Writing narration in Present tense

Maybe. But I’m not sure it would, at least to me. I guess I’m trying to pin down the “why” of some of the statements about how it affects the work. I don’t see it, yet, but maybe they’re right. But the argument are generally just conclusive statements, so I’m wondering if people can dig down into why, from a technical perspective, readability, or whatever, they think the results would be one way as opposed to another. It’s interesting to me probably largely because my own reading experience is not along these lines.

 

Truth be told, I wish this was the case for me. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of good reads out there I'm missing out on because the tense just doesn't work for me. What a shame. Then again, a lot of things don't work for me. But I'm somewhat of a weird reader. I didn't like Outlander (I couldn't even get past chapter 1 and let's not even mention the whole aspect of forced adultery in the book) + most books that are esteemed as literary masterpieces are not to my liking. In general, I prefer to be entertained by the books I read. If I want to learn, then I'll pick up a science magazine. SO...tying this into the OP, present tense doesn't allow me to feel entertained. It feels like work. There it is.

 

I can see that, for people who interpret a story as being narrated by one of the characters. I never read a story that way unless the author makes it explicit that this is what is going on, and in that case a present tense story might seem a bit more odd. I know from other discussions that a lot of readers do read stories as though they’re narrations of past recollections of the characters.

 

For one thing, Character A's present is not Character B's present. The author would have to be more explicit, even heavy-handed, in order to keep clear the sequence of events. A straight translation at the sentence level would quickly break down.

 

It's true that both "presents" are not the same, but I'm not sure that matters. Scene breaks are commonly also breaks or gaps in time. The next scene may be contemporaneous, prior, or after the previous scene within the chronology of the story. I'm not sure a scene being in present tense changes any of that, at least if I'm understanding what you mean correctly.

 

Yeah, it's really annoying when I have a birthday party and all my characters bring the same presents.

 

Oh, Svrtnsse, that's all in the past now.

 

I really didn't notice whether stories were written in present tense or past until I started to study writing and take writing more seriously. Now, I find I have to kind of switch gears and adjust. It usually feels weird for the first bit. Otherwise, present or past, it doesn't matter all that much to me.

As for writing, IMHO, if you're kind of new to writing, I'd say stay away from present tense until you're able to comfortably write stories in past. When I started writing waaaay back when, one of the biggest mistakes I made was misinterpreting the tip to write active prose vs passive prose as meaning to write in present tense.

Any way, when I did that, it seemed like it made my writing better because of the immediacy it gave the prose. It made things read so much faster. But I found for me, it just a superficial improvement that masked other issues I had. In addition, I found as a writer, being so mentally in the present made it feel unnatural to have my characters delve in to introspection and have their thoughts wander beyond what was in front of them. IMHO introspection is important in writing.

Now this isn't to say it can't be done and feel natural. It's just that at that point in time, I didn't have enough control of over writing to use it effectively, so my stories turned out unclear and superficial. But once I dropped the present tense, my stories got better.