present tense? past tense?

[lobelia321]

Do you have views on present vs past tense? Have you written either or both? Which do you prefer to write, and why? Which do you prefer to read, and why? What is, precisely, the different effect of either tense for you?

And I wonder what it's like in those languages that have more than one present and more than one past, like French with its passée simple and Italian with its what-is-it-called-again, but the one with the wonderful endings.

And does present tense necessarily conjure up the *present*?

Comments

[azewewish.livejournal.com]

You would ask this question when I'm writing present tense for the first time in forever.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Cue the eerie music:

mind meld

[gabbyhope.livejournal.com]

I have a difficult time keeping myself to past tense. Even when I am writing essays for school, I switch back and forth between the tenses if it's, you know, historically relevant and I have to say that so-and-so did that rather than so-and-so does this.

When it comes to writing fiction, past tense just seems weaker to me. Perhaps it's because present tense comes with some authority? It's happening NOW, there are no ifs buts or maybes. If that makes any sense. Hrm.

Also, I get hung up on the "he was swimming" versus "he swam." WHICH IS IT?! Ack!

[badgermonkey.livejournal.com]

"He swam" indicated an action that had been fully completed at the time you are writing about, whereas for "he was swimming" it was still taking place. I was going to give an example but my brain is mush!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*rolls eyes* (This comes from having a schoolmarm on one's Friends list...)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is interesting, the authority point. Although I often think that past tense has the greater authority because written from a point of knowledge: after the event, the narrator knows all, incl. th ending.

[gabbyhope.livejournal.com]

A very good point. Maybe it's just personal preference, then. Present tense fits better with my supposed "style" because I tend to rant and rave and use it like it's first person rather than third.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I think present tense can create the illusion of greater immediacy (diary-style etc). *Can*, I say. And *illusion*, I say.

:-)

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I almost always use past tense, although I find present very intriguing. I also like reading present tense, as long as there isn't too much switching of tenses. That drives me nuts.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Shuttling back and forth is tedious but judicious switches can be effective!

[badgermonkey.livejournal.com]

Er, English *does* have more than one present tense and more than one past tense. I am commenting. I comment. I do comment.

I commented. I was commenting.

But not the complexity of French. The past subjunctive! (Which I never really understood.)

Anyway, I don't like present tense writing. It smacks of pretensiousness to me, mostly, although I am sure I have read stories in the present tense which I have liked. It seems false, because how can you be narrating in the present? That's not how it works. It doesn't seem realistic (although I realise this is a gross fallacy and realism is not the issue, but I'm talking from a gut sense, not a litcrit sense here.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*bursts out laughing*

I hadn't realised you had such rantworthy views on the subject.

One thing we did in Wainthropp (ah, the nostalgia of the heady days of txt-slash), of course, was to do with tense altogether and just go for immediate direct dialogue narration!

[badgermonkey.livejournal.com]

Well, in my present (heh) incarnation I read a LOT of craptacular stories from young people and when they're in the present tense it's out of some misguided desire to seem self-consciously Arty, even though it's false and writing it in the past tense would actually make it more natural and ten times better written. And people find it hard to keep it up.

Arguments about the author's enjoyment of present tense are self-indulgent blather. Write a diary if it's for you. (Am horribly frustrated by whole generation of young people who refuse to consider a reader when they are writing and therefore produce a pile of rubbish.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs again but is also gratified at passions nursed about tenses*

Write a diary if it's for you.
Er, or an LJ... Ack.

[ukcalico.livejournal.com]

Do you have views on present vs past tense?

Yup. <g>

Have you written either or both? Which do you prefer to write, and why?

Both, and for different reasons. Past tense gives, imho, a more polished and sophisticated story. Respectable, even. Present tense is useful for getting the reader lost in the moment. Bearing in mind that often my aim is to lose a reader in the thrill of the prose so that they don't notice my plot until it's too late, I'd say at the moment I prefer present tense.

Which do you prefer to read, and why?

Present tense is like the teenager of stories, rushing breathlessly along, not quite conventional but having definite effect. Boring teenagers are *really* irritating.

Past tense, by contrast, is the respectable librarian of stories. When they have something interesting to say, it *really* sinks in. But you don't pay as much attention day in day out.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Heh, for some reason I like this: teenagers vs librarians. Though we all know what devious secret lusts a librarian might harbour... ;-)

This is making me wonder why I choose one or the other, and for what reasons. Whether sometimes I want to feel like a teenager and sometimes like a librarian, starched blouse and medallion and all.

