As a request from one of my readers, I'm writing my next story from a first person POV. The problem I have is that the main character is 5 years old. My understanding of people of that age is that they have a limited understanding of past and present tenses, and they would flip back and forth between the two when telling a story. When an adult does that, it's seen as unprofessional. Should I try to write it with little regard for keeping the tense consistent, or would it feel more authentic to have it change every now and then? For example: The noise was very loud. I looked all around, but I didn't find a lion or a tiger or even a cheater. Then I looked again; it was Mummy snoring! I had to cover my mouth to stop laughing, but nobody woke up so I tip-toed to the top of the stairs. I checked the time on John's phone; 11:52. It won't be long 'til Santa gets here! When Mummy snores, I go down two steps. She's so loud, nobody can hear the stairs creaking under my feet. Now I know the vocabulary is quite narrow and some of the words are wrong (I've used "cheater" instead of "cheetah"), but would it be accepted as a child's POV or simply disregarded as bad writing?
I think I'd probably keep the tense consistent, but you can play with sentence structure, word choice, faulty conjugations, and other such things to give it the sense that a child is speaking. You might go to Amazon and look at the samples of some of the Junie B. Jones books. They've been very successful and feature a protagonist who starts in kindergarten and then goes to first grade in later books. You can see how the author uses the first person POV: EDIT: Geez. Site won't even let me link to a book. Here: www(.)amazon(.)com/Junie-Joness-First-Boxed-Books/dp/0375813616 Just take the parentheses out of the URL. Lame
Stick to one tense. Flipping back and forth is confusing because with narrative you could be talking about flashbacks or immediate thoughts, for all I know, and it would just make it hard to follow. And then I'd start wondering if you knew what you were doing, and that's never a good question for a reader to ask!
Room is written from a first-person POV, five year old boy. He has some trouble with words but it's done in a way that reminds you he's a child without being grating (and I'm very easily grated by non-standard SPAG ). You might want to check it out. In your example, the switching actually doesn't bother me at all. I can feel the childish excitement and the jumbling of words. I would stick with correct spellings though (cheetah) since a five year old wouldn't be able to spell either version.
I think that's the kind of think Jack did in Room - it's been a few years since I read it. Usually it would really bug me but maybe I'm more forgiving for a child protagonist? If @ToeKneeBlack's example was from an adult character I'd probably be all KILL IT NOW.
Yeah, doesn't bother me from a child character. My daughter loved those books when she was little, and she found that to be a humorous part of the books (she always knew when Junie was saying something incorrectly).
The tense switching would absolutely bother me. I would suggest that you just stick with past tense--I doubt that the reader is going to find that unrealistic.
Thanks for the feedback and recommendations everyone, I'll go back over what I've started and fix it.
