Present tense?

Status
Not open for further replies.

GrimMoody

Registered
Joined
Jul 12, 2014
Messages
42
Reaction score
4
Present tense really works best with 2nd person, to pull the reader in. Man, 2nd person is underrated. I'm having so much fun writing in it.

As for first person, I always imagine that the MC is either writing in a journal or sitting beside me and telling me what's going on. Thus, they'd probably be using past tense, which is more natural in both formats.

3rd person? Well, I'm not entirely sure how that would work in present tense. Maybe I haven't seen it because I don't read YA fiction, especially modern ones.
 

Wilde_at_heart

υπείκωphobe
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 12, 2012
Messages
3,243
Reaction score
514
Location
Southern Ontario
The only tolerable example of 2nd person in a novel that I've ever read was Iain Banks' Complicity, but even then I don't think the entire book was from that POV.
 

namid

Registered
Joined
Jul 18, 2014
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
I've been experimenting with First Person present recently and it added a lot immediacy to certain pieces but created a lot of other problems, so I've gone to a mixture of present and past.

It's all about whether it works or not, one thing that doesn't work is if the character dies. I read Ghostwritten by David Mitchell a while back and one of the characters who wrote in first person present - all nine did if I remember - dies at the end of his story, so I'm left thinking: how did the words end up being written if the character died? That's kind of a rule with first person for me - at some point that character has to have decided to put pen to paper and write what he's writing, and if no chance for that is provided, it doesn't quite work for me.
 

eyeblink

Barbara says hi
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
Messages
6,358
Reaction score
893
Location
Aldershot, UK
That's kind of a rule with first person for me - at some point that character has to have decided to put pen to paper and write what he's writing, and if no chance for that is provided, it doesn't quite work for me.

Not so. First person could just as easily be interior monologue than an account written after the fact.

Present tense has been quite common in literary fiction (and especially literary short fiction) since the 1960s. John Updike wrote his novel Rabbit, Run (published 1960) in third present and was aware at the time that doing so was somewhat unusual. In an interview I read, he said that he used that as he saw the novel as rather like a film: this sequence would have the opening credits over it, this would have a moving camera, this would have lots of close-ups, and so on... Rabbit, Run was filmed in 1970 and I don't know what Updike made of it. He wrote three further Rabbit novels, all in third present.

Earlier examples of present tense can be found. JAR mentioned Dickens: half of Bleak House is in third present omniscient, the other half in first past. Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson (1939) is third present. Damon Runyon was known for writing his short stories in present.

Hunger Games wasn't the first YA novel in first present by any means, but it was particularly successful so may well have had an influence.
 

job

In the end, it's just you and the manuscript
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 27, 2005
Messages
3,459
Reaction score
653
Website
www.joannabourne.com
Like Beth S, I see Present Tense as common and becoming more common in YA. I don't see it as particularly increasing in LitFic or other genres or General Fiction.

Present Tense is on my list of
80 Things That Signal I Won't Like This Book
rather than my list:
420 Automatic Wallbangers.


 
Last edited:

jaksen

Caped Codder
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 6, 2010
Messages
5,117
Reaction score
526
Location
In MA, USA, across from a 17th century cemetery
I don't know if it adds anything to the convo here, but I recently read Kitty Foyle, published 1939, written by Christopher Morley.

He wrote in first person, as a young girl, then a young woman. He used past tense in some places, but shifted to present in others. Sometimes he did this in the same chapter. He also wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style with very little description and practically no information about who was who. A character is mentioned, and then it's expected you - the reader - will figure out who he or she is and their relation to the MC. It was quite a modern read, despite the fact it was written seventy-five years ago.
 

BethS

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
11,708
Reaction score
1,763
Like Beth S, I see Present Tense as common and becoming more common in YA. I don't see it as particularly increasing in LitFic or other genres or General Fiction.

Present Tense is on my list of
80 Things That Signal I Won't Like This Book
rather than my list:
420 Automatic Wallbangers.



