First-person present technique

[tegeus-Cromis]

I might try to dig out a section for critique and link to here.

here you go. I’m pretty sure some of the stuff that is discussed in this thread are in this sample.

First person example

Have at it. Jean and I each have one handle of the cart, although he holds his side a little higher and I have to bend awkwardly to stop our equipment spilling out. Sebastian will have to check its wheels tomorrow, before we set off. We’ve come to this, that a cart is more important than any...

www.sffchronicles.com

I'll admit, that's very hard for me to get through, specifically because of the present-tense first person. Seems well written otherwise, but the storytelling voice just doesn't pull me through the story. Of course, this may be just me.

That said, I just asked my 12yo daughter, who is a very enthusiastic reader of fantasy, and she said first-person present is her favorite.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'll admit, that's very hard for me to get through, specifically because of the present-tense first person. Seems well written otherwise, but the storytelling voice just doesn't pull me through the story. Of course, this may be just me.

That said, I just asked my 12yo daughter, who is a very enthusiastic reader of fantasy, and she said first-person present is her favorite.

There is definitely an age element to acceptance of first present. Get me, at nearly 50!

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

There is definitely an age element to acceptance of first present. Get me, at nearly 50!

Trying to think of what first-person present books I've read, I realize I did enjoy Scarlett Thomas' The End of Mr. Y (and, to some extent, her PopCo). She's an author I like a lot. But my favorite of her novels is Our Tragic Universe, which is in first-person past. I wonder if that's why I prefer it?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Trying to think of what first-person present books I've read, I realize I did enjoy Scarlett Thomas' The End of Mr. Y (and, to some extent, her PopCo). She's an author I like a lot. But my favorite of her novels is Our Tragic Universe, which is in first-person past. I wonder if that's why I prefer it?

Ist past feels very different again - it’s not unlike third past in most ways

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've read so many, many YA novels since this became a trend, it doesn't bother me at all now. It did at first, but also, some of the authors had not quite got the hang of it and were making mistakes far more egregious than those HB mentions, which threw me out of the story. They all seem a lot better at it now.

In fact, I have grown so accustomed to it, that I may be several chapters in before it even occurs to me that it's not the usual third person past tense being used. It's just a story, good or bad, which draws me in (or doesn't) on its other merits (or lack thereof).

So as far as age goes, I think it is more about what has become accustomed to. After all, if Jo is nearly 50, I am 70.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Well, first past has been well-established for a long time. Some of my favorite books are in first past, for example all of Raymond Chandler's novels. But it really derives from the 18th century/early 19th c epistolary or memoir novel (Clarissa or Jane Eyre), in which the scene of writing was well established. It's somebody telling you a story that happened to them. I just can't process the narrating premise of first present.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Yes, anyone who has read a lot of 19th century novels is usually comfortable with first person past tense. (Having read Jane Eyre at a tender age, I certainly am.) Or even older novels in general. It was still pretty common in the early 20th century. Nevertheless, a lot of readers have trouble with that one. Or maybe just a vocal few. I don't think the range of what a lot of people read is very wide, even among SFF readers. They have their favorite authors, and are suspicious of anything that doesn't resemble their usual reading matter. I know that doesn't apply to you, since you are apparently a fan of M. John Harrison, and what could stretch the mind in all sorts of strange directions more than the Viriconium stories? (Years later I'm still trying to figure out A Storm of Wings. All the rest I can manage, but not that one.)

 

[tinkerdan]

First person present tense is difficult: So discussion about it being something that is done because it is in vogue don't wash well, since the author has to make some tough decisions when using present tense.

Claiming that it's immediate(creating a sense of immediacy)are only valid in some few cases that usually don't involve an entire novel written this way and expecting it to be immediate is only going to tire the reader out when things don't go as fast as expected. I'm not sure where that myth comes from.

It can be immediate and that usually is where a past tense narrative wants to show what is happening as if it were happening right at that moment(to give that sense of immediacy)and I think in that case it does rely on being restricted in the way described above.

