Present Tense

A while back I asked someone I know if he had read The Hunger Games. He responded with an answer about the present tense and and how he'd had enough of it in grad school or something like that, expressing no desire to read the series because present tense annoys him. He explained that people don't write or narrate as things are happening; they write them down after the fact. I hadn't thought much about the tense of the book. Now I notice every time a book is in present tense. And guess what? Most of current YA seems to be in present tense. And even I'm starting to get irritated with it.

Jasper Jones The Scorpio Race The Girl of Fire and Thorns The Hunger Games Grave Mercy Before I Fall Divergent A Great and Terrible Beauty and on and on and on

Anna Dressed in Blood Blink Caution Legend Delirium The Disenchantments To Timbuktu My Name Is Not Easy Matched

All present tense. I think all but one is in first person. Ten of them came out last year, two this year.

Recently I stumbled upon a few articles about this very issue. Apparently Philip Pullman (author of His Dark Materials) and Philip Hensher spoke out against the present tense, criticizing the Man Booker shortlist for including so many present tense novels.

(Because I figure that long posts are more often skipped over and skimmed than short ones I've organized this post a certain way. First there are quotations from each of 3 articles on the subject, highlighting their ideas, with particularly interesting/important phrases larger than the rest of the quote, then there's my take, and then I hope you'll share yours.)

Philip Hensher's take:

"But one of the reasons it [present tense narration] has spread so much is a thousand low-level creative writing tutors, clinging to the belief that you can 'make your writing more vivid' by turning to the present tense. Writing is vivid if it is vivid. A shift of tense won’t do that for you."

"What was once a rare, interesting effect is starting to become utterly conventional. Some of the novels on the Booker longlist just seemed to me to be following fashion blindly."

Philip Pullman's take (this one is really good)

"But if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate."

"I want all the young present-tense storytellers (the old ones have won prizes and are incorrigible) to allow themselves to stand back and show me a wider temporal perspective. I want them to feel able to . . . use the full range of English tenses."

He compares first-person narration to handheld cameras:

"It's an abdication of narrative responsibility, in my view. The storyteller, in film or novel, should take charge of the story and not feel shifty about it. Put the camera in the place from which it can see the action most clearly. Make a decision about where that place is. Put it on something steady to stop that incessant jiggling about. Say what happened, and let the reader know when it happened and what caused it and what the consequences were, and tell me where the characters were and who else was present – and while you're at it, I'd like to know what they looked like and whether it was raining."

Deirdre Baker of the Horn Book's take (which is specifically about present-tense narration in YA lit)

"It’s about 'it’s all happening now.' About looking neither backward nor forward. It’s about being in an adolescent’s head—a head of hyperbole in which 'ruin my life forever' and 'worst hair in the history of the world' (say) are statements about Now and only Now."

"The very past-ness of the story acknowledges that the story has been shaped. The past tense shows the narrator, perhaps even the author, quietly admitting responsibility for the way the story is told, admitting that it’s a product of looking back and seeing the threads of cause-and-effect. It’s a silent declaration on the author’s part: this is an act of interpretation, of art, with what I see as the meaningful bits included in the story. In a sense, the past tense is the author acknowledging that to write is to take a stand, to come up with a reading. . . . Of course the story in the present tense is also shaped, but the present tense hides that influence."

"The present tense is reportage or live drama: every present tense verb is a step into nothing, into a tale that must make itself up from moment to moment. A Tweet, perhaps. A Facebook comment. Or even reality TV—happening right before your very eyes."

"In the immediacy of her account, Collins doesn’t tip the shaping hand of the story-maker—narrator or author—but instead intensifies the Now through dramatic enactment in the present tense. Is there a moment after this moment? Nothing about the words promises one.

"It’s that difference, partly, that makes present-tense naysayers irate. Whatever the pretense of your fiction, acknowledge your part in it! Tip your hand; remind your reader that this is artful invention, not reportage! Don’t compose your story as a momentary blip followed by another momentary blip; pretend that it will last until the present is past!"

Baker supposes that the proliferation of present tense has to do with it being the tense of Twitter and Facebook (I disagree) and the video and YouTube culture which allows for the viewing of videos over and over, experiencing them in present again and again (I disagree with that, too). I do think that present tense narration might have become common in part because of how action/plot/etc happens in movies, reality shows, and news.

I also found the comments in response interesting, like this one:

"For me, first person narration is so immediate on its own that adding present tense is like turning it into a sledge hammer."
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

So that's an overview of those articles (though you should read them in their entirety--especially the Philip Pullman one).

I even found something Ursula Le Guin had to say about tenses and persons: "The same fear of “distancing” leads writers to abandon the narrative past tense, which involves and includes past, present, and future, for the tight-focused, inflexible present tense." (find the rest here)

My Take:

I will defend Hunger Games's present tense. The Hunger Games is such a unique (or rather, was) story that is so in the moment--life or death as it's happening, will she survive?--that I think the present tense actually worked with the story, maybe even improving it. Of course Hunger Games has spawned tons of dystopian action novels of survival, like Divergent and Legend, which mimic the same style, nowness, action, etc.

But generally I don't think present tense strengthens a story. Like, Le Guin notes, it's "tight-focused" and inflexible." There aren't many stories where such a take would benefit them. For example, Maggie Stiefvater jumped on the bandwagon with her most recent book, The Scorpio Races (a book I would definitely recommend, despite the tense). There's little action, and I don't see any justification for using present tense. It's not a story of immediacy, rather it develops carefully and calmly over time. It has so much more breadth than the present tense suggests. Overall, tone, story, pacing, everything about it seems better suited to past tense. Jasper Jones is another one which I think would've been better in past tense. At first, it might make some sense because the discovery of the body is very moment by moment, but the narrator, Charlie, is very pensive and thoughtful, and his ruminations are throughout the book. It doesn't make sense that those contemplations are happening right now (is he really going to contemplate in depth the meaning of life between two sentences he says aloud?). He draws parallels and conclusions that make much more sense as ruminations after the fact, in quiet moments of thought, not as everything is happening.

So pretty much I agree with the Philips: it's an interesting effect which, when used wisely (and not too much), can be effective.

So I think it's safe to say this is a trend, but is it a good one? a lasting one? Thoughts?

I think at this point, I want to say, "Stop it already! You don't have have to do something because everyone else is doing it!"