That's a lot of wallbangers!

:D

But it's the same for me -- present tense is one of those things that will make me put a book back on the shelf. Small portions of it written in present tense, OK. The whole thing...no. Not for me.
 

Scribhneoir

Reinventing Myself
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 1, 2006
Messages
1,165
Reaction score
134
Location
Southern California
But it's the same for me -- present tense is one of those things that will make me put a book back on the shelf. Small portions of it written in present tense, OK. The whole thing...no. Not for me.

Same here. I've never yet come across a novel written in present tense whose story is spectacular enough to make up for the pain of reading it. Two chapters is about as far as I can manage before slamming the book shut in complete annoyance. Now I don't even try. If I see present tense, the book goes back on the shelf.
 

BreMiche

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 2, 2014
Messages
59
Reaction score
4
Location
In America's Toothbrush
Website
www.bremiche.wordpress.com
I think first person present tense works well for certain genres like dystopian, since the survival of the character is up in the air and that adds to the urgency of it. Then you might get into crazy territory such as the MC actually dying and his/her ghost relaying the aftermath. I see why most people don't like it though. Some lines can be hard to read from that POV.

I'm taking a shot at 2nd person right now and it's the most fun I've had in a while.
 

jaksen

Caped Codder
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 6, 2010
Messages
5,117
Reaction score
526
Location
In MA, USA, across from a 17th century cemetery
In the biological world there are generalists, animals or species which can make it just about anywhere, like the crow or cockroach. Then there are the specialists, who need a specific and very narrow niche in order to survive. Think many of the endangered species of the world, or something like the great sloth of S. America, now gone. Anyhow...

I'm a generalist. I'll read just about anything, and have. I don't dislike or won't try something because of POV, mood, location, time it was written, or genre. I'll pick it up, read a few pages and bang, off I go. I'll even read badly written self-published, and have.

But books written in present tense? Thought I didn't like them until I wrote one myself - well a short story. I couldn't get it right, then saw everything happening right then, right there, playing out before me. I switched to present, all the while thinking OMG what am I doing?

But the story worked. I realized then that I should give present a chance and have since read several books and shorts written in present and liked them. I got so deeply into the last novel I finished, Kitty Foyle, I barely realized when the author threw in some present tense here and there. You're reading along, listening to this woman tell her story - almost always in the past - and then suddenly she's 'so we are doing this, and going here and saying this' - and I am wow. Brilliance. (The voice is powerful in that book, if anyone else has ever read it. It was written in 1939.)

Again, not knowing if I'm adding much here. I'm just a reading junkie. It seems to me if it has words, I'll read it. If it sucks me in by page four or five, I'm lost to it 'til the end.
 

Jon_Nace

Registered
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Is it just me, or has present tense (especially in first person) become far more common in the past few years? I hardly remember seeing it at all before the millenium - everything seemed to be past tense. In particular, virtually all the YA stuff I see on SYW seems to be in first person present.

Is it just that I've started noticing it more since I started writing more, or has it become a more popular form?

(I don't want this to turn into some "present sucks!" or "past tense sucks!" debate, more interested in whether it's more prevalent).

I have noticed that as well actually. It seems like everything is first person, present tense. I think it has to do with agents wanting to connect with a character "within ten pages" of the manuscript. It limits the overall scope of the story, but it does create a better connection with the main character.

My thoughts.
 

Jon_Nace

Registered
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
I think first person present tense works well for certain genres like dystopian, since the survival of the character is up in the air and that adds to the urgency of it. Then you might get into crazy territory such as the MC actually dying and his/her ghost relaying the aftermath. I see why most people don't like it though. Some lines can be hard to read from that POV.

I'm taking a shot at 2nd person right now and it's the most fun I've had in a while.

I'm trying a little of that also, first/second person. Do you not find yourself sounding somewhat condescending to the reader when you throw in the second person? Its my main struggle.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.