Why do you hate the first person present tense?

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Cappy1

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I've heard a few people say they really don't like the first person present tense, here and on reviews.

But I'm writing my next novel using that tense, and really enjoying the sense of immediacy it brings. In fact, I can't imagine telling this particular story in any other way.

So I'm interested in hearing why the people who don't like first person present tense, don't like it.
 

gothicangel

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Personally I love it. But I think its a personal preference. The only thing that annoys me is when people say 'you can't write a historical in first person present tense, because its in the past. Bizarre.

You do have to work harder with the POV, but it also has great possibilities because of its limitations (unreliable narrators, concealment and revelation.)

If you want to write a book if first person, present tense then go for it. Ignore the naysayers. Its your book, not theirs.
 

LA*78

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I enjoy it. I find I can place myself in the POV character's position far more easily than a 3rd person narrative. However if not done well it does make the story very difficult to read. For eg. when the writer gets the urge to have the POV character read other characters' minds.
 

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Oh, I like present tense quite a bit (the last novel in present tense I read was a historical, Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and I loved it to pieces), but maybe somewhat less so for first-person narration. (Hilary Mantel used very close 3rd limited for Wolf Hall).

Problem is, first person present tense can feel like someone is doing a running commentary on everything they do, which can feel pretty artificial and actually undermine the immediacy one wants to achieve with present tense, reason being that commenting already involves a certain level of detachment of the commenter and a certain regard towards an audience. You are either caught up in the moment or commenting on it. There's a natural gulf between narrating I and experiencing I, at least if the experience is properly engaging. Using past tense acknowledges that and can actually feel more natural.

Of course that gulf is sometimes bridged when we get so caught up in our own story that we relive the past experience but it can be difficult to maintain that level of excitement over the entire novel. And in the quieter passages that sense of immediacy can feel forced.

You don't have this problem if you do a proper interior monologue, something like Schnitzler's Leutnant Gustl for instance.

How long is this going to last? Better look at the watch. Or maybe not, it's not proper behaviour for such a serious concert. But who's going to see? If someone sees it they're not paying any attention either and I don't have to be embarrassed ...Only quarter to ten? ... It feels as if I've been sitting here for three hours.

This feels fairly natural; it's simply Gustl talking to himself. He's not describing things (something that would suggest awareness of an audience), and he's not narrating his actions either (I sit in the concert. I fret about. I look at my watch). There are no considerations at all of a potential audience, no explanations, no transitions between thoughts. You read

Oh no....."With the collaboration of the choral society" - choral society ... odd! I always thought that's something like the Viennes dancing singers, that is, of course I knew it's something different! Ah, memories....

and you have to figure out on your own that he's reading the programme now. There's no "I look into the programme. It tells me that the concert is held with the collobarition of the choral society."

As a result the whole thing can be hard to follow. But it does feel right, and most of all, very immediate. Because that's the thing about immediacy - there can be no mediation, no filtering, no concessions to a reader. In short: no narration. It's great if done right, but pretty hard to pull off. And it demands quite a bit, not just from the writer, but also from the reader.

If you want immediacy, don't go for half-measures. You won't just need present tense, you'll need something as close to stream-of-consciousness as you dare to use without alienating your target readers. (Tolerance for stream of consciousness varies widely across readership).

It's not too different with 3-person limited present tense either. It works better and better the closer the perspective is tied to your focalizer character. But I do feel you get away with slightly more narration than with first person present tense.
 

Linda Adams

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I don't hate it, and I've done a few short stories with it.

However, I don't love it either. It's very hard to do well. Most of the novels I've seen with it have not done it that well, in such a way that it stood out. I have run across one that did it so well that I didn't notice it for a while, but it's been rare to find it written that well.

Might be why it gets the bad rap.
 

Ugawa

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Like others have already said, it boils down to personal taste. Some people love it, some hate it, and others really don't care either way.

I enjoy a well written first person present tense novel. My current WIP was almost written in first person, present tense, before I realised that I kept changing to past tense every couple of sentences.

