A question on tenses: what is acceptable, and what makes people point accusingly.

[scarylady]

Hiya all.

I have a question for you, if you'll indulge me.  I'm planning my next, long, chaptered fanfic, and as I'm making my initial forays into writing it I'm strongly feeling that, to get the style and feel right, I want a third-person, present-tense Prologue, and a third-person past-tense Rest of Fic.

Is this allowable?  Or is it sloppy?  I would prefer not to write the entire thing in present tense, but the Prologue is resisting all my efforts to re-write it into past tense.

Comments

[niniane]

I'm not sure that I'd call it "sloppy" per se, but confusing, definitely.

I'm honestly a big fan of third person, limited POV set in the past tense. I think that other tenses/POVs can work, but if you're going to use them, I sort of want a reason for why you just need the different tense/POV rather than the standard default. (i.e. I've seen second person POV, future tense work, but the author really thought out why he needed to use this tense vs. something a bit more standard)

So if there's a damned good reason for shifting POV/tense, I say go for it. But it's definitely a distraction to do that (and distractions tend to annoy me and other readers), so I'd be wary. Prologues, I think, can be especially daunting as we expect them to come first (chronologically), so it's hard to see why this would be in present, but stuff that came later would have happened in the past.

Again, though, a lot depends on the reason for writing it in present tense. If the idea is that the prologue happened later than the rest of the story, and so the view point character is using it to set the stage for the story as a whole, it might make sense that it's in present, and the rest of the story is the story that he/she is telling.

Then again, I also tend to hate prologues and epilogues unless there's a damned good reason for them, too, so I may not be the best person to ask as to whether or not you should use one as my default answer would be, "Cut out the prologue. Problem solved!"

[scarylady]

The only reason to issue this section as a prologue, rather than the first part of chapter one, is because it works better in the present tense, but I can't pinpoint why.

It's setting the scene in a way that is quite seperate to the tone of the rest of the story, and although I've tried twice now to move it to past tense it just seems to lose something important and I wind up deleting the past tense version.

I wish I understood it better and could explain it. It certainly isn't following any kind of logical rule about when it is, compared to the later action, and I hate that.

[niniane]

Yeah...and to me, that would make me think that it probably needs a rewrite into the past.

I'm of the impression that there are no real "rules" to writing, as no matter what the rule is, you can find someone who's broken it well. But there are a lot of "generally good ideas", that can really only be broken when you know why you're doing it. (Well, in my opinion, anyway.) And sticking to the same tense/POV in a story is one of those "generally a good idea" things. (Although I've seen a lot veer between omniscient and limited third person POV, as long as it's not done in a single scene.)

What is it that reads/works better about the present tense? Is there a way to regain the immediacy in other ways? (i.e. using active rather than passive verbs, or something along those lines?)

[nightsfury]

Echoing what ninane said about prologue/epilogue and POV, I'll just add the following.
Are you trying for a feeling of immediacy? Tension? Maybe changing the rhythm of the prose, using hard sounding words and short sentences might help. What effect are you trying to set up in the scene? What do you want the reader to come away with after reading it?
Also, I've sometimes found that switching to a different character's POV sometimes helps a scene to gel better.
Hope this helps.

[niniane]

Yeah, I've definitely done a lot of "keep trying POVs until one works" things. It's pathetic how many scenes have been rewritten like...10 times...as I keep switching POV. But, you know, it's a handy trick! And whatever works!

[noctuary]

Okay, now, I don't know if you've read "Hannibal", but whatsisname, Thomas Harris or whatever, he has a tendency in that book to jump between present and past tense from chapter to chapter. When I started reading it and noticed this I got a bit grumpy. "How sloppy!" I thought. BUT. The more I read of it, the more I liked it, and the more it seemed to well illustrate the story he wanted to tell. I ended up very glad that he'd done it that way. It gave the book an extra bit of depth and strength.

So if it works, go with it.

[analect]

^^ Yup. Sometimes, weird shit works. *grin*

I'd been warned against doing anything in the present tense. Then, when I went ahead and wrote the thing in present tense anyway, none of the people who'd said 'I hate present tense, don't use it' complained. IMHO, some things just 'want' to be that way, so if it feels better than past tense, don't deny it.

Equally, if it's a technical issue and *only* a technical issue, viz., immediacy and import, then nightsfury's point about changing the rhythm, using short sentences etc., is a great way of bridging the difference, and is probably a better idea than allowing present tense to be chronologically peculiar.

...if that makes sense. I've been on elderly duty for three days. Brain fried.

[scarylady]

It seems to be kind of that... I write very plain prose, and I wanted to write this with a little more poetry, as it's the reader's first glimpse of Antiva. Every time I try to move it to past tense, it clashes with the imagery.

I don't know why, though, and that annoys me. How am I meant to learn, if I can't understand it?

[analect]

A-haaaa... I think I see. Tough to suggest appropriate butt-kicking without seeing it, but tell me - what sort of rhythm and construction are you using in present tense? I find, if you have a distinctive flavour there, shifting it into past tense leaves you with the curse of 'was' etc.

Also, what are you doing in the way of sub-clauses for description? Assonance, simile, metaphor? Give us details, and we shall pore over them. Sling summat up if you like. ;D

[scarylady]

Thanks, I'll gratefully bung it over to you. It's not terribly long.

I would prefer to move it to chapter one and carry on from there with the rest of the chapter. But that will mean staying in present tense and I'm not fond of it.