No disrespect at all intended, but I'm struggling to understand the point of view of people who dislike books written in the present tense, or who see its use as trendy, or liken reading it to being hit over the head.

I strongly disagree with the comment that it is not natural to tell a story in the present tense in English. It is perfectly natural. Have you ever told a joke? Or talked about what a bad day you've had? Sometimes you use present tense, sometimes past tense. In both cases, you're telling a story. They are both natural in our language. Do I speak a different language from the rest of you? (Don't answer that!)

We're talking about writing fiction, not newspaper reports. There are very few strict conventions to be adhered to, as I see it. Writers tell stories how they see fit to tell them.

We have a straight choice. We write in the present tense, or we write in the past tense. It's the same as deciding whether to use first person or third person. It's an important decision, and has implications for the whole story, but I can't see how choosing one tense over another would cause such extreme reactions in a reader.

Luisa

Writers tell stories how they see fit to tell them.

Yes, of course they do, and tense is one of the tools in our toolkit. That's what it should be - not an effort to be trendy, any more than past tense should be consciously archaic. The story 'Maura's Arm' that I've just uploaded into the Archive is in present tense, for a very particular reason, and my new novel is a very slippery mixture of the two, sometimes within the same narrative.

Having said all that, I have to say that many present-tense narratives do make me feel after a few pages as if I'm being hit over the head with a teaspoon (i.e., a small, hard tapping). I think it's something to do with the insistent immediacy of it, with the lack of any rhythm of tension and relaxation. Or something. Or maybe it's just that most writers don't handle it properly.

Emma

There are very few strict conventions to be adhered to, as I see it.

I totally agree with this, Luisa, and I hope that you didn't get the impression from my previous postings that I was saying that the present tense shouldn't be used. It can and has been used to great effect but, as a reader, I do find its use irritating in a lot of recent novels. In some cases, it feels like the author is trying to be overly literary (which I think was Derek's point too) and in others it feels unnatural. It's as though there is an attempt to bluff the reader into believing that they are following the story in real-time (is this the impact of reality TV?) but obviously that's not the case as the writer has finished the story. But in any case it is rarely invisible. And personally, I like writing that is invisible, where the style is the servant of the story.

The use of the present tense in a short story is more defensible to me because a short story is, in some ways, like a frozen moment of life but in a novel there is evolution: someone grows or changes as a result of influencing outside factors and in the majority of cases I think the past tense is better suited to that.
But all of this is only my opinion and you may or may not be writing for a reader like me. The writing rule I prefer is that you can do anything you want as long as it works.

Hope that helps to clarify my position.

Ashlinn

This is interesting when you say that present tense is artificial. I think it does add immediacy and is realistic because we all live our lives in the first person present. We don't have an omniscient narrator to 'tell' us what the other person is thinking, what they had for breakfast, how they had sex last night etc… we have to interpret these things from what we see. I am writing my Novel Niagara in the first person present point of view because I feel it adds immediacy and interest to a historical novel. I don't think it is a cop out or easier. If anything I think it is harder. You can only portray things that your main character actually witnesses and you don't have the benefit of saying things like 'Joan thought .... while she looked at him' or such. You have to find creative ways to work in other information that you could otherwise blurt out with your omniscient narrator.

Brian.


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Television, which is the biggest for of storytelling today is pretty well all present POV.

Thanks for this great thread.

I 'knocked up' a short story last night written in the present tense.

The nature of the story meant that I thought this tense was appropriate tense to use - the story is fast paced - I felt any other tense would drag the story out too much, but maybe thats my inadequate writing skills; no really it is!

As an exercise I think I will re-write the peice and see how both pan out.

Thanks!

Mark

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Thanks for this great thread.

I 'knocked up' a short story last night written in the present tense.

The nature of the story meant that I thought this tense was the appropriate tense to use - the story is fast paced - I felt any other tense would drag the story out too much, but maybe thats my inadequate writing skills; no really it is!

As an exercise I think I will re-write the peice and see how both pan out.

Thanks!

Mark

I think it depends on the mood of the story. I like the immediacy of writing in present tense.

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Have just read through this thread, and wold add that I also enjoy reading present tense writing. I find it just as natural as past tense.

My first novel is written the present tense, I can assure it was neither easy or lazy.

I'm not a fan. I like Emma's 'repeated tapping' description. I don't know, I think it can work for short sections, when there's a specific reason for it, or when a sudden change of pace is needed, for example, like old friend says, but I think when whole novels are written in it, it very rarely works. It just doesn't flow for me in the way that past tense can so smoothly and apparently effortlessly.

And I think it's a bit of a myth to say it makes it feel more immediate - in the hands of an accomplished writer the past tense can be absolutely as suspenseful and immediate as anything written in the present.

I can't agree that it's a 'myth' that present tense makes work feel immediate. I think it just can. But it's of course a matetr of preference. Different strokes, etc. I am a lot more likely to put a book down that feels too plodding, which in my opinion is how tales told in past can come across. But that is strictly my opinion.

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Looking at a few books on my shelves, Ali Smith's excellent Hotel World and The Accidental are in present tense, our own Roger Morris's excellent Taking Comfort is in present tense, Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Clare Dudman's 98 Reasons for Being, Susan Elderkin's The Voices, most (if not all) of Donald Barthelme's fiction, etc, all are in present tense. Brilliant writing, and easy to get into (for me anyway).

Perhaps these works share a non-traditional flavour, some being more experimental than others. And perhaps that is what really stands in the way for some readers.

I also suspect the preference of some reader for past tense narrative arises from personal custom; if most work is written in past, then you're used to past, and so it *seems* more natural.

(Okay, I'll shut my trap now.)