So write your story how you envision it, don't let other people's opinions put you off, because that's all they are, opinions. And every opinion is different. But that's just my opinion ;).

Good luck.

xx
 

VoireyLinger

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I guess I'm the first chiming in with hate and loathing. Sorry, but I can't stand it. I'll drop a book immediately when I see it.

It feels like someone narrating a their way through a dream sequence... a smoky dream where I'm wearing blinders and someone has me by the head, pointing me at just where they want to look. I don't feel it gives any sense of immediacy or extra closeness to the character, as many writers claim it does. If anything, it constantly reminds me I'm not in the narrator's head and that he or she is choosing to tell me what he or she wants me to know. On the writing end, I think it's very easy for first person and present tense to become stilted.

It's simply not for me. I don't like the feel of it.

Of course, I'm one person and there are people who do enjoy reading it. Those people are you market and you should write for them.
 

MeganJoWrites

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I like first person present tense in short stories.

That's pretty much it.

A whole novel? Not for me. And I think it's because it is so rarely done well. But then, I don't really love first person, either. Present tense is just icing on the crap cake to me.
 

ap123

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IMO first person often feels like I'm with someone who just won't stop talking.

Just my .02, it's very popular, has been for quite a few years, so I'm fairly certain I'm in the minority. And I have read books where the writing is so engaging and smooth I didn't notice and it didn't matter to me at all.

Like everything else, it's all in the execution.
 

Vella

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I'm going to make a vote for the ambivalent crowd - it can work very well, but it can also feel incredibly stilted. No person or tense automatically presents immediacy, but many of them aid it. I think I'd get tired by a whole novel in it, but I agree that a short story can work excellently, because there's not the pressure of keeping up variation throughout the whole novel, and first person present is much more difficult to keep varied, IMO.

Then again, if I were presented with a good, compelling, well-voiced FPP novel, I would absolutely read it all the way through. It's not going to render a novel unreadable for me, by any stretch, any more than third person present will. But done badly, it will make me drop the book just as fast as badly-written third person past.
 

SomethingOrOther

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I've heard a few people say they really don't like the first person present tense, here and on reviews.

Many people aren't (as) used to it and dislike it on simple aesthetic grounds.

Complicated justifications — attempts to "legitimatize" the dislike on (poorly thought-through) theoretical grounds — often follow.

Reasons that emphasize the way it feels (like some of those provided above) are way better than ones like "Present tense is unnatural because how can you tell a story if you're actually there experiencing the events. Stories happen in the past, so the tense they should use is past tense." (I've actually heard this one before, lol.)

I like first person present tense in short stories.

That's pretty much it.

A whole novel? Not for me. And I think it's because it is so rarely done well. But then, I don't really love first person, either. Present tense is just icing on the crap cake to me.

Without clarifying what you mean by "done well," it's almost like you've answered the title question by saying "For a reason."

Sentences with "done well" pop up in FPP threads a lot ("I like it as long as it's done well" is one of the most common) — so often, in fact, that you'd end up in the hospital if you played a drinking game based on finding it in these threads. But "done well" could mean so many things, really, and it's not a very meaningful phrase in the absence of clarification and examples and so on.

For example, what I mean by "I can't really like third-person past unless it's done well" is "I can't really like third-person past unless the narrator has a pronounced voice and personality (or unless, of course, the prose is flat-out amazing)." The second sentence is obviously a lot more informative, and it distinguishes my reasons from those of person-who-says-"done well" #2 and person-who-says-"done well" #3 (and #4-#20, because let's face it, there's going to be a lot of them). :)
 
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MeganJoWrites

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Without clarifying what you mean by "done well," it's almost like you've answered the title question by saying "For a reason."

Sentences with "done well" pop up in FPP threads a lot ("I like it as long as it's done well" is one of the most common) — so often, in fact, that you'd end up in the hospital if you played a drinking game based on finding it in these threads. But "done well" could mean so many things, really, and it's not a very meaningful phrase in the absence of clarification and examples and so on.

