Present Tense - Tumblr Posts

writing tip #2180:

only use present tense if your story is set the second you are writing it, or you’ll be lying to everyone

Writing Tips Pt. 10 - Tense

I wasn't aware until this past year that sometimes people confuse point of view and tense when writing stories. I ran across a fanfiction where the author mentioned experimenting in "second-person POV" for the first time...and proceeded to write an entire story that was third-person present tense. Someone brought it up in the comments, and it turns out that the author was under the impression that what we know as present tense was "second-person POV."

So that has inspired this post and the next (which will be about POV).

There are three main tenses you can use when writing, each with subcategories. I'll cover the main tenses in this post, for simplicity's sake, but I won't go into detail about the subcategories. There are plenty of articles that explain those finer distinctions in greater detail than I can manage here.

The three main tenses you can use are past, present, and future.

Past tense is arguably the most common tense you will find in published fiction. While everything in the story is told as though it has already happened, most if not all readers are so used to this tense that they will still feel a sense of immediacy when reading a story written in past tense.

John ran to the door and yanked it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm raged overhead as he pulled her inside to warm up, even as she protested that she was fine. That didn't matter. Only her safety mattered.

Subcategories will be based off of more specific structure of the tense, such as "had gone" or "would go" or "would have gone," but they can come across as more clunky and stilted, even flat and passive, compared to simple past tense.

Present tense is less common, but still accepted as a valid tense for published fiction. This tense has the added benefit of built-in immediacy for the reader, since the story is happening in what amounts to "real time." The events of the story haven't already happened, they're currently happening.

John runs to the door and yanks it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm rages overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she protests that she's fine. That doesn't matter. Only her safety matters.

I find this one a bit more difficult to write consistently and well, but I've read plenty of stories that put it to good use. This is also the tense that most book blurbs (the summary on the back cover or inside dust jacket of a published book) are written in. This has similar subcategories as past tense.

Future tense is rarely used in fiction, as it is extremely difficult to do well. More power to you if you want to give it a try, but be aware that most editors will probably ask you to change it if it's not handled well at all. This tense gives a sense of events that have yet to happen, which is part of the reason it is rarely used.

John will run to the door and yank it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm will rage overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she will protest that she's fine. That won't matter. Only her safety will matter.

One of the only stories I've heard of that did this well (read by my husband, not myself, so I only got this second-hand) was a story telling the main character what he was destined to do, because that's what he'd done on every previous time loop, and ended with encouraging the main character to go and live their own life instead of the one their previous iterations had lived. It was also phrased as dialogue from the narrator to said main character to help facilitate the tense. The only other instances I can think of off the top of my head that work in future tense are children's books. ("Jeremy will turn five tomorrow. Everyone will be at his party. Jeremy will have a good birthday.")

My recommendation is to avoid writing your story in future tense unless you feel it's absolutely necessary to capture the essence of what your story is about.

Regardless of which tense you choose, though, make sure to be consistent. Don't switch tense mid-story, and especially not mid-section. The sudden shift from one tense to another can be very jarring to a reader, and that's something we as writers don't want. If you're combining sections you've previously written (especially as short fiction exercises and "drabbles"), make sure to double-check the tense of each section you add to the story to make sure they match. I've seen stories that took segments previously written separately and combined them together, but some segments were written in present tense while others were in past tense, and the author failed to edit for consistency, leaving very disruptive tense-changes intact.

There are, of course, some instances where tense changes can work to your benefit. An out-of-body experience or dream sequence, for instance, may be done in present tense even though the rest of the story is in past tense. If you switch POV to a character who experiences time differently, you could also justify a tense change.

The short of it, though, is this: choose one tense for your story and be consistent about it.