My friend who works in the library system says most people pay little attention to tense or POV when they are reading. Was the American a writer and the Brits just readers? Personally I don't usually notice. I have done now but only since I started writing. My first book was present tense because it was in the head of a seventeen year old boy it plain works better - past tense doesn't portray the required urgency and the asides are flat less amusing. I suggested writing a third person past tense for my next book and got complaints from some of my readers about it not working as well for the real in your head stuff. What I have found is that writing present tense is great but when I am in the editing stage I hate reading past tense writing it is so flat in comparison. However maybe the reverse happens with those that write past tense.
It can be too fast paced. Something I had to watch out for was ways to slow it down. Using a passive voice to create a newsreel in the characters head has helped. Also because it is first person it helps with interaction. I think with my first my biggest concern had been the amount of action - was there too much? I pulled it back and gave time for reflection and told it mostly through interaction with other people. There are a few books where I have found myself catching my breath with the story.
One American and two Brits doesn't make for a very conclusive sample. My feeling is that Americans and Brits tend to get wound up by different things. A lot of things that we Brits think of as stylistic choices many Americans seem to see as hard-and-fast rules (I blame Strunk & White!) But try to slip in anything that is -- rightly or wrongly -- perceived as an Americanism on this side of the Atlantic and there will be stern letters to the publishers! I wouldn't call A Handmaid's Tale "stream of consciousness". It's essentially a diary format (although we discover at the end that it's not so simple). Joyce's Ulysses is the sort of thing I think of as "stream of consciousness". Between you and the American editor you've done the right thing. You've tried it both ways, and chosen the one that works best. Badly done, narrative present can be rather wearing (badly done, anything can be rather wearing, but narrative present seems to fall into that particularly easily). But sometimes it is certainly the right choice.[/QUOTE]
Yes perhaps it was just because the American was a writer and the Brits I gave it to were readers. I agree with you not a large sample but also note that the American writer seemed to believe it was a hard and fast rule. As for the pace it is one of the reasons I prefered first person, it did seem for me very flat and dull in third person past. Also loving film I think I was influenced that when action is occurring it is always present tense in film. If it is introduced correctly you still know where you are in time. Funnilly enough someone released a book in a similar genre to mine long after I had started writing. When I edited I found that because she is a well respected journalist and author I was more confident about beginning chapters with phrases such as "I am in the Bellagio admiring the beautiful waitress as she..." because I have seen her write in a similar fashion. The important things are that in fiction you have a good story to tell and that if you are writing non-fiction whatever you have to say should be interesting and engaging. Tense is the least of your worries.
Only because they don't do it enough. The homogeneity of mainstream fiction is producing lazy readers.
No, I think that the narrative present is inherently more tiring to read because it's so much harder to control the pace. Practice at reading isn't going to change that. Whether you're a couch potato or an Olympic athlete, sprinting to the shops is still more tiring than walking. And if you think mainstream fiction is homogeneous, maybe you're not reading enough! I've recently read a mainstream novel written with multiple narrators entirely in 2nd person narrative present [1], and a while ago read one in which one of the two narrator voices was entirely in fragments. Experimentation <em>is</em> mainstream now. But there's good reason for most writers settling on 1st or 3rd person past tense with properly formed sentences: it works well. [1] Arguably a single narrator casting the reader into multiple roles.
It's no more difficult to pace a novel in the present tense than in past. There seems to be some idea that the present tense precludes any change in pace or time, which is utterly misguided. Anything pacing-wise that can be done in past tense can be done in present. As to the second question, you only need to look at the knee-jerk reactions of some readers on this forum to questions of POV and tense to see how little experimentation is tolerated. The arbitrary default is third person past tense, and I don't see any reason to perpetuate the myth that this mode of story-telling is inherently superior to any other.
I'm not suggesting that any mode is superior to any other. Historical present <em>does</em> give particular problems of pacing, whatever you say, but it has the advantage of immediacy. It also used to have the advantage of novelty (I think that's what some call "freshness"), but it's so heavily used nowadays that I think it's lost that. The point is that it's a trade-off, a compromise, and so is any other style. The author needs to choose the compromise that best suits their particular task. As I said, there's a reason 1st & 3rd person past tense are so widely used: it's because they're general purpose compromises that can almost always be made to work well enough. Other approaches -- 2nd person narrative, historical present, even future, are specialist approaches that might give a great lift to your particular piece of writing, but more often they'll seem affected at best, unreadable at worst. Of course, the unreadable stuff doesn't usually get published, so we only see the stuff where it more-or-less works. And because we tend only to see stuff where it works better than 1st or 3rd person past would have done, it's all to easy to think that because it's better there it would be better everywhere. It's much the same reason as most cars on the road being standard saloons. The car manufacturers could make cars in vintage car or "super-car" shapes shapes to a budget, but the demand isn't their because they're impractical for most purposes. But vintage cars and super-cars cars are just the right thing in their respective places (vintage car rallies and "Top Gear", as far as I can tell). Is a Lamborghini Sesto Elemento "better" than a Nissan Micra? Well, the look, performance and build standard of the Lamborghini are far better then the Nissan -- but I know which I'd prefer for doing my shopping -- the Lamborghini would probably ground on the speed hump at the entrance to the supermarket!
