Tenses in writing

[Chibi Pika]

This started out as a pretty narrow idea, but the more I thought about it, the more things there are to talk about with tenses!

You see, I've been writing in past tense my whole life. Almost every book I've ever read has been in past tense. Most stories we tell are of things that happened in the past, so it's just natural to use past tense. My hand automatically tends to reach for the 'd' key at the end of every verb, even! (Yes, most of my tense errors are typoes, lmao.)

And yet... despite this near-ubiquity, there are a lot of outliers. For instance, tense errors are extremely common. Even in native English speakers! I don't think it's an issue of not knowing the rules either. I think there's something else going on that makes tenses uniquely tricky to keep consistent, and I was hoping to get some ideas as to why. (What's really interesting is that people almost never make tense errors when just... telling a story about something that happened to them. It's almost always when Writing For Real. That's interesting!)

And then the other reason I made this thread: I've noticed present tense is becoming fairly popular around the forum! I was curious if there was any reason why.

Myself? Well, like I said earlier, almost all my writing has been past tense so I've never struggled with it. But the recent popularity of present tense around here opened my eyes to the possibility that maybe what tense you use could be a meaningful part of your story, rather than just a means to get prose on the page. What significance, if any, can choosing one tense over the other yield? Past tense is more natural, but present tense is more in-the-moment. Has anyone ever chosen one over the other for an actual reason?

Wondering this made me realize that I actually had a perfect opportunity to write something in present tense and have that tense shift be a meaningful storytelling element! The problem, however... is that I'm really bad at present tense! Past just feels so natural! I go to write "X did Y" only to realize for the umpteenth time that it should have been "X does Y" and also that I've been doing it for the last two paragraphs. And don't even get me started on present perfect.

Oh, and there's one last place where present tense excels: idioms. Most idioms are in present tense. Trying to inject one into past-tense narrations is... a pain. I still haven't figured it out.

Ok that's all! Sorry for the text wall! Feel free to share your own experiences, whether it's problems, experiments, tips for others, you name it.

 

[The Teller]

To be fair, when I write chapters in my grunt anthologies, I write everything out first and go back later to correct any past tense with present tense. Also, present tense is becoming popular now? *pulls pants up to chest* Why, back in MY day, I wrote present tense BEFORE it was cool, in six, no, thirty feet of snow, uphill, both ways, whilst the alien invasion was still going on, AND while juggling three jobs and supporting all twenty of my younger brothers and sisters! What's that, sonny? Get off my lawn!

*pulls pants down...back to hip level* Anyway, I chose present tense for that particular line of stories because, due to the second-person POV nature of the fics, trying to convince the readers that they HAD experienced a particular emotion in the past is harder to do than convincing them that, in that moment, they would feel a particular emotion. Plus, I was already going the weird route with the 2nd person POV; might as well go whole hog by doing present tense as well. I didn't have any experience with writing in either styles for creative writing at that time, so I also wanted to challenge myself to see if I could pull it off.

Tense trouble is often my biggest trouble specifically because I don't adhere to it in real life. I'll mix past and present up all the time in talking to others but, due to social cues, facial cues, tones, past context being already known, and other factors, no one really gets confused by it. And I'll often type word for word exactly how I would speak the line in real life, so I don't notice anything's wrong until a beta or, more likely, a mod points it out. And don't get me started on the differences between creative writing and academic writing! I've had plenty of experiences in both and it's oftentimes frustrating trying to remember which tool in your writing toolkit you have to whip out for any such thing. Sometimes you can't use contractions, sometimes you can't use "I," sometimes you can't be too descriptive, sometimes you have to be lengthy. When it comes to academic articles in the social sciences, typically you write in the past tense, but there are occasional instances where you can, or are required, to write in present tense, and even sometimes in future tense. This, of course, makes writing stories consistently in one tense a bit of a chore, hence why I tend to just write and not bother checking each sentence until the whole chapter is done.

Well, that's my two cents. Hope it helped in some way!

 

[Dragonfree]

(What's really interesting is that people almost never make tense errors when just... telling a story about something that happened to them. It's almost always when Writing For Real. That's interesting!)

I'm not sure that's true! People often start telling a story in past tense, establishing background and buildup, and then switch to present tense for the more intense, in-the-moment parts. ("Okay, so last night I was walking home, around ten PM. It was pretty late and I was hurrying because I didn't want to miss the news. And then as I'm going past the store I realize this weird guy is following me, and I turn around and he's just staring at me...") The Icelandic sagas do something similar - the main narration is in past tense but they tend to switch to present for the fight scenes. In fact, I'm pretty sure Icelandic literature today is also pretty lax with tenses. I don't recall ever being told to keep tenses consistent in Icelandic class - I still do, because inconsistent tenses just bug me, but I sort of get the impression it's largely a matter of convention whether tense-switching is generally considered acceptable in professional writing or not in a given language.

I imagine it probably reads weird in most languages if you switch tenses back and forth at random or slip up occasionally in otherwise consistent text, though, and I just like consistent tenses. I don't generally have trouble keeping to one tense, even though I write both; sometimes I change my mind on which tense I want to go with for something, and it's a sort of mental shift to get used to the new tense, but tense errors tend to jump out at me pretty strongly when proofreading, so I think they barely ever end up in my finalized prose (and when they do, it's generally matter of past vs. past perfect).

There's definitely a difference in feel between past and present. I generally feel the present is better suited to closely character-focused narration, following along with someone's thought process in the moment, while the past is better for more plot-focused stories that can more easily focus on recounting the events that are happening with a bit more distance from the POV character (if any), but of course you can do either with either tense. I've found myself going with the past for my longer stories, but increasingly leaning towards the present for extras/shenanigans that are more about the characters.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Seconding the point about the way people switch tenses as they relay a personal experience. I know that I switch between them constantly: "so he's standing there, right? and then I said" and so on.

I tried writing in present tense for a while, and I'm not sure whether it was just discomfort with the breach of convention, but it didn't feel quite right after a while. I think it just brings the narration too close (but not for short stories and flash fiction, mind!) and forces me to phrase some narration in a way I think is awkward. I think part of the attraction of present tense is that it can feel much more immediate and close to the character, but I find that writing "over the shoulder" third person POV rather than third person omniscient gets me 'close' enough to satisfy.

I occasionally mix tenses, but usually it's part of an unconventional sequence. For example, past tense all the way through until the characters mind meld and then as long as they're melded, the narration is present tense, fragmented and overlapping.

Note that you can nest different aspects of your morphological tense to achieve different objectives as well. For example, I recently wrote a chapter in past tense that had a good deal of recollection in it - I used past perfect tense for the recollection to indicate that the events were further in the past. I did have to redo it all in simple past tense once it got long enough that all the many uses of "had" started to grate!

Anyway, I'm sticking to past tense because it's the industry standard and I want to work according to that convention in anticipation of publishing original fiction one day.