emma

Susieangela, what did strike me when I read the excerpt in WF was that it seemed surprising to have a male vp character (as well as a female one) in a book primarily about someone going through the menopause, and named to emphasise that.

Not sure exactly why it seemed strange to me. Perhaps because menopause is something 'very female', which often seems quite private and kept in the female domain? I'm not sure.

However, perhaps you have used the male character to give a fantastic male viewpoint on what is happening to the main female character, and perhaps that works really well - I can't tell without reading the whole thing.

I can say that the bit I read was very well written and very engaging, so if you've got that right, I feel inclined to trust your judgement on the other...

Deb

Deb, I've taken a bit of a chance here (which could provoke another thread!). The extract you read comes two-thirds of the way through the novel. The first two-thirds are about two 50 year old women, one of whom is going through the menopause. I alternate between their viewpoints up until this point. Pete is a catalyst for one of the women's transformation, and she is a catalyst for his. Does this make any sense at all?!