I'd suggest that you need to decide what you might call your main narrative tense, for the novel. Traditionally, that's past tense, but you'll see a lot more writing in present tense these days.

Once you've decided which you're basically working in, you might find that the other works well for things which are rather separate, stand-alone element: a chunk of memory, a dream, a self-contained flashback, an interlude. If your first chapter is definitely a different sort of element from the rest of the story, then it might well work as you've suggested it.

What's very hard to pull off is bobbing about writing in whatever tense occurs to you at any given scene, with no real reason for the change of the sort I've been outlining. Unless the writer's really experience, the chances are it'll just be confusing.

(I did blog about this a while ago here, although the discussion moves in a rather different direction from your original question.)

Emma

Sounds like your first chapter would work better as a Prologue. You can do all sorts of things in a prologue which you wouldn't do in the rest of the novel.

If you ever decide to extend the tense switches into the novel then it's worth checking out Jennifer Donnelly's A Gathering Light to see how another author does it.


- NaomM

Maggie O'Farrell did it too in After You'd Gone.

I mix tenses a lot.

Each scene is written in a POV of a different characeter and each character has a tense that best reflects them and their circumstances.

So in the WIP the MC is written in first person present tense, as he is in danger for a large proportion of the book and is racing against time. I felt first person present best suited that breathlessness I'm trying to create.

Another character who is trying to solve various mysteries and save the MC is written in thrid person, past tense. He needs to be more analytical as a member of the security forces and think before he acts.

There's also a third person, present tense character who has autism, and I felt that was the ONLY way I could sum him up. He sees himself in the third person and can only deal with what is happening at any given moment and process it.

I've done this in all my books and I've never had an editor or reader complain about the chopping and changing.Indeed in book one the only person in present tense was the baddie, and still no one guessed. I used the differing tenses to make her seem other iyswim.

I think it's one of those invisibile writerly things to many readers.

What I've never done...yet...is change the tense or POV of the same character within the book, though I don't see why you shouldn't. It could work well (though a writer would need more skill) to convey the differing moods of a character.
HBx

<Added>

I'd also say, that I've read lots of crime books where the central part of the story is writtn in past tense, yet, perversly, the past narrative woven through to make us understand the context of the crime, is written in present tense.

It works very well as a signifier that what has gone before is still wholly relevant, indeed is the driving factor in current action.

Then again, I am a structure geek, and possibly overthink the entire thing lol.

Oh and enough already with the 'I'm not a technician.'

Yes you are.

You are already considering the effects of tdifferent techniques.

I've never done a course in my life and the only How To book I've read is Story by Robert McKee.
Structure is somehting you pick up by reading imho. You read a book and think wow, I loved the way that was done. Or bloody hell, that made everything more complicated than need be.

HBx