[cherry-glitter.livejournal.com]

I often find present tense too contrived. And I suppose I also prefer past tense because it's more "literary" - present tense can often sound more like a monologue or a presentation than a story.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Interesting, again. So many different views! Some think present is more immediate and others , like you, find it artificial.

[maralily.livejournal.com]

I have tried writing present tense before and when I do, it ends up sounding contrived and phony. I have read some authors of many genres who can get away with it, but for me, it is dead in the water. Can't do it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

When I first tried present tense, it also sounded contrived, but that's why I chose it because I wanted 'contrived' at that point. It was a sort of stylistic straitjacket for me, to prevent self-indulgence.

I yanked this from Lobelia...

[maralily.livejournal.com]

If you...
1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
Medeteranian- Dolma, Hummus, Lebanese tea...yum

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
Violins. I would specialize in making and selling violins. So I could test play them all.

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
I am writing one now, and it is fantasy genre erotica with a bit of adventure. My books would be Anne Rice meets Jacqueline Carey with a dash of Stephen King, a pinch of Andrei Codrescu and a light sprinkle of Harry Harrison (the alternate history Harrison) thrown in. Oh, and add a chucnk of Poppy Z Brite for flavor.

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?
Music. If I could just teach a violin class, I would.

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
I have done this too. Twice. Both were choral recordings of Gaelic music. If I could do it again, I would probably do an album with one song of each kind of ethnic music I like, so I couldlearn to do them all. One flamenco song, one Gaelic, one French cabaret song, a Hindi bhangra, etc. I have been wanting to do a Hindi song and lace some violin over it.

Hmm

[maralily.livejournal.com]

This was meant to be posted in my LJ. Accident. Sorry :-)

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

Heh. How pertinent. I'm surfing the flist on a break from polishing up a short story for (hopeful) publication, and I've just been wrestling with my tenses. The story starts with a ruminating opening in present, and then spirals down into the narrative, which I prefer in past. (Perfect. Whatever.) The problem is when to make the change and how suddenly to do it. All very tricky.

But, to the general thoughts. I don't like lengthy passages in present tense. Maybe this is just my conservative training - I went through a long period of present-tense writing in high school, and was scolded severely by my teacher - but it feels... unfinished, cheap, easy. Like the half-assed shortcut to immediacy.

That aside, I don't like writing in it because you're trapped in the moment. There's no room for narratorial skill, because you're just relating what's happening. Now, that's a gross overgeneralisation, but you see the point at which I am attempting to drive? I like past because, partly because of its traditional association with the telling of a story, it gives you the full range of story-telling options in terms of time and scope.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Publishing a story? *is massively impressed*

It's interesting how responses here veer between 'present tense is immediate' and 'present tense is contrived'. And then what value people place on 'immediacy' and 'contrivedness' ('contrivion'?).

I can see how past opens out more possibilities and is the narrative tense but I'm just reading David Mitchell's book Cloud Atlas and god, does he do wonderful things with the present tense - in a letter / diary / interview kind of mode. Constantly veering as well.

[airgiodslv.livejournal.com]

Past tense (for me) is telling a story. Relating it, sharing it.

Present tense is *living* the story. Existing in it, and experiencing it as you write rather than knowing how it ends.

I keep an eye on when I switch, because it either means that I am getting too caught up and allowing it to get out of control, or am losing sight of the emotional connection and detaching.

I now prefer present, because I can be subsumed in present tense. I keep my distance in past, a little. I can't do that in present, because there's no way of knowing how it will end.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I like this. Not knowing where it will end -- well, the narrator always does know, of course, so it's an *illusion* of not knowing. I like the relating vs the living although prose that gallops along in past tense can also subsume me and suck me into experiencing. So.

Hm, I'm not getting any closer to any essence of the tenses. Maybe there isn't one!

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

it depends on what i'm trying to convey in the story. most of my really short capture-a-moment fics are present tense, whilst the few that have anything resembling a plot tend to be past tense. sometimes i start writing in one tense then decide to switch (and re-write) half-way through. it's true that past tense implies some kind of narrative authority: i am telling you about things that have happened. present tense implies that things are still happening: there's not the same sense of closure.

as far as reading goes, i don't have a preference as long as the fic is well-written. but random tense-changes are just slack.

n.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I think it's the experience of the *writing* that might be most fruitful. Because I just can't figure out any essential differences in the *reading*, everyone here seems to have a different opinion. But I can see how the writing of one tense makes the writer feel different. And then the reasons for switching...?!