Having had my head buried in present tense for nearly a year - it isn't anymore difficult but it is different. Having broken one 'rule' to get it to work well I chose to break other rules. I deliberatly chose it for my seventeen year old boy because the flow and speed was different and it suited his personality better. In past tense the book would have been flat. However a number of writers who have reviewed have said until they looked back they didn't notice it was present tense which was a great compliment. Using middle voice in places has helped - passive voice etc (some people object but most don't notice) - making huge amount of use of sitting on a sofa talking. Things happening in sleep etc. It has taken a whole new look to get it working for a hundred and thirty year old character. He would have been much easier to write in past tense, it would slow his thoughts down naturally. Give him a wiser feel. However again I decided for in your head thoughts past tense doesn't flow as well. Also it has allowed a younger fresher feel to the man - he stagnated a bit in past tense. If you write unaware of the advantages/disadvantages of the POV and tense it can trip you up. I have loved using first person and present tense to its full advantage, finding ways to get round the disadvantages etc There is nothing worse than a book that works like the downhill of the rollercoaster with no uphills.
I don't mind present tense (or any other tense or POV), so long as the author has done it well. I agree with arron, above, that it is no more difficult to control a story's pace in present tense. I've heard this said many times but I don't see it. Maybe someone could post a short excerpt of a passage written in past tense in which they think the pacing couldn't be achieved in present tense.
There was a piece of writing on here need to find it lol I remember whilst reviewing, feeling it needed to be moved from past to present tense. It was too slow in past tense. It was about a person dying from the point of view of one of the nursing staff. Past tense didn't achieve the same urgency as present tense would allow. Had it been told from the point of view of the patient then I think present tense would have been a bit crass - it would have made it too urgent and too close. Sometimes that distance helps with the emotion. It was a first person piece. I think the tense has a greater impact on first person writing than third person. However you are right I can think of far more pieces that would benefit moving from past to present than from present to past.
The present Tense or Past Tense I read many books that are in the past tense, and don't realize any books in the present tense. However, I just completed my first novel, which is in the present tense. I always ask myself if that is a good idea or not. I am about to start on the second sequel to the first novel I completed, but I am not sure if that one should be in the present tense or not. Ah, something that I want to point out is that if some of you heard R Kelly's Video (which I believe that he wrote a short story or novel about it before he made it into a video), is Trapped in the Closet. That video is in the present tense. I'm not sure if he wrote a story about it first before making a video about it. However, if he did, I'm assuming that the novel/story for it is in the present tense, since the 22 chapters of the video for it is. Other than this, I rarely see novels that are written in the present tense. Something that I am realizing about writing in the present tense is that I have more dialogue in it than narration. I mean, my first line of narration is written like this: "It's afternoon, where I'm in California graduating from high school. I can hear the Pomp and Circumstances song as I walk up the aisle. I walk until someone trips over me. Getting back up, I am finally reaching the speaker while he calls my name." The above line is what I wrote in the present tense instead of the past tense.
This what I noticed too my stories contain a huge amount of dialogue. In fact they all begin with dialogue. There are huge advantages to present tense there were elements of my story past tense couldn't have allowed to happen in the same way. My spy character is the classic example - present tense allowed me to hide him effectively for a whole book in ways past tense wouldn't have accomplished without cheating the reader.
I'm surprised you couldn't have done that with POV. That's not to say that present tense was the wrong choice for your book, but tense seems to me to be a strange way to restrict information.
I used both the POV and the tense to full advantage with it lol - it is hard to explain a lot of my writing comes from the gut as well as the head. POV and tense affect the feel of the novel. It does alter and change the pace - you have the option with present tense to move much faster over a scene successfully. Whilst I could have achieved Nate in past tense it would not have been as successful. I did such a good job not even I knew who he was by the end of the book lol It was only when I started writing a second book from POV of his lover I had to uncover him.
Could you explain this all a bit? It seems connected and interesting, but not sure exactly what you mean or how you're doing this. Thanks
