Getting fed up with present-tense writing

[Danny McG]

I love reading present tense when I am editing present tense because my brain doesn't keep trying to change the tense of the book I am reading. In between editing times I like the book to suit the tense and some characters/stories just suit present tense better than past tense

I tensed up trying to follow that!

 

[Robert Zwilling]

More than one commenter here has said this fad for present tense seems to reflect cinema. I think that's right on target (all the more because current fiction often loads up on dialog). It's possible that, in the future, people will regard the excessive use of present tense and dialog as giveaways --

If present tense was not the new style thing, something else (possibly better, possibly infinitely worse) would hold that distinction.

Some YA writers are writing the way they do to make their writings more realistic and their audiences like it.

As far as the latest styles go, there are some who feel that the over dramatization of characters character aspects change the story from being all about the story to being all about me, wondering if that trend will continue. It has gone in and out of style ever since story telling began.

Or maybe its just a logical expansion of the comic book universe.

When you have no sense of grammar, it's all about the ideas, not how they are presented.

 

[Toby Frost]

There's always Titus Groan, which for no clear reason lapses into the present tense for about fifty pages before going back to perfect tense again...

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I tensed up trying to follow that!

When I have been editing any of my present tense stories then I find past tense really difficult to read because my brain keeps trying to put the book I am reading into present tense.

Maybe people here that work in past tense do the same when they read present tense. I personally, tend to read stories that are in the tense that the story I am working on is in.

When I am not editing or working on a particular story then I only care about the tense when the reader has chosen one that doesn't suit their MC or story.

 

[hitmouse]

There's always Titus Groan, which for no clear reason lapses into the present tense for about fifty pages before going back to perfect tense again...

I had forgotten that. Isnt the first chapter with the Hall of Bright Carvings, written in the present tense? Havent picked it up for years. Maybe overdue for the nth reread.

 

[Anne Martin]

I see stylistic reasons for writing in present tense, but it drives me nuts. For me present tense slows the action. You can't analyze or reflect in the heat of the moment. Something that happens in the blink of an eye, like parrying a thrust in battle, takes forever if you are thinking about the safety of the damsel you are trying to protect at the same time. (It's like super slow-mo.)

I found reading The Time Traveler's Wife annoying because present tense might have worked, but the story was all about memory and memories of when the characters met and re-met and what order things were in. Everything was really in past tense - even the future - but it was told in present tense. I understand that the characters are living "in the now," but it is always set in the context of the past, and sometimes that past is in one character's future.

For me, present tense only really works in short stories, i.e. in short bursts - experiencing an event when there is little specific action. I have one where a character narrates her death, and the story ends when she dies. She does, however, reflect on her past, which is obviously in past tense. I do find present tense useful for dreamscapes, however, as they often exist outside of time.

 

[Toby Frost]

Isnt the first chapter with the Hall of Bright Carvings, written in the present tense?

The bit I'm thinking of begins with the big dinner scene, where Sepulchrave is losing his mind, and each of the characters has a soliloquy. I love the soliloquies: it's such a weird, bold thing to do.

 

[Pyan]

I don't mind the odd lapse into the present tense, like Titus Groan does, but I do find a complete book written in it annoying. But I dare say that there's a book out there that's gripping enough for me to read without noticing - I just haven't found it yet.
To be fair, I felt the same about first person singular, then discovered the Dresden Chronicles, by Jim Butcher...

 

[JunkMonkey]

Can't abide it.
To me, it reads like the audio descriptions option that you can get on some TV programmes.
"The noise of the TARDIS fades away. The Doctor pulls a lever and pushes some buttons, then walks over to the door. He turns to his companion. 'I hope that we've got the right planet this time!' he says".

Because it's film script writing. Film scripts and plays are written in the present tense because they are relaying what IS happening (or should be happening) on screen, or on stage, right in front of you. Novels and short stories are stories being told to you by a storyteller. Whether that is the narrator of the book or the omnipresent authors voice. It's very hard to write, "Once upon a time - a long long time ago" in the present tense.

I find it intensely irritating to read. So much so that I don't bother it's the one thing almost guaranteed to make me not read something.

 

[BT Jones]

I get what you mean. It can sound pretentious, just as the use of second person can. (And I speak as one who has done both in the writing challenges.)

Another thing I find annoying in this article is the phrase "a couple customers" instead of "a couple of customers." This irritates me in the same way as "alright" instead of "all right" or even "okay" instead of "OK" (the latter of which pays proper acknowledgement to the origin of the word as a humorous abbreviation for "oll korrect" [sic].)

While we're at it, long live the Oxford comma!

And you darn kids get off my lawn.

@Victoria Silverwolf, I am guilty of using "a couple customers" when writing, because I feel dialogue should always read how it is spoken. My 'American' characters generally speak Americana, and Irish Irish, etc. But the narrator ALWAYS uses the correct words and the right English. I, too, use present tense in my work, but only for the point of view of certain characters. 80% of it is 3rd person past tense. The tenses I chose for certain characters perspectives feel correct for who they are, and the way their mind works. But then that's just me. I can't speak for how readers will find it.

Oh, and I didn't even know about the Oxford comma until probably a couple (of) years ago. Ever since, I've been using it in my work because it just seems logical.

One thing I can't seem to be able to adopt is indents. Never liked them, never will. I feel the extra space at a line break is perfectly sufficient to signify a new paragraph.

 

[Brian G Turner]

More than one commenter here has said this fad for present tense seems to reflect cinema.

