Do not mistake tense in narrative voice with grammatical tense. The latter applies only to individual sentences. However, the narrative tense for a piece of writing is consistent throughout (or should be), and is a significant decision. If you don't understand why a definite line should be drawn, you don't understand narrative tense. And it's important that you do.
I can guess the title of your novel..... Dream Merchant.... and it'll be about a guy's sexual fantasies ... about what he'll do if &*%$#@*&
Narrative tense: determins whether the work is told in past, present or future. it combines with narrative pov and voice to depict mode of a narrative. Mode relates to the way a message is represented: speech sounds, writing, sign language etc. Which in a lot of ways also ties into choice of medium: the way the written word can then be written on paper, slate etc... Choices in any will affect the way the words are presented and the effect it has on an audience...and so on... Just because someone questions something, it doesn't mean they're ignorant of what's being discussed, Cog. Some authors make conscious decision to switch narrative as well as grammatical tense.
I see this said all the time here, and I don't really understand the point. The only thing that contains any objective facts here is the message "I personally do not care for it." If an author-to-be shares this opinion and doesn't care for present-tense narrative, then of course they're not going to use it. If they feel they'd like to give it a try, then of course they're going to do their best and thus prove you wrong. But if they're inexperienced, such words might discourage them from even trying. But I guess what's being said here is kinda pointless, too, by my own logic, since a real artist will do whatever seems to be in the project's best interest anyway, regardless of what people say. So I'll shut up now.
I personally don't care what tense a novel is written in, nor do I care what person/point-of-view a novel is written in, as long as it's a good story written well and it engages me. One of my favorite thriller novel authors is Brad Meltzer, and some of his novels were written in the present tense. They're fast-paced, exciting, roller coaster rides of suspense. His characters are fun and likable and his stories captivate the imagination. One example is The Zero Game. Another is The Millionaires. Another is The First Counsel. Charlie
Well, the jokes on me. I just went back to revisit a book I enjoyed when I was younger, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Lo and behold... The damn thing is written in first person present tense... Ugh! Oh well... This is one of those battles I've decided I won't win. Those of you who write in the present tense, go right on ahead. Plenty of literary journals publish it, so you won't have trouble finding a home for it.
Ha ha! Thanks for the permission. I was like, "Damn, I'm 7/8ths of the way done this present-tense novel, but now this guy says I can't write this way!" Jay kay, brah. It's cool you've discovered (or re-discovered?) another thing in the world that's capable of bringing you enjoyment.
Still, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that present tense narration so rarely works well. Yes, it can be done, but you really need to be a skilled writer to pull it off. Unless, of course, you prefer to do everything the hard way.
I don't think there's a tense that you can write in that you can hide it if you're a bad writer. I think we need to be highly skilled no matter what tense you write in. I don't think there's an "easy" tense. (A bad writer, often, is just a good writer with less experience. So if you're not highly skilled, the way to become highly skilled is to follow three steps: Write, Write and Write! When you're not writing, you might want to read as well...) I generally write in the third-person limited past tense, but I think I was just wired that way, and I just naturally gravitated to that. (My fiction anyway... nonfiction is different.) May be it's what works best for my particular stories, or may be it's just me. I don't know. I felt compelled to write my stories that way, and that's the way I wrote them. Whether I'm highly skilled or a poor writer, from my own point of view, tends to depend where I am on the manic-depressive cycle of self-assessment of my work. Folks in the writing groups (some of whom can be very discerning) seem to like my writing. I have a first person short story in the early stages of development. This particular story just seemed geared for it. It will be my first... but the story practically made the choice for me. It almost seems instinctual, to know what tense and viewpoint goes with what story. I haven't tried present tense yet, but I'm not ruling it out either. I have a feeling that when I have a particular story that goes with present tense, I'll know it. I suspect that most writers (whether beginning or experienced) will feel what tense and viewpoint is right for their stories. If you (anyone) are unsure of your choices of tenses or viewpoint, you may want to try experimenting with different methods to see what works for you. You may even want to share samples with a writing group and see what others think of your writing and your story. It may even be, if you think that you have a tense or viewpoint issue, that you really have a different issue, and you're blaming viewpoint or tense when it's something else that's having a bad effect on your writing. It's all good practice and training, I think, in becoming that highly skilled writer, to just write, write, write. If it turns out your story would do better with a different tense or viewpoint, you at least have the experience of writing what you did, and it will help you write better the next time. Naturally, when all else fails, write in second person future tense, alternating paragraphs with fourth person present perfect. There's also a great section in one of the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy Books that talks about time travel stories and the verb-tense problems of talking about things that already happened to you in the future. Charlie
No, but there are approaches that are certainly much harder to succeed in than others. Breaking into the market is hard enough without stacking the deck against yourself. When I spoke of a skilled writer, I was talking about far more skill than the threshold to get published. It's sheer arrogance on the part of new writers to assume they are skilled enough to not only get published, but to do so while breaking conventions. The rejection piles are filled with pieces by writers who know they can outwrite every author on the New York Times Bestseller List. There's a difference between bold confidence and rash arrogance.
