 For Authors: March 10, 2021 Issue [#10627] |
This week: Brush Up Your Tense Edited by: Max Griffin đłď¸âđ  
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In Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter tells us to "Brush up your Shakespeare." That's good advice. It's also good advice to brush up your tense when writing fiction.
When do the events in your story happen?
In The Time Machine, the events of the novel begin in Victorian England before moving to the distant future. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurâs Court, the protagonist begins in fin de siècle Connecticut before moving to King Arthurâs court. In both novels, the era is part of the fictional world that the authors construct.
So, one answer to the question âwhen does your story happenâ is the era in which the fictional world occurs. Depending on the novel, the era can change. For the adventures of the Time Traveler in Wellsâ novel, the far future becomes his present. Similarly, sixth century England becomes Hank Morganâs present in Twainâs novel. In both cases, a fictional era becomes the fictional present for the characters.
Many novels happen in other eras. For other examples, Faulkner set Absalom, Absalom before the Civil War, and Jean M. Auel set The Clan of the Cave Bear in the pre-historic past. Science fiction is often set in the future: think of Huxley's Brave New World or Asimov's Foundation series.
Thereâs yet another way to think about the question of when fictional events happen. The syntax of the story establishes a here-and-now on the page thatâs independent of the era. All the novels mentioned above use past tense for their narrative, so the syntax on the page is past tense.
It's not just historical novels that use the past tense. Most novels do. Consider King's The Shining or Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Chances are pretty good that if you randomly select a novel, the narrative will use past tense. Nonetheless, as we read these novels, we are transported, via the point-of-view characters, to the here-and-now of intricate fictional worlds. Talented authors breathe life into the fictional present and make it real and compelling. The fictional present, regardless of era or the tense of the narration, is where the readerâs imagination resides while experiencing the story.
The fictional present is different from the readerâs present. While I read The Time Machine, Wells transports my imagination to the future. This is true, even though the Time Traveler recounts his experiences in the future using past tense, and I exist in the present.
There are many reasons that most novels use past tense for their narrative regardless of the era of the fictional world. For one thing, weâre used to it. Stephen King has even said that present tense is only suitable for short stories. I admit that when I read fiction that uses present tense for the narration, I find it distracting just because itâs unusual.
Of course, unusual doesnât mean bad. John Updike was one the premiere stylists of the last century, and he used present tense in his masterwork Rabbit Run. Here are the opening sentences:
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires.
I note in passing he also uses an omniscient narrator. His compelling use of language draws readers into the story, and part of what makes this effective is the use of present tense. Other examples of novels using present tense for the narrative include Fight Club, The Hunger Games, and Insurgent.
Screenplays almost always use present tense, although they serve a different purpose. Screenplays provide the framework for many other artists to work their magic. The director, the actors, the Foley artist, the musicians, the costumers, and so on all bring the screenplay to life. In a novel or short story, the author has only the words on the page. With skill and artistry, those words can bring everything to life in the readersâ imaginations. The point here is that making the fictional world real doesnât depend on the tense of the verbs.
Of course, active verbs are better than passive--and verbs are better than adjectives--precisely because they are active and thus better stimulate the readersâ imaginations. But the tense of the verb isnât whatâs important. Itâs certainly possible to use present tense and draw readers into the fictional world as the above examples show.
Whatever syntactical tense you chose for your narrative, close attention to grammar is important. In particular, the grammar associated with verb tenses helps keeps your readers grounded in the here-and-now of the fictional present.
Sometimes you will see people complaining that you should never use verbs like âhad.â This advice sometimes comes in the form of including 'had' on lists of empty words like "very" that clutter your prose and should be cut. Sometimes thatâs true, sometimes not. The reason "had" can be a perfectly good word has to do with perfect verbs. In fact, when I started this blog, I had been thinking about perfect verbs.
Wait. Whatâs a perfect verb? Itâs one where the action takes place at a time different from the surrounding context, or aspect. The phrase above is an example:
...when I started this blog, I had been thinking about perfect verbs.
The initial clause establishes the context as being in the past, when I started this blog. Now, if I followed that with âI was thinking about perfect verbs,â that would say starting the blog and thinking about perfect verbs happened at the same time in the past. But instead, I wrote, âI had been thinking about perfect verbs.â That means the precipitating event, thinking about these pesky verbs, took place before I started writing the blog and, in part, motivated it. In particular, the âhadâ adds information and sequences when things took place. âHad been thinkingâ is past perfect progressive because the thinking was (a) in the past relative to the context and; (b) ongoing.
The "progressive" part of "past perfect progressive" has nothing to do with politics; it's the part that means the thinking was ongoing as opposed to a one-shot thing. If Iâd written âhad thought,â it would be simple past perfect because that phrasing means the âthinkingâ wasnât continuous but rather occurred at a single point in time prior to starting the blog.
Unlike present and past tenses, the perfect tenses in English are not fully inflected and depend on a form of "to be", used as an auxiliary verb, to establish the "perfection." Irregular verbs can add to the confusion. English grammar is filled with puzzling conundrums; for example, what's the past perfect of "beware?" Hint: it's a trick question.
Another error besides "had-hatred" is to mistake these auxiliary verbs as indicating passive voice. When properly used, perfect verbs have clearly identified subjects (actors), as in the clause in my example. Passive voice is generally bad in fiction, but not because of auxiliary verbs.
So, no, itâs not always the case that you should eliminate âhadâ from your writing.
There. I got to make the point that was annoying me back when I started writing.
That felt good.
But I digress. Let's get back to the main thread: does it matter whether you use present tense or past tense in your narrative?
While present tense can add immediacy to your narrative, there are some challenges to using it. As I noted above, it is unusual and thus runs the risk of distracting readers from your fictional world rather than drawing them in. This alone makes word craft more important. Secondly, because itâs focused on the present, introducing past history or perspectives can be a bit more challenging. Third, because the mind is always active and often jitters from one thought to another disconnected thought, maintaining continuity can be harder. These are some of the same challenges you face when writing first person narratives, which is also generally harder than third person limited. None of these are debilitating. If present tense is right for your story, go for it.
Just be sure to brush up your grammar first.
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