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I've been meaning to ask this for a while....
Mon, 11/16/2009 - 17:28 — parakletos
..... is it new trend on the Englsih language to use the present tense all the time. And example....
The man sits in his chair a looks at the window....
Whereas I would say....
The man sat in his chair and looked at the window.....
Just wondering......
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I think its just a lack of education...
... it seems few people actually understand the difference between past and present tense these days, so what you get is a strange combination, with present tense tending to be what comes most readily to mind when one is visualising a situation.
-SC
I've used it myself a time or two
Sometimes it just seems to fit the atmosphere of a story to tell it in what I believe is technically known as "historical present". It gives an immediacy that the perfect tense does not.
I've also found it has the interesting effect of removing any certainty that the POV character must have survived the tale to be relating it.
NotACat wrote: Sometimes it
Sometimes it just seems to fit the atmosphere of a story to tell it in what I believe is technically known as "historical present". It gives an immediacy that the perfect tense does not.
I've also found it has the interesting effect of removing any certainty that the POV character must have survived the tale to be relating it.
The only place I normally see it is in a script:
ANDREW—[Seeing ROBERT has not noticed his presence—in a loud shout.] Hey there! [ROBERT turns with a start. Seeing who it is, he smiles.] Gosh, you do take the prize for day-dreaming! And I see you've toted one of the old books along with you. Want to bust your eyesight reading in this light?
ROBERT—[Glancing at the book in his hand with a rather shamefaced air.] I wasn't reading—just then, Andy.
I can't think of any novels I've read that were in present tense all the way through.
Can't say I've run across it
Can't say I've run across it except when it's a mistake. Most of the time when I've seen the present tense in a narrative it's just been a confused tense, usually with the author having switched to it from the past tense partway through by mistake. I don't think it's used very often in third person narratives and second person is incredibly rare in my experience (not to mention damned tricky). It's pretty jarring now that I think about it, not to mention thoroughly annoying unless executed with extreme care.
CaffeineAddict wrote: Can't
Can't say I've run across it except when it's a mistake. Most of the time when I've seen the present tense in a narrative it's just been a confused tense, usually with the author having switched to it from the past tense partway through by mistake. I don't think it's used very often in third person narratives and second person is incredibly rare in my experience (not to mention damned tricky). It's pretty jarring now that I think about it, not to mention thoroughly annoying unless executed with extreme care.
I have. It was awful and hard to read because of how awkward sounding it was. It was a pity that the author wrote it that way because it had a good plot.
A fish without a bicycle cannot contemplate his navel.
It can work
I've seen it used to good effect (recently, Ken) in a first-person narrative. In that case, the PoV character was relating events that she had witnessed, so the entire passage was like a portion of dialog. Used that way, it's easy to accept that some individuals relate past events in the present tense when speaking aloud:
"So I say, 'what are you talking about?' And he says, 'the price of tea in China!' Then we both went out for coffee."
It's certainly not grammatically correct for prose, but it can be a useful and accurate characterization element when used properly.
That said, it's much more common to see it used in error.
Like everything else, it depends...
"So I say, 'what are you talking about?' And he says, 'the price of tea in China!' Then we both went out for coffee."
It's certainly not grammatically correct for prose, but it can be a useful and accurate characterization element when used properly.
In addition to using it as a way of demonstrating speech patterns (see Dave's flattering reference above), I've also used it (and seen it used) as a way of creating immediacy. In narrative voicing, there's a crucial question of how far you want the voice to be from the characters and the action. First person POV is one way of manipulating this, but it's sometimes the wrong way, since 1st POV limits what the narrative voice can see/know. In one of my published stories, I had a scene that took place 20,000+ years ago, and I put it in the present tense as a way of bridging some of that distance.
Harlan Ellison despises the use of the present tense in fiction.
What I hate is when it's used in nonfiction to describe events that really took place in the past.
Snork!
Harlan Ellison despises the use of the present tense in fiction.
This is very nearly sufficient justification in and of itself to use the present tense as much as possible.
Harlan might be (or have been) a great author, but his people skills make me look smooth and sophisticated.
non-fiction
What I hate is when it's used in nonfiction to describe events that really took place in the past.
Curiously, its use in that context actually makes sense to me. Use of the present tense when stepping through a past event helps keep the sequence straight.
- SC