I would have thought it was actually the reverse - there's been a big trend over the past couple of decades for stronger and more immediate character experience - working to the unique strengths of a novel that TV and cinema cannot reach. It's the novels written in omniscient which are overwhelming written as if watching a screen, leaving characters distant and underdeveloped, and that appears to have been the more common style before all this. The vast majority of aspiring writers joining chrons still write in omniscient precisely because they are used to watching TV and movies rather than reading novels, and I cannot remember the last time a new writer joined chrons to post something in present tense to our Critiques section.

Personally I find the objections to reading present tense strange. I've noticed a lot of people here just focus on reading and re-reading books published in their youth rather than anything modern, but I find the objection that present tense is a gimmick makes no sense considering that English Literature has gone through far more profound trends and experimentation. Present tense has absolutely nothing on the modernist and surrealist styles of a century ago, and at least present tense is engaging the declining number of readers who are still buying new novels.

And as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has been mentioned, I'd definitely recommend the reading of it - I would daresay one day it will be regarded as classic literature. No, seeing the film doesn't count as knowing the story, because the story *is not* about kids killing each other, it's about the lead character trying to define their own sense of identity, when every single person around her is in conflict with her to shape her into their own image, and her struggle to do so against extraordinary and soul-destroying circumstances. The use of present tense as a literary device really delivers on the immediacy and intensity of all this, and the use of omniscient would have left the book empty and lacking the way the film adaptation did.

 

[The Big Peat]

This is when it becomes effective, and how I've tried to use it myself (as a one-off, I'm mostly third-past). IMO it should be something close to stream-of-awareness (sensory input, own thoughts, etc). But some writers don't seem to bother much with that.

I was just pondering the maze of my tastes and realised this is exactly the case with me and present tense. I like it the few times I encounter it where I really, really feel that immediacy. It feels natural then. But many try and few succeed. When that doesn't happen, my mind clashes with the words on the page, because it's expecting to read past tense because that's logical and it can't speed read because the words are wrong. Straight up itchy brain won't do it.

This pondering came from wondering why Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Soutbourne uses present tense for the entire book, which is mostly someone narrating their past, which is surely a time for the past tense.

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

I honestly thought I loathed present tense until I read Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. He does it well.

 

[Extollager]

Abusus non tollit usum. I referred, in my past message, to an abuse of present tense; of turning a necessary feature of grammar into a gimmick. And I said I was considering no longer reading things written in present tense. It would have been more precise for me to have written that I'm considering the policy of giving fiction and articles written in present tense only a cursory look. If I do that, I might miss something that, at last, would turn out to be good, but this is unlikely to be a tragedy, since instead I will read something else that was good.

More than one commenter here has said this fad for present tense seems to reflect cinema. I think that's right on target (all the more because current fiction often loads up on dialog). It's possible that, in the future, people will regard the excessive use of present tense and dialog as giveaways -- as tell-tale indications of the time in which the work was written, kind of the way certain names become extremely popular and then fade out of favor in a few years. (The tell-tale sign that they are losing their pizzazz occurs when the names are kept but the spellings become odd.)

Incidentally a few weeks ago I read a short novel written in present tense, which I thought was at least an arguably defensible thing in that case -- Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream. There the point of view was that of someone apparently dying and not in her right mind. I didn't think the book was great, but it's something I might read again some day.

I started Francis Spufford's novel Light Perpetual today but don't expect to read it (a library copy). It's written in present tense. It appears that it was going to be about the lives several English children could have had if they hadn't been killed by a bomb during World War II. When I discovered that the novel was written in present tense throughout, I was put off. It might be a good novel, so anyone who is not put off by present tense fiction might give it a try. I did get the sense that the novel might show influence of the movies (and television). Perhaps a good adaptation will be made by the BBC or ITV.

 

[sknox]

Agreed. Present tense is for amateurs and hacks. Future perfect, now, that's literature!

 

[Snicklefritz]

Some of the company in the present tense bar has been quite successful:
The best novels written in the present tense

Updike, Bronte, Dickens -- not too shabby company, indeed.

 

[Extollager]

Updike, Bronte, Dickens -- not too shabby company, indeed.

Mr. Trowden is wrong. I can't speak for the Updike novel, but he's wrong about the Brontë and Dickens novels. I wondered if he confuses first-person narration with present tense, since Jane Eyre is written in first person and the Esther Summerson chapters of Bleak House are in first person. (I wanted to check his reference to Kesey's One Flew, which I read many years ago, but I couldn't find my copy; I don't remember if it was written in first person, but I'm sure it wasn't written in present tense.)

Here is how Jane Eyre begins:

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been
wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)
the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain
so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the
question.

Here is a present tense rendering thereof:

There is no possibility of our taking a walk today. Outdoor exercise is out of the question because of the weather: the winter winds are cold, the clouds are sombre, and the rain is penetrating. (Some of the original can't be turned into present tense because Jane is remembering.)

Dickens uses some present-tense writing in Bleak House (see Chapter 12 "On the Watch"), but to say the novel is written in the present tense is like saying all of Charles's recent coronation was a musical composition by Handel.

 

[Snicklefritz]

Philip Pullman calls time on the present tense​

Philip Pullman calls time on the present tense

If every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness

www.theguardian.com

 

[Jo Zebedee]

re the Jane Eyre, can’t you can go back to the past in present tense, the same way as you can shift to present from past tense, provided you manage the transitions. we think about past in the present all the time. handed attempt:

there is no possibility of taking a walk today. We did this morning, wandering in the leafless shrubbery for an hour but since dinner - Mrs Reed took it early since there was no company - there has been a cold winter wind and the clouds are so sombre, the rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise is out of the question.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Present tense can also work well in nonfiction. My upcoming I Am Taurus is an example. Tbh, I found it liberating at the time, and continued with it for subsequent books.