I've talked before about present tense being over-used and misused in contemporary fiction:
These days it seems fashionable for beginners, especially in the YA and literary genres (oh, yes, litfic is a genre), to write their first novel in present tense. They are setting themselves up for a very hard time. Present tense is devilishly difficult. Present tense does not make the text more immediate--just the opposite, in fact. Present tense is the language of dreams and jokes, not realistic fiction.
[...]
Yes, I used present tense in one of Slow River's narrative strands. I did it to a purpose. [...] Present tense for the distant, only half-remembered childhood narrative. Past tense for the narrative present. Present tense is dreamlike, unrealistic, unmoored. Past tense is hard, solid--concrete.
Part of a master's expertise (a master of any trade) is knowing the right tool for the job. A gardener understands that you don't use a chainsaw to prune the roses, you use secateurs. (Actually, anyone with roses knows that.) Some novelists these days seem to be acting like beginners; they seem ignorant of their choices. They're picking up the literary equivalent of secateurs to cut down trees. I am mystified by this behaviour.
I'm not the only one. A few weeks ago, blogger and editor, Moonrat, explained that "present tense is not a reason I categorically reject a novel submission. But it often becomes a contributing reason." She lays out her reasoning here. If you're a writer, please read it. You'll learn a lot.
And now, over at the Telegraph, Philip Pullman and Philip Hensher have weighed in on the issue, criticising the Booker shortlist for its inclusion of so many novels written in present tense. Pullman says, "This wretched fad has been spreading more and more widely. I can’t see the appeal at all. To my mind it drastically narrows the options available to the writer. When a language has a range of tenses such as the perfect, the imperfect, the pluperfect, each of which makes other kinds of statement possible, why on earth not use them?"
A bit curmudgeonly, perhaps, but not wrong in essence.
Posts
Thanks, Coach.
ReplyDeletejeanne
Nicola -- you had me scared for a minute... then I looked up "secateurs" in the dictionary and read that it's the British term for pruning shears. OK, right with you.
ReplyDeletejeanne, my pleasure.
ReplyDeleteDianne, I'm guessing the French might quibble about whose term it is :) But then, eh, the Romans might get in on the act...
Fair enough, but Pullman's claim that the choice of present tense is simply 'fashionable' makes no sense when it comes to Emma Donoghue's Room. I don't see how you could reasonably use the past tense if your narrator is five-years-old. Children live in the present. Like any stylistic choice -- including Nicola's to use present tense for sections of Slow River -- there are always situations that cry out for ignoring certain 'rules' of writing. I think the problem is that this article is too short and lacks nuance. To stick with Emma Donoghue's work, for example, one would, in fairness, need to point out that both her historical and her contemporary fiction are written in the past tense and that Room is an exception. For all I know, that might also be true of the other two authors, whose work I don't know.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Emma was reading from Room at the local library yesterday and noted that, although Jack, her protagonist, shares many speech patterns with her son, she endowed him with one characteristic no five-year-old has: the ability to tell a series of events in a coherent and sequential fashion. To my mind, the use of present tense was absolutely necessary to make Jack believable as a story-teller. If it had been written in the past tense, it would have stretched credulity entirely too far.
My two cents...
Wendy, very good point re: Donoghue. I haven't read the book, though--given others' praise--I think I'll at least give it a go.
ReplyDeleteThanks for keeping us honest :)
I like a sense of time flow in writing. I find that when writing is in the present tense (save for a good literary reason), I feel like I'm reading with a concrete wall constantly two inches in front of my nose. To me, present tense disrupts time flow unlesss it is used with skill.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a lot of of skill, certainly more than (most) beginners are capable of.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaving it to the experts :).
ReplyDelete