However a novel written in First person present tense has to be handled differently. I suggest for an example you look at Charles Sross's Laundry series.

Trying to mandate exactly how anyone might think at any time is a futile attempt at profiling everyone to think as we do. I for one am often sidetracked throughout the day by certain cues like smells and tastes that bring back vivid memories from my past--apparently not everyone does that. If someone says something that just so happens to be the same a lyrics to a song I often get that song stuck in my head--maybe I'm psychotic. I often rehearse what I'm going to say to someone when I have important meetings.

The real point is that no matter what tense or what POV or what Narrator or Voice you choose; in fiction you have an obligation to entertain first. Sometimes that means that your character ends up being a bit quirky, but you do have to fit things in in a way that follows some logical pattern.

I actually think before I speak and so often my characters do that and I don't try to restrict them from such activity.

The real problems with first Person Present Tense are the ones like having shopping list like paragraphs, too much detail about everything that goes on around the character that they are aware of and too much detail behind their thoughts. And of course there is the threat that you take the reader through every moment of every day and that would be horrible.

However by the very restrictions set in the OP I'd say that you would have to have every moment, every thought, every act, every visual cue and every cue from every other sense for every moment that the character is awake otherwise it breaks the sense of being in present tense. And all of that would just be nonsense, which takes me back to the difficulty in presenting present tense in a way that doesn't become boring, pedantic, and long. You might need to take some license with it and do some cutting, to make it read well and make it read like a story.

When I pick up a book:
I don't really bother with the POV or the tense, unless there are real problems with either. I know from the start that it's a story that is not happening right this minute--present tense doesn't fool me into any illusions--I'm often baffled when people can't get past that when they are standing there holding a book which usually consists of a plot and has a start page and end page and the only thing immediate is that this is usually the first time they saw these words put together this way. Written well, a novel will flow right out and be done before I realize, oh that was present tense.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

How much YA fiction do you read, tinkerdan? Because I have to say that the books that I've been reading do not go into the kind of over-detailing or the long paragraphs such as you describe. It might be so with adult SFF written in first person present tense, where the technique is still considered a bit experimental and the author's intent might be to write something more in the tradition of literary fiction where there is a lot of emphasis on a character's inner thoughts.

YA fiction tends to be short, with word counts at the lower end of the novel range. So the writer does have to be selective about how much to tell, just because it is YA fiction, whatever the chosen viewpoint.

But here is an important thing to remember: In a few more years the kids that are reading YA fiction now will form a large percentage of the SFF market, and some of them are going to want their first person present tense narratives.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think a better question would be how much non-YA fiction I read.
You can find first person Present Tense in other fiction.
YA that I have here and have seen are plenty wordy enough to be called novels.
I can't recall any that don't cover some or all of character thoughts, descriptive actions, descriptive sensual cues and even backstory.
It's rather difficult to build a character without those.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh, I know you can find it outside of YA fiction. But I just wanted to observe that most of the YA SFF I have encountered is more in the 60-70,000 word range, instead of 100,000 words and up, up, up for adult SFF. And in those books I have read there tends to be much more action than introspection and description only as necessary—though in secondary world fantasy what the author, and in my case the reader, considers necessary in the way of description can be more generous than in contemporary real world settings.

Anyway, we are obviously reading different books or else we measure "enough" and "too much" in different ways, which is fine. What a dull genre it would be if everyone wrote their books in the same style.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Oh, I know you can find it outside of YA fiction. But I just wanted to observe that most of the YA SFF I have encountered is more in the 60-70,000 word range, instead of 100,000 words and up, up, up for adult SFF.

