Now, first person present tense does mess with me a little bit. I'm always wondering how somebody has time to dodge gunfire and narrate a story. I know that's not what's happening on an intellectual level, but some times the phraseology can throw me.
I think too much. About everything. It's a real disruption for me in every aspect of my life. When I start analysing literature itself I always come to the conclusion that it's ultimately pointless. The whole story-telling process, regardless of POV and/or tense, is silly when all's said and done, and is littered with illogicalities. Take the third-person POV, for instance. How can we, the story-teller, possibly know Jack was thinking about his first kiss with Alison? Or first-person past tense. Is the narrator relating the events from 1985, in 1985 or 2020 reflectively? The only one I can get my head around when writing (I can read pretty much any tense/POV except 2nd) is first-person past tense, relating it at the time it happened (so past tense as opposed to past perfect), but even then it can mess with my head if I think about it too much... which I inevitably do.
I don’t agree. It’s a stylistic choice. Unless the author puts in a narrator intended to be recounting past events, this is reading too much into choice of tense. Present tense doesn’t mean it is happening “now,” either.
Yes, but how long after? If the events happened in 1985 and I write the book starting today, then if what you say is true I would have to write the whole thing in past perfect tense, with 'hads' littering every paragraph. This is why traditional, simple past tense is like present tense anyway. When we read, 'John opened the book and started reading' we see that scene as present tense, happening there and then.
Thats quite clearly past tense... reporting that john did something in the past... to see it happening there an then it would have to be 'John opens the book and starts reading'
I know it's past tense, but the reader doesn't 'see' it that way. They don't see these scenes in a reflective flashback manner. They see them happening there and then, as present tense.
Yes. Scenes meant to be backward looking flashbacks are set out as such. The exception to this general statement is when the author employs some artifice to make it clear it is intended to be a recitation of past events—a narrator who is a historian, for example. There are lots of ways to do that, but it is not done in most past tense works.
But the reader whos using their imagination to picture the scene see everything happen right then, even if its written in past perfect flashback... if we write "Seven days ago John had opened the book" they still see a mental image of john opening a book
Really? I would see that as the flashback it is. I would take it as the narrator informing me of a past event, and wouldn't really picture John opening the book at all.
There's no timescale implied with past tense, not on its own. It could be five minutes ago, it could be five centuries ago.
Outside of first person stories, most fiction does not have a 'narrator' in the sense of an individual who has some independent existence apart from the story. That is, again, something that has to be expressly set up by the author.
People talk about their day in present tense all the time. It doesn't mean it's happening as they're telling it. Take a woman recounting her day at work to her partner. ".... ooh, and then Mary comes in and starts rabbiting on about her new boyfriend. So I ask her if she's thrown him out again and it was like I'd opened the floodgates. She starts crying and before I know what's what I'm sympathising with the boyfriend...."
Then she's being grammatically incorrect. If that's how you want to write, that's your stylistic choice.
Nonsense. Only if the author sets it up that way, such as through a very close third person limited POV, which is akin to first person.
Yes, perhaps I should have stressed this is my style. I only write in first-person and try to make my narrator blend in as one of the characters. I don't suppose that makes sense to anyone else, because I don't think I'm explaining it very well. What I'm trying to say is that ideally my narrator would be invisible, in as much as they narrate in the same voice and tone they use to converse with the other characters.
It may be informal, but in no sense is it grammatically incorrect to talk about past events in the present this way.
Perhaps using the term "grammatically incorrect" is wrong to describe using the wrong tense, but I'm not sure what the correct term is.
It's just the way some people speak. I don't like the idea of a narrator being a literary genius, sounding like some scholar, especially when writing in first-person. I'd much rather my narrator said "Julie was the woman I was attached to the most." than, "Julie was the woman to whom I was most attached." And this is precisely why I never write in third, because I find it almost impossible to give the narrator (omnipresent or close) a voice.
The present tense is used for a lot more than just talking about the present. There's the habitual use of the present (Jim does drugs), use in conditional clauses (if I buy the watch), future use in reference to an event (we leave town tomorrow), and so on. It's a grammatical category; it doesn't always directly correspond to natural categories.