May be you're right on that. I just don't think that tense or viewpoint are things to sweat about. I think the best way a beginning writer can stack the deck against himself is to sit for hours staring at a keyboard trying to decide what tense and viewpoint to write his story in. Better that he start typing and get the story on the page. You can always go back and change the tense or viewpoint, well before you hand it to any editor or publisher. It's all a good training experience. My humble opinion. Charlie
Are you serious? You can, if you consider a total rewrite a viable option. It doesn't take hours to decide. Your two most viable choices are third person past tense and first person past tense. Of the two, third person past tense is much more flexible, and should be your default choice. The necessary criteria for the more difficult first person past tense are pretty straightforward to check.
That there is so much resistance to the use of the present tense seems to be a good reason to be very wary about using it. Add to that the fact that it is tougher to “pull it off” and I think there is considerable weight to the “why make things harder for yourself” type of argument. Whether the resistance is justified or unjustified seems to somewhat miss the point: the dislike exists. Let’s say you are about to start a new job and you hear that the boss hates blue ties. Surely it’s easier not to wear a blue tie? Why do things the hard way?
Yeah, only when you're a hugely successful writer, big pimpin' in a limo with hot babes and gold chains and money flyin' all around for some reason, should you even think about breaking conventions. There's a lot of resistance to trespassing naked on the property of government officials, too, but that doesn't stop me. If all your friends were sitting around not jumping off bridges, would you join them? Hell no! Let them rot in their cages, I'm jumpin'.
I'm afraid that breaking a rule just to break it, just because others say don't, is a bit of a juvenile attitude. I like to breaks rules when I can articulate exactly why I think they need to be broken. "Because it's a rule" or "because the grown-ups told me not" is not an adequate excuse.
Of course a total rewrite is viable. Sometimes it's a blessing. I lost my entire book and was forced to re-write. In retrospect, I'm glad it happened. I believe there are famous stories of authors who have had to do, or have done, the same thing. I do total re-writes of chapters quite often. I decide I don't like the viewpoint I originally chose, or I have a major change I want to make in the plot... and I rewrite! Second and third drafts often turn out to be total re-writes, and, often, that too, is a blessing. Anything can be fixed. The important thing in first draft is that you get your story down. In second draft, you can change viewpoint, change plot, yes, even change tense--anything can be changed, and any problem can be fixed. When the last draft of my novel is finished, I don't think very many words will be the same. That's what re-drafting is for: fixing things, getting it right, even if you change settings, characters. You can change a winter storm scene to a summer beach scene, if that works better for your story. Ultimately, the more you write, the better you'll get at writing. Re-writes are valuable in making us better writers. If you write, you write. You don't just say, "Re-write? All those pages? That's way too much. Too many pages. Too hard." You just write. Are you serious--asking me if I'm serious? Is there? I'll be honest, I'm a reader. I've read a number of books written in present tense... books that were terrific. Those authors, apparently, didn't get resisted. Have you written anything in present tense and had it rejected for that reason? Who's resisting? You say "the dislike exists." Who dislikes? The first time I heard of someone disliking a tense was when I read this thread. I recommend Brad Melzer's books to people all the time. I've never heard anyone say, "Read it. Didn't like it. Bad verb tense." Is it tougher? I would say if someone instinctively thinks that a particular story needs to be in a particular tense, it would be tougher to do it the other way. I think that what's tough for me might be easy for you, and what's easy for you might be tough for me. When Brad Meltzer (he's the one who stands out in my mind) wrote several of his novels in present tense, I loved what I read! I'm imagining if there were a time machine, and someone went back and told a young Brad Meltzer, "you shouldn't write in present tense!" how impoverished we would be in not having those terrific books, and that this advice might be preventing the future Brad Meltzers from writing them. I think a story will dictate things like tense and viewpoint, and a writer will instinctively know what will work... and that practice in writing is what makes a person a great writer... not something as artificial and arbitrary as viewpoint or tense. (Although we need to know those choices... and we need to use them consistantly and correctly within a particular work, which is why discussions of viewpoint and tense are important.) If writing were that simple (correct tense + correct viewpoint + correct word usage = good novel) computer programs could be written to write novels for us and we wouldn't need writers who actually use their brains, make decisions and take chances instead of letting some formula tell them "this is right" and "this is wrong" when experience tells us there are terrific novels written using a wide variety of methods, and when each of us has our own instinct and ideas on what would work for our novel... Just because I write in third-person limited past tense doesn't mean Brad Meltzer shouldn't write in third-person limited present tense and Dean Koontz shouldn't write in first-person limited past and Stephen King shouldn't write in third-person omniscient. You have to be skilled no matter which you choose, but you need to make the decision. There's no formula to say the "right" tense or the "right" viewpoint. There will be resistance no matter which you choose. That's called "competition." The only way to overcome resistance is to write a novel that's better than the best, and the only way to do that is practice, practice, practice. Your novel has to blow away the competition. Your novel has to be entertaining, engaging, draw the reader in. It has to be consistent. It has to be well written. It doesn't have to be in this tense or that tense, or in this viewpoint or that viewpoint, to do those things. Charlie
"Excuse" is a curious word to use here. When it comes to his work, an artist is God. He doesn't need an excuse. I don't believe I've seen anyone in this discussion advocating "breaking a rule just to break it," but then I didn't think we were discussing "rules" either, so what do I know? QFmfT. Waaaaaa!
If you really want to become a published author, then yes you should probably stick to the past tense- the much preferred tense to read. However, the plain truth is that you are terrible at writing as seen by the public and shouldn't give two seconds of a thought as to which tense you write in; write what comes naturally and fits best.