I was left feeling gutted after someone responded to a few chapters I uploaded on here saying "It shouldn't be written in the present tense", so I'm relieved to discover that it is at least something that's open to debate. It's interesting to hear that some people find it artificial; a key reason I chose to write (half of it) in the present tense is because it seemed vitally important to the book that the narrator doesn't know what's going to happen to him at the end. To write in the past tense and pretend that the narrator doesn't know what's going to happen struck me as at least as artificial as the device of placing the reader inside the narrator's mind. Also if you're dealing with two timelines, (in this instance) interspersing the narrative present of the storyteller with subplots set in their past it provides an immediate orientation for the reader.

Furthermore, it allows the writer to present minute details, thoughts, reactions that a narrator wouldn't plausibly recount if they were telling a story that had already happened.

Also 'old friend' mentioned "any attempt at this achieves something but there is always a second-opinion feel about his/her words", with regard to developing characters other than the narrator. Is that not true of any first person narrative, though? You're always going to be seeing the world through their eyes, with their take on things - and there are plenty of first person past tense narratives where the storyteller explicitly lies to the reader. It's not something inherent to tense, but to point-of-view. The most ingenious use of this is if the writer is able to have his narrator react in one way to an event but to let the reader understand that something completely different is unfolding.

I gather from reading other threads on the subject that this topic cropped up when Pete Thingy from the Ampersand Agency complained about 'overuse of present tense'. That seems like an odd comment to my mind. If you're writing in the past tense then surely *any* use of present tense narrative is going to be ridiculous; out of place. Similarly if you're writing in the narrator's present then everything that takes place in that thread of the story is going to *have* to be in the present tense. It seems more like a stylistic device that he personally objects to.

it seemed vitally important to the book that the narrator doesn't know what's going to happen to him at the end.

Highlighting the nature of this narrator's narration seems to me an excellent reason for writing in present tense. But the unreflective quality of present-tense writing is a gain in this way, but a loss in other contexts. Present tense tends to read as all surface: the reader doesn't get a sense of the narrator's existence in the past. And after all, it's that past that shapes his/her reactions in the present, and you can get stuck with some very clunky zig-zags to and fro when you find you do need to layer the narrator's existence more than the and...and...and... tendencies of present tense allows.

That said, for the first time, my new novel has quite a lot of present-tense narration. That's because two of the three narrators are in a known and important present, but their narration is deeply concerned with their past, and (nervously, because of the afore-mentioned being-struck-repeatedly-on-the-head-with-a-teaspoon effect) I've gone for present-tense, just so it's easier to keep the reader on track. Still crossing my fingers that it's working, which makes it hard to type.

Emma

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Fundamentally, I don't think writing in present tense is any guarantee of immediacy and vividness, and I'm sure that's what Pete at Ampersand meant; immediacy and vividness are created by the word-by-word quality of the writing. And past-tense narration is just as 'natural'. Pick any half-way decent thriller off the shelf, and I think you'd find past tense doesn't in the least militate against an exciting, contemporary-feeling read. Nor do readers necessarily demand to know where the narrator's standing in relation to the narrative; after all, there needn't necessarily be a narrator at all, in the sense of someone who's a character in the narrative.

Fundamentally, I don't think writing in present tense is any guarantee of immediacy and vividness, and I'm sure that's what Pete at Ampersand meant; immediacy and vividness are created by the word-by-word quality of the writing

Oh I completely agree, and I certainly don't want to sound like I'm suggesting present tense is the only way to go. Just that it seemed like the only option for a particular story. As I say I was just initially suprised (distressed/mortified would be more accurate) at a comment on a piece I wrote that said one shouldn't write in the present.

I dunno. I guess with a lot of stylistic tropes, if you have a good reason for doing them (as opposed to just using them for the sake of it) then that should be enough, although I'm just re-iterating what other people have said. It's interesting, as one of the people who seemed to find it problematic, Emma, that you've started using. Again, I suppose that just underlines it as something to be used when appropriate. I recently started a new project in third person/ past tense because for this book I find it a lot easier to move around a large cast of characters in that way.

I was just initially suprised (distressed/mortified would be more accurate) at a comment on a piece I wrote that said one shouldn't write in the present.

Hemingway said that one of the things a writer needs is a 100% reliable bullshit detector, and I think we each need to aim our detectors at others' comments as well as our own writing. You need to take criticism on board of course, but developing the instinct to judge when it's not right, and the confidence to throw it back into the sea, takes experience.

Like you, I have used present tense for short fiction, including one of my most successful stories, when I was after that slightly dreamlike moment-in-time feeling that some short fiction needs. It's probably true in this novel, too, that the present-tense passages sometimes benefit from that effect. Tense is one of those writing decisions which are so difficult - early, hugely important, and very hard to make rules about.

I recently started a new project in third person/ past tense because for this book I find it a lot easier to move around a large cast of characters in that way.

That makes a lot of sense. I do think that present tense can be less flexible for plotting and structuring and less fluent in tone than past, and the same is often true for third person versus first. As far as I'm concerned writers should write how and what they want to write - no 'should's necessary - but there is a reason for the majority of prose fiction having been written in third person/past tense, and I'm sure this flexibility is part of it.

Emma

an example of the present tense used well would be Mr Phillips by John Lanchester... great book; as i lay dying by faulkner would be another, written about 80 years ago...

i liked the bradbury example chris put up, i was following the narrator around everywhere...

sam

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and faulkner used multiple points of view too...

I must admit I couldn't get on with Mr Lanchester at all, and the un-reflective un-layeredness of feeling of present tense definitely had something to do with it - I've rarely tried to read anything so uninvolving.

Emma