For example, what I mean by "I can't really like third-person past unless it's done well" is "I can't really like third-person past unless the narrator has a pronounced voice and personality (or unless, of course, the prose is flat-out amazing)." The second sentence is obviously a lot more informative, and it distinguishes my reasons from those of person-who-says-"done well" #2 and person-who-says-"done well" #3 (and #4-#20, because let's face it, there's going to be a lot of them). :)

Hmm... seeing as I'm about the third person in this thread that said that, I'm not sure why you singled out my response.

But either way, my eyes kind of crossed in your third paragraph because... numbers? I'm a writer, man, I don't do numbers! ;)

I guess I would say that I don't really like first person because I don't always want to be inside a character's head for an entire novel. It's a little different from third person, because I feel claustrophobic. When it's in present tense, that feeling is even worse. So yeah, that might be vague, but I can't describe it better than that. It's just a feeling that I don't enjoy while reading.
 

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I used to find it unbearably pretentious. Then I started to lapse into it essentially by accident during long stretches of writing. I prefer very-close-third present these days, but either way I find that it frees me up to play more loosely with time, syntax, humor -- it allows my character to make observations that, were I writing in past tense, might end up more filtered and structured.

Kind of the equivalent to shooting in hyper-saturated shaky-cam, which I used to hate until I loved it.

* Re: done well, I guess the lack of filter and structure could become an excuse to write lazily, to neglect flow and syntax because you can, but obviously that's true with any device.
 
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Little Anonymous Me

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I'm not crazy about it for two reasons. The first is that it seldom appears in my genre (epic fantasy from first person present? they exist somewhere, I guess), so I rarely read it. The second is that many authors don't manage to stay in present the entire time. I'm really nit-picky about tense changes, and running across one makes me feel like this: :e2bike2:



I don't care for being stuck in one head the entire story, so I really like close 3rd because I 'see' much more. First past is doable for me, but you have to be really damn awesome to get me to stick with present.
 

SomethingOrOther

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... I'm not sure why you singled out my response. ...

You were closest is all. But yeah, that reply is addressed to every unsupported "done well" in the history of the universe, all the way back to Grunt McGruntgrunt, a Stone Age artist who said he only liked spirits in cave paintings if they were done well.
 

wolfking

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I stay away from anything that is not the same as my current work. Anything different I must treat like a piece of radiation until I am done, lol. I'm writing in 3rd and if I start to read something in 1st it will cause a massive mental avalanche.

Kill it with fire until WIP is done.

But outside of that, I'll enjoy anything as long as it is done well.
 

WeaselFire

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I've heard a few people say they really don't like the first person present tense, here and on reviews.
So? I don't like broccoli. Other people do. I'm pretty sure my viewpoint that cauliflower, AKA Albino Broccoli, is an aborted Communist plot has no affect on those who like cauliflower. And there are even people who like artichokes, liver and onions and mustard on french fries.

Live for yourself and discard the opinions which don't make a difference to you.

Now, my problem with anything in present tense is that it is impossible for them to write it, publish it, distribute it and for me to read it all simultaneously. That makes the writer's present tense my past tense, or my present tense their future tense. They can't interrupt the time-space continuum. Yet.

Oh, and I don't like brussel sprouts either. :)

Jeff
 

slhuang

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The second is that many authors don't manage to stay in present the entire time. I'm really nit-picky about tense changes, and running across one makes me feel like this: :e2bike2:

This. Exactly this.

I don't mind present tense and have even written in it myself (though I don't think I'd choose to do it for a novel), but I've found that even the most well-written present tense will ever so occasionally speed bump my brain with a tense issue. Sometimes it's not even something done wrong -- sometimes it's just a character trying to describe something that happened in the past, and it takes me a minute to parse the tenses and figure out what's going on. I don't like having the reader experience interrupted that way. (And it doesn't happen in the move from past to past perfect, for me.)

