The TENSION of TENSE Choice

 

I adore first person present tense.

Present tense takes me, as a reader, right in. I’m here, and here we go together, all the way until the story’s end.

 

When it comes to writing picture books for the very young, it also feels like natural language. Toddlers use present tense even when speaking of past or future events.

 

Here’s the kicker: what to do when a picture book is about something that is no more? Think, the past. Think, HISTORY.

Like the Milkman, or corsets, or rotary phones.

 

There are writers who can do it. I’m still struggling.  

Writing in PRESENT Tense

How do you feel, as a reader, about stories in present tense?

My last two drafted novels for Middle Grades are in first person present tense. A year and a half ago I read an excellent YA, Bound by Vijaya Bodach, written that way. When I next sat to write my story, my writing inner voice would have it no other way.

In present tense, I see, taste, and feel what the narrator does in real time. Every detail is vivid, and what is obscure to the narrator is also obscure to me, the writer. There is an immediacy and urgency as I follow, just as in this paragraph.

Of course, present tense has its limitations. An excellent reflection on this (as well as a plea to not use it) can be found in this article. Like the passive voice, (which I also use thrice in this paragraph) there is a reason for the choice of tense. Past tense allows greater flexibility narrating back and forth in time. But blimey if some things aren’t lost or become diffused by past tense narration, just as in this paragraph.

Sharp, immediate, intimate. This is present tense narration in a nutshell.

In picture books, it also seems the most natural. Very young persons begin speaking in present tense. Compare these two sentences and see how natural present tense is for the little ones, as opposed to moving back and forth in time:

1.   I tell Mom I need this cookie

2.   I told Mom I will need this cookie

Imagine what Snoopy can do if he changes it to –

It is a dark and stormy night

Just sayin’. It’s easy enough to edit the whole text to simple past later, and if an editor insisted, I would do it. But for holding my own interest in telling and writing it down, present tense narration does it.