The Pros and Cons of Writing a Novel in Present Tense

And I Might Add, the Utter Insanity of Writing in First Person, Present Tense...

I pondered the subject of the first post for this new blog, and it came to me that narrative voice is probably the most important first decision a writer should make before attempting to write a novel.

And then I wondered, should I just discuss narrative voice and the many types writers use? That seemed a little too general. Perhaps new writers need to know the pitfalls and advantages of each type of narrative voice before making a decision.

Maybe...

Everything All at Once

But while evaluating a young writer's novella, who chose to write in both the present tense and in first person, it came to me that I should discuss the one narrative voice that writers should never, ever use—unless they really know what they're doing. It's one that new writers almost thoughtlessly, blithely engage in, and the trouble they get into with this narrative combination sometimes causes me to snort coffee through my nostrils with what happens, throwing their stories into existential chaos.

To put it another way, first person, present tense narrative is a deadly combination. Let's see why...

I would first like to direct your attention to an excellent article by Brian Klem, titled "The Pros and Cons of Writing a Novel in Present Tense." In his article he does a great job of defending both the pros of writing in present tense and the cons of writing in present tense. It's a great starting point for the main focus of my post, which is writing in first person, present tense. He does not address this aspect.

Let's define "narrative voice." The narrative voice is different than the character points of view in a novel; they can be considered voices as well, but not the overarching job that the narrator does in telling the entire story. So here is a short list of the most probable narrative voices in storytelling. There are others besides those listed here, but those will be reserved for works of non-fiction.

1. Omniscient, third-person narrator.
2. Limited, third-person narrator.
3. First-person narrator.

And here is a list of the possible narrative tenses.

1. Past tense
2. Present tense

Seasoned writers know that the other tenses (past perfect, future perfect, conditional, etc.) are used to coordinate and navigate past or present tense. I'm not going to get into that in this post.

Right away, I want to discuss issues that bother me with present-tense narrative before getting into first person. It bothers me, but it apparently doesn't bother some readers or writers. If we have a 200-page novel and the overarching verb tense is the present, regardless of whether it is first- or third-person, to me it means that no matter where you open the book and begin reading that portion of the story is happening right now, in the objective present. If you flip back twenty pages, the story is happening right now, in the objective present. If you flip forward twenty pages, the story is happening right now, in the objective present. An entire book written in the present tense says that everything that happens in the book is happening at the same time, all at once. How can it not? There is no past; there is no future; it's all right now.

On page 15, the quarterback is throwing the winning touchdown pass, and on page 17 he is simultaneously being rushed to the hospital, while at the same time on page 16 he is being hit from behind by an opposing team member.

In Brian Klem's article, which I referenced at the beginning of this post, he adds that it is more difficult to move around in time with the narrative present tense. We get a smattering of the past tense in the present-tense narrative:

The moment that brought him here, looking out a window, expecting them to show up at any second, makes him wonder if he can convince them to forget the debt. He doubts that he can.

As we can see, it's rather awkward to express a past action that has bearing on the present. Another element I really don't like about present tense is that we can never quite move forward, without simply jumping to another present moment. It's kind of like the ongoing action that beginning a sentence with a gerund forces us into:

Killing the car engine she fumbles with the keys at the front door.

Wait...what?

She went all the way from the car to the front door in the blink of an eye—or worse, her arms were long enough to kill the engine in her car and AT THE SAME TIME fumble with the keys at the front door. Yes, this is a bad example. It's meant to be a bad example. Unfortunately, new writers create these bad examples all the time. They don't think of what creating "ongoing" action is doing to the visual scene unfolding. We need to navigate through time to get us from killing the engine to fumbling with the keys at the front door. We need a sense of first this...then that. It's difficult to show discrete action if everything happens in the present tense.

Further, present tense is unnatural to us as we navigate through our day in real life. The moment of being in the present is so fleeting that we cannot logically experience it. When we say "the quarterback throws the pass"is he at that moment cocking his arm back or releasing the ball from his hand, or doing both of these even more minute actions at the same time? In our perception in real life, we're either going to do something or we have done it. "The quarterback threw the pass." That action, using the past tense verb "threw" doesn't confuse us with the process and the steps in throwing the pass, like cocking the arm back, whipping it forward, and releasing the ball. The past tense says he just threw the pass. Of course there are semantic exceptions.

"What are you doing?"
"I'm writing this article."
[Actually at this moment I am typing these letters on the keyboard.]

"What is the movie about?"
"It is about this guy who robs a bank and then goes on the run."

There are also occasions when present tense is the only logical way to describe an ongoing action. Let's say that there is a guy with binoculars and a guy behind him. The guy with binoculars is watching another guy across the street and is describing what's going on to the guy behind him.

"He's pulling a knit cap down on his face; now he's assembling a rifle from a suitcase. Now he's sneaking along the street, darting in and out of the shadows..."

Note, however, in describing the ongoing action of the thief across the street, the guy with binoculars gives us a play-by-play description of several actions, as he views them. But later when the cops arrive, the guy with the binoculars tells the police what happened in the past tense.

"I saw this guy across the street put on a mask, assemble a rifle, and sneak down the sidewalk."

Within the context of an unfolding story, there will be perfectly logical occasions when limited use of present-tense narration is the best choice. But again, not of an entire story. At some point, we have to move the story forward and allow time to flow.

Now to the utter insanity of using first person, present tense narrative voice.

The first thing we should consider is just how the first-person narrator is telling the story in the present tense. Readers make unconscious assumptions when reading a story. When a story is told in first person, we assume that the character/narrator has lived through an experience (a story) and sits down at some later time to write about the experience. We also have to assume that the first-person narrator has actually lived to tell us his experience, because otherwise how would he have written the story? We also assume that everything in the story is now in the narrator's past. Does it make sense to tell it in the present tense?

Can a first-person narrator write about his own death—especially while it is occurring in the present instant? Only if the reality in which the story takes place is one where ghosts or souls or entities from the Other Realm can somehow communicate, use a computer or typewriter, or make a manuscript appear to the corporeal world. No, we don't need to know this, but we have to assume that this is the case.

Can a first-person narrator tell of the people that attends his funeral? When you write it in present tense, it becomes utter insanity. Can a first person narrator be unconscious and continue to tell his story? No. Unless the narrative is told in the past tense, and even then we have to assume that he lived to tell the story.

There are times when the first person narrator can present segments of her story in the present tense, and I have done this myself when my narrator/character is writing in journal form and the reader knows that the narrator is sharing journal entries. It works just fine to write snippets in present tense:

I listen to the silence as I write, allowing my thoughts to present themselves for my consideration...it's raining outside the tent, now, and a cold wind, feeling wet, blusters its way inside like a bear looking for camper food.

I have written an equal number of novels in first person and in third person omniscient. But I cannot conceive of writing either of these narrative points of view in the present tense, at least for the entire story.

I have read some well-considered articles discussing the advantages and sheer brilliance of first person, present tense narration. But for those novels, like The Hunger Games written in first person present tense, the authors were not novices.