(But I think in almost every present-tense book I've read I've also hit that one sentence the author accidentally put in past tense incorrectly. The bicycle smiley is exactly how it feels. ;))

I wouldn't say I hate present tense, not at all. I would say I'm wary of it.
 

untechioux

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These 2 answers hit it on the nail for me:

If anything, it constantly reminds me I'm not in the narrator's head and that he or she is choosing to tell me what he or she wants me to know.
(emphasis mine)

first person often feels like I'm with someone who just won't stop talking.

Exactly! It's like being with a chatterbox that's telling you only the side of the story that makes him or her look good, when you know they're leaving out pertinent information - especially information that might cast him or her in a less than favorable light.There are, of course, always exceptions. I don't hate 1st person/present, but it doesn't speak to me. I think I've always written in 3rd person, sometimes present, but mostly past tense. Maybe it's easier, for me at least. Now second person... :)
 

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I will read first-person stories, sometimes, but given the choice between first and third I'll almost always take third and let the first-person one languish. It's definitely just taste - I don't tend to find the main character of most books the most interesting or compelling character, so being parked inside their head, glued to their eyes and ears, is just not for me. While there are exceptions, I feel like I as a reader have a lot more freedom of enjoyment in third.

But if I fail to read a wonderfully written story because it's first-person, then the problem is not the author's, it is mine. Don't change what you're doing because some people have different taste :)
 

Susan Coffin

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I've heard a few people say they really don't like the first person present tense, here and on reviews.

But I'm writing my next novel using that tense, and really enjoying the sense of immediacy it brings. In fact, I can't imagine telling this particular story in any other way.

So I'm interested in hearing why the people who don't like first person present tense, don't like it.

I only hate first person present tense when it's not done well. Otherwise, I just don't like it very well.

I am working on a team to proofread a local anthology which has a few stories written in first person present tense. Both were excellently written and I really liked them.
 

muravyets

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So? I don't like broccoli. Other people do. I'm pretty sure my viewpoint that cauliflower, AKA Albino Broccoli, is an aborted Communist plot has no affect on those who like cauliflower. And there are even people who like artichokes, liver and onions and mustard on french fries.

Live for yourself and discard the opinions which don't make a difference to you.

Now, my problem with anything in present tense is that it is impossible for them to write it, publish it, distribute it and for me to read it all simultaneously. That makes the writer's present tense my past tense, or my present tense their future tense. They can't interrupt the time-space continuum. Yet.

Oh, and I don't like brussel sprouts either. :)

Jeff
This, except for the fact that brussels sprouts are delicious and you clearly don't know what you're talking about. ;)

I like first-person just fine. First-person has a long and well-established place in literature, and it's been my experience that very good effects can be achieved by using it. To me, it's just as good as third-person. (Second-person is a mind-breaking horror that should be banished from this dimension, however.)

Present-tense bothers me because it feels like I'm reading a rough draft or a synopsis. But, as has been said, it depends on the execution. I just finished reading a novel that used present-tense (third-person) in some chapters for a particular reason. It did really annoy me when I first started reading, but I was interested in the story and gave the author a chance. I soon figured out why he was doing it, which helped me get over my resistance and lose myself in the book. However, I still think it was unnecessary and distracting, that the story could have been told just as well without it, and I did notice that he dropped the technique at some point and I haven't yet figured why he did so, which makes the beginning use even more puzzling.

All in all, present-tense feels like a writerly trick to me, and I don't really want to watch a writer juggle and ride a unicycle while he/she tells me a story.
 

dolores haze

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I have a hard time with first person present tense. I will attempt to read it, but the author has only a few pages to hook me, though I'm usually a very patient reader. I've got to be in the head of a pretty fascinating character for me to tolerate what often seems like excessive navel gazing.

So I guess this means I'm okay with it when it's done with verve and skill. Thing is, I've had such a hard time embracing it that I now tend to avoid it. So there could be many books I would otherwise enjoy that I'll never even try.
 
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