Present tense is the worst tense

Hello all,

So I've been trying to finish a short story personal exercise that is written as a series of journal entries (first person). By nature of a journal, the events described in the journal are past tense. However, would the musings of the journal author be in the present tense or the past tense? Very simplified examples:

"I won't go with you," Mary said.
She is so unreasonable.

or

We watched as he got in his car.
He is certainly very old. It is such a shame for him to be alone.

Vs typical past tense style:

"I won't go with you," Mary said.
She was so unreasonable.

or

We watched as he got in his car.
He was certainly very old. It was such a shame for him to be alone.

I have researched this and it appears that it is acceptable to change tense to indicate what a character is thinking in the present about a past action. But I have never attempted this particular style. And I've seen different techniques from different published authors. I think both examples could be technically correct? But perhaps convey a slightly different meaning.

This was meant to be an interesting exercise but I have found myself to be surprisingly inflexible with tense changes. I do enjoy the effect present tense has on my writing style, particularly the combination of present tense and first person. I could switch entirely to present tense, although I'm not sure it would make sense with the journal writing aspect.

Anyway. Am I making this too complicated? I could, of course, just surrender and revert to past tense entirely.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts

 

Are you saying that you're struggling with writing this way, or you're not sure if it's correct? I think that these are correct. The fictional narrator is talking about events that happened in the past, but is discussing facts that remain present in the moment that he's narrating.

The mix of tenses is happening extra often because the time that the narrator is talking about, and the time that the narrator is, well, narrating, are very close together. If someone were narrating from further away in time, some of the facts would also be past tense, but some would still be present tense.

Expanding your 24-hours-away-from-events narration:

"I won't go with you," Mary said.
She is so unreasonable. She's from St.Louis, which is a city in Missouri, and she always insists that Ted Drewes custard is better than any ice cream.

If the narrator is half a lifetime away from the events:

"I won't go with you," Mary said.
She was so unreasonable. She was from St.Louis, which is a city in Missouri, and she always insisted that Ted Drewes custard was better than any ice cream.

If the narrator is centuries away from the events:

"I won't go with you," Mary said.
She was so unreasonable. She was from St.Louis, which was a city in Missouri before the United States dissolved into principalities, and she always insisted that Ted Drewes custard was better than any ice cream.

 

All I know is the the suffix ed is only used for past events, and everything else
either ends with s or ing or by it's present tense of the words.

It really is a bitch to keep it straight some times.

We watch as he gets into his car.
He is certainly very old. It is such
a shame for him to be alone.
(Present tense).

Also on an aside, try not to use very
whenever possible, there a plenty of
much better words.

 

"Very" is one of my own worst weasel words. During an edit, I always run it through my search/find facility and zap it whenever I can. It's amazing how often I use it, and also how easy it is to get rid of. I always liked Mark Twain's attitude towards the issue ...replace every instance of 'very' with 'damn' and your editor will get rid of it for you.

 

Oddly enough I have not used it in my WIP (as far as I know). I suppose
it may have to do with it being a 'weaker' word, but is ok when used in
dialogue I guess. IDK, I just know that I avoid using it like the plague.

 

I'm beginning to think that perhaps, at heart, I AM a weasel!

 

For dialogue and inner monologue it's perfectly fine, like you mentioned. Especially for children and characters with humble vocabularies.

 

Thanks Chicken Freak! That actually makes a lot of sense now. I am accustomed to the narrator being further removed from events, so I think that is why this feels clumsy/wrong to me. This will probably be a good exercise to expand my range a bit.

And don't worry about the 'very,' I just made those sentences up to illustrate my point I suppose I was lazy about it though, good point. Although I will often use simpler vocabulary for dialogue and occasionally inner monologue, like bone2pick mentioned. It doesn't make sense for all of the characters I write to be logophiles. I think it's especially interesting when there is an obvious contrast between characters or the lack of vocabulary is just striking on its own. But anyway, I digress. Thanks for the feedback!

 

@jannert - I just did the very > damn exercise you suggested on my WIP. It appears I've used it 280 times. (out of 125k words) Is that a bad record or a good one?

 

Yeah, it's scary. But usually fixable.

 

Yeah I haven't gone through why/where I actually used the word "very" but would be quite curious to see! Gotta stop procrastinating and finish off writing the darn ending first though. Editing later. Ha...

 

Present tense narrative. Ugh!