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

i usually switch (fnarr) when i've started a story and realise that it needs a more authoritative or immediate feel to it, or when i've decided that the tense i am using doesn't work for the timescale of the fic. this is 'cos quite often i start writing with no clear idea of how the fic will end.

n.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

this is 'cos quite often i start writing with no clear idea of how the fic will end.
I've often done that -- but with me the chosen tense tends to influence the way it's going to end, or the way it's going to play out. For me, present tense is more objective, stricter, less intimate. Although most people on this thread experience it the other way round.

What, btw, is fnarr?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

this is 'cos quite often i start writing with no clear idea of how the fic will end.
I've often done that -- but with me the chosen tense tends to influence the way it's going to end, or the way it's going to play out. For me, present tense is more objective, stricter, less intimate. Although most people on this thread experience it the other way round.

What, btw, is fnarr?

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

fnarr = a bit of a leer in a Carry On stylee, ooh missus!, you get the idea.

n.x :)

[pithetaphish]

Do you have views on present vs past tense? Have you written either or both? Which do you prefer to write, and why? Which do you prefer to read, and why? What is, precisely, the different effect of either tense for you?

an interesting question, since I've been tossing up questions of tense, person, and perspective with the novella i'm writing/attempting to write at the moment. as most people have already said, past tense is the standard tense in literature, whilst present tends to be used mostly by teenagers who slip between fiction and diary-writing.
personally, i think the reason present tense isn't used so much in literature is because it has this teen-pretension stigma attached to it, but also because it's so damned hard to write a good present tense narrative. in being bound to the here-and-now, you cut out a lot of the ruminating and reflection that is more easily done in past tense. the pace of the narrative is also much more dependent on the action/plot in present tense, whereas past I think gives a little bit more leeway, because the high suspense that is created by present tense isn't really there - suspense is there, but as you said, there's also an acknowledgement that the narrator is looking back with hindsight and not experiencing the events directly.
but also I think there's a lot of possibility in present tense. I've yet to see it done well, because it's so under-used, but if someone managed to drag it out of teen pretension and into the realm of literature, there's potential there to really grab the reader by the throat and keep their nose jammed against the pages the entire length. a combination of present tense and first person might be something worth experimenting with, but i've never really written present tense except in things like letters and diary entries within a larger work, so it works as a counterpoint to the greater past tense narrative. i think that is where present tense's best use may be, as a means to indicate any number of shifts within a larger narrative.

a long-winded answer to a relatively simple question :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is very interesting! (And the question is not simple, oh no.) How tense relates to person! Now we might be getting somewhere. Because yes, I too can see the potential in present-tense letter / diary / interview type of prose. I was just saying somewhere above how much I love David Mitchell's new novel, *Cloud Atlas*, and that's what he does with present-tense: interweaves it in the form of these eyewitness narratives. And then present-tense plus third-person - now how might that work?

Oh, and of course the narrator *always* knows where a story is going. The present tense just creates more of an illusion that she doesn't.

[and_chocolate]

Do you have views on present vs past tense?

I have views on everything. *g* One of my views is that tense and POV are often interrelated.

Have you written either or both? Which do you prefer to write, and why?

I've written both. My FPS fiction is almost exclusively written in past tense, and that tends to be my default. When I started writing RPS, I started in past tense as well, but my first three RPS stories kept drifting into present tense as I wrote. Since ninety-five percent of my fiction up to that point had been in past tense, it seemed to me that there was a reason my subconscious was altering the script. *g* In the end, I switched those three stories to present tense in the editing process, and have written my RPS (with one exception that was also a POV experiment) in present tense ever since.

Which do you prefer to read, and why?

I'll read either, so long as it works for the individual story.

What is, precisely, the different effect of either tense for you?

I think that we, as readers, have been trained to feel that past tense is more "literary" than present tense. I also think that the "past tense" = "literary" equation is a) false, and b) more a result of a cultural feedback loop than an objective assessment.

