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

[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.