Past or Present Tense: Which is Better For Your Story?

Writers will argue about anything, and I've already touched on a lot of subjects that will get heated if you discuss them in writing forums, or at a panel at a convention somewhere. While I was polling some of my regular readers for topics, I came across one that I didn't actually think was a big deal, but it turns out there are a lot of folks who have very strong opinions on this.

So I figured I'd talk about the Past Tense v. Present Tense conflict that's been raging for the past several decades, and offer my thoughts on the issue.

For those who thought Chicago V. MLA was a big deal, buckle up!

Using Tense as a Tool of Your Story

Near as I can tell, according to articles like The Pros and Cons of Writing a Novel in Present Tense, the use of present tense as a long-form writing style has been considered a mainstream option since roughly the 1980s. Before that, most commercially successful novels (and most fiction in general) were written in the past tense. But once someone proved that a present tense novel could work, it sort of became the new thing to do. So younger authors experimented with it, some of them were successful, and so on, until some authors just thought that present tense was how you did it now. Times had changed, and you simply couldn't write in past tense anymore.

To be absolutely clear, you can do basically whatever you want. You can even be successful with it, since success is determined by number of readers and sales rather than by which items on a particular list get checked off. Past and present tense are both viable tools. However, you should think of them as two different types of screwdriver. They might arguably be the same tool, but they are not both useful in the same situations.

Keep your toolbox varied, is what I'm saying.

The primary advantage of present tense writing is that it gives your story a sense of immediacy. The reader is right there, sitting on your protagonist's shoulder and watching the story unfold as they do. And that is an effective way of telling a story, there is no doubt.

However, using present tense also locks you into a particular time frame. The reader, much like the characters, are forever in the midst of now, which can limit you in ways that using the past tense doesn't. This can also work really well for ratcheting up tension, since there's no way of knowing whether risks that manifest are going to be overcome, or if this is where the narrative is going to end. While there's no denying that present tense offers intensity, it can be like the intensity and immediacy of a sprint. It's why it usually works far better in short fiction, where the limitations mentioned don't present such an overall problem to the story being told. And while a reader might be willing to go with you on a journey of several hundred pages, doing so at full-tilt might be to the detriment of your story, and the patience of the reader.

Past tense, in fairness, can feel languid at times. There's also that implied question of, "Well, the narrator is telling the story in the past tense, so clearly that must mean they survived?" unless you're doing a third-person omniscient in the past tense. However, a past tense narrative can jump back and forth over the time, and provide a great deal more freedom than the present tense can. It can also allow for suspense in ways that present tense can't. A good example of this is Poe's short story The Maelstrom, where we see a man so crippled by fear and anxiety that we then wonder what he could have survived to turn him into the creature we see before us. A present tense narrative can only go forward, and that works for some stories, but not for others.

Which Should You Use?

Neither tense is inherently superior to the other, in general. However, something I would recommend you keep in mind is that past tense can often be more forgiving than present tense because it provides you more options and structural tricks to help keep your story moving. However, there are going to be stories that will work with either tense, if you've got the skill to design your narrative around that particular setup.

End of the day, though, this guy is going to be a deciding factor.

Like with anything else, however, whether you should use past or present tense should be decided (at least in part) by your readers. Which genre you're writing, the length of your project, and who your targeted demographic is will make a lot of difference. Because in many instances, readers may be ready and able to accept present tense for a story. In others the very fact that it's told in present tense may be a turnoff large enough to reconsider your story's tense in the first place.

That gets into marketing decisions, and trying to move copies off a shelf, but it's important to remember that writing the book and selling the book are just two sides of the same coin that is your career. So you should keep in mind that one can (and does) affect the other.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

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