Literary present in 3rd person past tense narrative

I'm not at all sure what you mean. If it's narrative in a novel, to whom is the other novel being described or with whom is it being discussed?

I'm not certain what you're asking either.

They'd discuss it the same as anything else?

Discussing with someone else? Through dialogue, i.e., "I liked the part where the couple found each other again."

Contemplating the novel she's just read? "She thought about the chapter where a couple had just found each other after 30 years apart."

Which is what you would expect in a book that was written in third person past tense. The architecture of third person, as far as I'm aware, still allows the narrator to tell the story of what's happening inside the character's mind.

The same way you would do it.

I'm still a tad lost.

In Third person Limited POV - the POV character and the narrator are not the same.

The narrator is you - the writer.

One of the characters is a novelist and his work influences this character who is, in this case, the third person limited narrator.

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emvireo said:

Johnny does these things in the time of the novel in question. That’s how Johnny is, not was.

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That's how I'm seeing it. Present tense is looking better to me.

But with describing the novelist's style, I think it's more a matter of distance. Both look fine, but just one of the two might look better depending on the context.

For example, if she's looking back on it and contemplating how this relates to a present situation or basically how it it is able to offer any insight at all into something else entirely, past tense seems to suit this.

Writer’s style was bustling, intoxicating. He always reached something specific but took the long, teasing, route to get there. In SS, for instance, he abruptly broke away from the fast-flowing story to follow a woman who has lost her phone. She led you to a tavern, and to a place that made you question the truths of chapters past. The journey was certainly as important as the destination, but Writer’s books eased their way well beyond this clichéd aphorism.

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To me, this looks like a temporary break away from what the narrative's really focused on at that point, and this is going to lend itself to further observation. I don't think this could stand on its own. This is viewed from much further away, as an experience that has already been completed because she wishes to draw from here, what she learned in hindsight and apply it to a current experience or consideration.

Whereas with the one written in present tense, it looks more comfortable in a discussion or inner dialogue. When we're immersed in the book and the book alone, the story/book is not yet in the past. It's an ongoing experience.

I really don't think there's a hard rule for this. Maybe pay attention to how close or far away the characters is from the story at the time that she's thinking or discussing it. And whether it feels as if, depending on the event, she is experiencing its effect currently or looking at it in retrospect.

That's all I can make of it anyway. Hope this helps.

If she is thinking/contemplating, it should be in present tense. If she is talking, it can also be in present tense, just like you would describe your book if you were talking to me. If it is narration and the book is in past tense, then the narration — whether you consider the MC or someone else the narrator — would be delivered in past tense.

OR, I could have misunderstood your question altogether.

Check out The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - is that along the lines of what you are talking about?

After having read your examples, I'd say leave it in past tense. The present tense samples were jarring. Basically, you'd write it the same way you'd write anything else she's thinking about. There's no need to change tense.

I think your unease about these book insertions may arise from some ambiguity over what you are actually adding. You may be trying to treat these insertion as ordinary 'narrative' in your Third Person POV.
I'm not sure this works.

There's a lot of narrative in writing -- narrative being a broad term for all the stuff that isn't dialog, action, internals, or internal monologue. In straight genre writing, narrative handles the bits of description and explanation the reader needs to follow the scene. Sometime it's short passages. Sometimes kinda long ones.

This sort of narrative doesn't pull the reader out of the story. It's invisible because the narrative tends to be stuff the POV character is seeing or is thinking about or could be thinking about at that time. We are close to the character's POV. The narrative might even be in the POV Character voice.

Now, what you are doing would seem to be dropping a book discussion into the middle of your ongoing action. It looks like -- it may not be, but it looks like -- an Omniscient Narrator popping by to interrupt the story and say his piece.

There is nothing wrong with adding an Omniscient Narrator. It's just a new POV, really.

Omniscient Narrator generally uses the same 'home' verb tense as the other POV characters. So the Omniscient Narrator insertion would use Past Tense.
But you can play around with that if you want to.

I think it depends on the context. Direct thoughts are italicized and written in the tense they are thought in. Alice thought, I can't believe the main character killed the mistress.

Works written by the main character can be given an extra indent and shown as block text the way the character wrote them. I can't get this reply to indent or I'd give an example.

Dialog would also be as said. "So, class, we can see that Johnny is to the point." The present tense description above gives me a teacher feel.

I'm pretty sure any other options have to match the rest of the narrative.