Actually, from what I see, YA fantasy is getting longer and longer. My daughter read the Throne of Glass series last year. Seven volumes. Shortest one 415 pages; longest one 989 (!) pages. And not large print either.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

One thing that posting the link threw up:

can first present be ‘played’ with to show character aspects as other tenses can be? (In here one of the POV characters is distant from herself, not just others) Sure, I could put this into past. But I don’t actually want to as present is allowing me this room to explore the characters more.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Cassandra Clare is another YA novelist who writes long books, but I find such writers to be the exception.

Although you can't really figure word count by page count, even taking the size of the font into consideration. I learned that from a New York editor a long time ago. The spacing between lines matters, naturally, and maybe the kerning (not as sure about that, and do I mean tracking?), too. A 989 page book will undoubtedly be a long one, but it may not contain as many words as it might appear.

To give an example, two editions of The Hidden Stars that I have on my shelf. Same book, same publisher, but the trade paperback—bigger pages, so you'd expect even with a bigger font there's room for more words per page—comes out as over fifty pages longer than the mass market. Not a dramatic difference in this case, but it does show how the spacing between lines—leading it's called—can make a book look longer than one with the exact same word count.

 

[HareBrain]

For first-person narration, I'm never able to ignore the context in which the narrating is supposedly being done. So I've written stories, and sketched a novel, which are supposed to be the first-person character's memoirs (as in, they're the ones supposed to be doing the writing), so in the past tense; but I simply can't conceive what the first-person present-tense narrator is supposed to be doing: narrating to themselves? Doing a running commentary for the sake of an invisible interlocutor? This is why this feels to me like a really artificial mode of narration, and I can't get past that artificiality to immerse myself in the story.

I'm also afflicted with this curse. With first-past, I'm often looking for signs of when the narrator is meant to be telling the story, and in what form. I think this is because I read most first-past in literary fiction, where the story is told by an educated type and it can be taken that it's a written account done after the events. I at least have to believe that the author has made this decision in their mind, and evidence to the contrary can make me uneasy (e.g. the narrative feels written rather than spoken, but the character lives in a world without a literary tradition or access to paper etc).

With first-present, this "who are they narrating to?" question is possibly why I want it to be as close to a readable stream of consciousness as possible, because it allows the character to almost disappear as narrator, and so the question doesn't arise (to me, at least); it becomes a brain-dump translated into language.

 

[Ursa major]

To return to something that was mentioned earlier....

The character would be aware of what they were staring at, not the act of staring itself.

There are (at least**) two contexts in which the PoV character would be aware of the act of staring:

1. the character is deliberately staring, i.e. they want someone else to know that they're staring (which might include the object of the staring);
2. the character becomes aware that they have been staring, which happens, more or less, at a point in time (in the present, if it's a present tense narrative), but as they'd previously been unaware of their staring, they'd have difficulty (to put it mildly) determining how long it had been going on.

** - I'm too lazy to bother thinking about other ones, but may return to it if the lockdown continues for longer enough....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

With first-past, I'm often looking for signs of when the narrator is meant to be telling the story, and in what form.

Don't you ever narrate your own life to yourself while you are experiencing it? (I hope it's not just me that does that.* That could mean something ... unfortunate ... about me, couldn't it?)

____
*Mind you, I also sometimes stop to edit the previous narration, which, in a book, could really show the action.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Don't you ever narrate your own life to yourself while you are experiencing it? (I hope it's not just me that does that. That could mean something ... unfortunate ... about me, couldn't it?)

No, no, I’ll join you in the Crazy Lady talking to themselves corner.
Is it an internal monologue thing? Some have them and some don’t apparently.

 

[HareBrain]

Don't you ever narrate your own life to yourself while you are experiencing it?

I know what you mean, but I think I probably do that only a few seconds at a time in certain types of circumstances (but I'm not sure what they are right now). I don't think I'd find it a credible premise for a whole narrative**. (You're not saying you do it all the time ...?)

** now Jo's chimed in, I might have to revise that!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

(You're not saying you do it all the time ...?)

Oh no. No, no, no, no. Of course not. Perish the thought.






(Actually, no. That would be exhausting, what with all the editing.)