To explain more, let me start with something we're more intimately connected with: fanfic. Within each fandom, there tends to be one style that's privileged over any other; usually that's the style of the first (or most prolific) writers in that fandom. A specific example of that might be Smallville fandom, where prose written in the past tense is the exception rather than the rule. As newbies migrate into SV fandom, they see that a lot of the fiction is written in present tense, and they think, "Ah, this must be what SV fic is all about." When they write their first story, they do so in present tense, thus contributing to the body of work that the next newbie looks at...and so on.

I think the same phenomenon occurs in literature. In the era of Austin and Dickens, omniscient POV was "literary." Nowadays, third-person limited POV is privileged over omniscient POV. Similarly, past-tense narrative is currently privileged over present-tense narrative. It's not a matter of the inherent value of either, but a result of the our cultural expectations.

To get away from the literary wank, though, to me, present tense feels like a more immediate, more stream-of-consciousness style and it flows naturally from the kind of tight third-person-limited POV that RPS seems to demand.

Why present tense? Real life happens in the "now"--with source material such as interviews and appearances being forever in the present tense, regardless of the disparity between when they occurred and when we consume them. Why tight third-person-limited POV? Real life has less plot than fiction does, and so non-a/u stories about real people tend to be all about the characters instead of being all about an external plot; this leads to a lot more focus on the internal over the external.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes.

To nearly all. But as soon as I say yes I have a perverse inner voice saying 'yes... but!' So here are my buts:

I'm not sure we live our lives in the present. In fact, Augustine (as in The Saint. Hah!) thought that it is impossible to grasp the present: every moment is already past the moment we try to grab it. Time flows through us inexorably. Pehaps the present tense is a way of creating the illusion that it does not and that we *can* capture time. As it is, we can, in fact, only live through the past, in memory. Even of the seconds that have only just ticked by.

I like your historicisation of these things, though. I'm going to give up seeking essences. There's only historical contiguity. Well, I take it back -- I'm an inveterate seeker of essences nevertheless...

Past tense is perhaps not more 'literary' but it is *the* narrative tense.

Interesting that you switched into present tense when writing rps. Any ideas as to why?

[and_chocolate]

Interesting that you switched into present tense when writing rps. Any ideas as to why?

I really have no idea. It's not something I really did before; I think only two (out of thirty-some) of my non-RPS stories were written in present tense, and I assumed I was just going to continue writing past tense, regardless of the genre of story.

But once I started writing my first RPS story, the tense kept slipping without me noticing it. As I was transcribing it from my notebook I realized that it seemed to "want" to be in present tense, so I just went with that as I edited the draft.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So what was the fps you were writing in before? Was it Lotr?

[badgermonkey.livejournal.com]

"The worst tense used in print journalism, in my view, is the present. "We're having lunch and Renee Zellweger is picking at her lettuce ... Our cruise ship slips down the river and into the night ... Blair comes bounding through the door." It is so obviously mutton dressed as lamb. We can see through its artifice. The events so described have happened, to be replaced by another event, a writer picking away anxiously at his or her machine. It is impossible - and dangerous - to proclaim iron rules about writing, but I would say that the same rules hold good for most narrative non-fiction books and essays. A step into the dramatic (or false) present is nearly always a mistake; it tends to break our belief in the reality that the writer is trying to describe."

This guy seems to agree with me! I knew I was right.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ian Jack, omg, I think t'h knows this guy. Is he about 108 years old? But then again, the name could be very common...

I like, go to read his thingy and like, I note this:
The past tense is simply the more truthful tense, and in this way it conveys a precision and conviction that the present tense lacks.
This is what irritates me! This smug certainty and laying down of plainly untenable and absurd timeless truths. The past tens *is simply* x, y and z? No argument? No justification? No perhaps, arguably, has been taken to mean in certain historical periods / different cultural contexts / a number of worldwide languages...? No: it not only "is" but it is "simply".

*wants to slap that man*

Sorry, am, liek disagreeing with you, liek, totally here.
it tends to break our belief in the reality that the writer is trying to describe."

Again: confuses *one* particular type of writing (the one *aiming* to achieve a belief in a putative 'reality') and one historical period (the one in which above quest for 'reality' is a dominant enterprise)and one philosophical dilemma (what is reality anyway? and whose reality?) with Literary Rule For Fiction Numero Uno. What if I don't *want* to achieve a 'belief' (and define belief, please -- don't we all suspend it when reading fiction, anyhooo?) in 'reality'? And so boring forth.