tense musings

[lobelia321]

Both mdbfan and cupiscent made such interesting comments in response to my pov musings, that I feel propelled into posting some follow-up musings.



Musings on the uses of tenses in fic writing

As soon as I'd finished writing my pov musings, it occurred to me how closely linked pov is to tense.

Both mdbfan and Dee talked about how close to first-person pov a tight third-person pov can be. But then Dee pointed out how the first-person character has decided to tell his own story while the third-story person has not. The narrator is, as it were, eavesdropping on the third-story pov. But the first-person pov is always written following a conscious decision to tell a story. I find this distinction really helpful, and I think it's one of the crucial differences between the two povs.

And then tense comes into it. Or time. Because, I think, when we listen to a first-person narrating his story, we also find ourselves asking 'where is this person now?' The first person seems to be writing from his present position-as-narrator much more. So that with DesertPrince!Orli I find myself considering where he actually is when writing this, even what parchment he's writing on and what reed pen he's using and the frame of mind he's in. Somehow that slipped in as if by itself from the very beginning, when I dropped hints such as 'i did not then yet know' or 'this place that was to become my destiny' and so forth -- alerting the reader to the fact that narrator!Orli knows more than narrated!Orli.

This was not done with any conscious purpose in mind but now, months into the fic, it has become conscious. I've noticed Orli doing it, and I've asked myself why he's doing it, and I've realised that the effect of this framing is to draw attention to the present tense of the narration.

Then, of course, that can in itself be played with. I remember reading novels where half-way through or near the end, the plot suddenly reaches the point from which the tale was written, and we career into a new time zone. Sometimes this can be signalled by the change in actual grammatical tense (past to present). That point in a plot is always a little dizzy-making and a jolt. And it's going to happen in Desert Prince, too.

It occurs to me that these musings are actually not so much about tense as such as about time frames.

Comments

[pippinspeach.livejournal.com]

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That is very interesting. I've done that in <i>Emerald</i> - so far it is in first person present (I'm considering changing that), and there's a bit where Viggo & Billy are talking about something, and Viggo says, as narrator "Later he'll tell me it was the hardest day" or something like that.

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[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's just the kind of thing I was talkign about! And then the choice of actual grammatical tense... well, there's yet another topic. But not one I'm going to post about right now. This has caused me headaches in the past. The present tense can give you something really galvanising and immediate but, as you said yourself, it's a bit fashionable and can lure you into relying too much on your present-tense gimmick.

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[pippinspeach.livejournal.com]

grammatical tense - mmmm, yeah. See, I love all this stuff. I know I'm odd. :)

The present tense can give you something really galvanising and immediate but, as you said yourself, it's a bit fashionable and can lure you into relying too much on your present-tense gimmick.

The first time I tried it, I fell in love with it. I really have to be in the zone to be completely comfortable writing it, though.

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

One of the best new Aussie fantasy novels I read last year (and the genre is rife in this country, there's about five new authors discovered every year) was first person. I've always been wary of first-person fantasy, because what I love about the genre is its scope and huge cast and view, which you can't achieve in first person. But this novel - The Aware by Glenda Larke, I recommend it if you're at all interested - was a tight piece of storytelling.

I mention it now because it had that framing of the first person story-telling thing going on. But also, something else. Interludes throughout the book that were letters written by the anthropologist who had interviewed her - the guy to whom she was telling the story. There was a little bit of story going on in those letters too - other events, the academic success of his research with her, even a love interest for him going on in there. Plus, his comments on her gave some description of her, and also a different tone - he thought the story she was telling, of magic and fell beasts, was obviously ludicrous and imaginary, but the narrator-character's tone was so matter-of-fact, and she's such a sensible character, that we as readers know that it must be true. So there's this building tension that in the rest of the trilogy, these events of the past that she's telling will intersect in some manner with either events of the present, or the situation of the present. The bringing of the two threads together creates its own narrative tension in the story.

One other element that I can draw from that novel, while I'm waffling about it, is the problem of first-person and tension. Like was mentioned, there's a certain lack of ability to have the reader wondering if the first-person narrator survives. Must survive, else how could she be talking? This particular novel overcame this brilliantly, I think. When our narrator-character got involved in skirmishes, that whole "gasp!" thing was kinda skipped over - in a very skillful way - because, well, there's no currency in it. However, some horrible torturing took place, and that was edge-of-the-seat stuff. Because the narrator could still talk while horribly mutilated, couldn't she? And we've become attached to her, and because of the use of first-person, the events were more immediate. It was very powerful.

...and of course there's always Lolita for really interesting consideration of first-person storyteller narrators, and how viewpoint is altered and considered. It's my novel-teacher's favourite, and he talks about it endlessly. If I'd actually read it, I'd be able to sound so intelligent here. *g*

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[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this rec! The Larke books sounds really interesting and even though I don't read much fantasy these days, the way you describe the first-person storytelling makes my mouth water. That's one good thing about writing myself, I find: I can read even books that wouldn't normally grab me as Reader from a sort of Author-perspective -- "so what if it's fantasy, la-de-da, but what about this first-person pov, eh?" Do you get that?

I've browsed around in Lolita, I think but Nabokov is not one of *my* authors, although I know various people do rave about him. I read "Pnin" some years ago but I really had to force myself through it. It seemed too contrived to me, too all-knowing, too cerebral. Still, there's no denying that the opening of Lolita is a tour-de-force!