Episode 99: March 14, 2008

Grammar Girl here.

Today's topic is verb tense.
 

This episode is a little unusual because I usually deal with topics that can be widely applied to fiction and non-fiction writing, but recently I was on a plane reading Seth Harwood's crime novel Jack Wakes Up, and I was struck by the fact that it was written in the present tense. That present tense writing really stood out the whole time I was reading the book and got me thinking about how people use tense in writing.

Fiction writing is way outside my area of expertise, but I believe it's interesting enough to be worth discussing, and I welcome your comments if you want to add to the discussion.

As an aside, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says that it's acceptable to use the word way as an adverb, as I did when I said fiction was way outside my area of expertise. But you shouldn't use it that way in formal situations (1).

What are the Basic Tenses?

Back to tense.

First here are some examples of simple tense so we're all on the same page:

Present tense is when you write as if things are happening right now. For example, the first sentence of Jack Wakes Up is Jack walks into a diner just south of Japantown.

Past tense is when you write as if things happened in the past. If you rewrite that first sentence in the past tense, you get Jack WALKED into a diner just south of Japantown.

Those are the basics, but there are many other tenses such as progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive.

Major English Verb Tenses

 

Present
Simple present	Jack walks	verb (+ s/es for third person)
Present progressive	Jack is walking	am/is/are + present participle
Present perfect	Jack has walked (doesn't sound like present to me?)	has/have + past participle
Present perfect progressive	Jack has been walking	has/have been + present participle
Past
Simple past	Jack walked	verb + d/ed/t (except for irregular verbs)
Past progressive	Jack was walking	was/were + past participle
Past perfect	Jack had walked	had + past participle
Past perfect progressive	Jack had been walking	had been + present participle
Future
Simple future	Jack will walk Jack is going to walk	will + verb am/is/are going to + verb
Future progressive	Jack will be walking Jack is going to be walking	will be + present participle am/is/are going to be + present participle
Future perfect	Jack will have walked Jack is going to have walked	will have + past participle am/is/are going to have + past participle
Future perfect progressive	Jack will have been walking Jack is going to have been walking	will have been + present participle am/is/are going to have been + present participle

 

Why Use Present Tense?

Now, in my experience, most books are written in past tense, as if the story has already happened and the narrator is telling you about it after the fact. John Updike's novel Rabbit, Run, published in 1959, is sometimes thought to be the first novel written in the present tense (2), but Updike credits two other writers as coming before him: Damon Runyon and Joyce Cary. Nevertheless, I found Updike's comments about his state of mind when he was choosing the present tense to be illuminating. I've heard people complain that present tense novels sound like screen directions, and for me, it IS easier to imagine the sentence Jack walks into a diner just south of Japantown as the opening sentence of a screenplay than as the first sentence in a novel. And here's what Updike had to say about Rabbit, Run back in 1990:

It was subtitled, in my conception of it, ''A Movie''; I imagined the opening scene as something that would happen behind credits, and I saw the present tense of the book as corresponding to the present tense in which we experience the cinema (3).

I read that and thought, "Ah, ha! He thought of it as screen direction too."

I was so intrigued by this idea of writing a novel in the present tense that I interviewed Seth Harwood a few days ago to learn more about his reasoning for doing it and learned that other people had also told him that it seemed like a screenplay. But his background is in writing short stories, and he tells me that short stories are more commonly written in the present tense, so it wasn't a big leap for him to write a novel that way. Also, because his book is a crime novel, writing it in the present tense allows the reader to unfold the mystery at the same time as the main character. When Jack is surprised, we're surprised at the same time.

Reading a fiction novel requires the reader to suspend disbelief to some degree to get wrapped up in a story we know isn't true, and a present tense novel can require an extra suspension of disbelief to accept the idea that events are unfolding right now.

I was also reminded by one of my Twitter friends that another book I recently read was written in the present tense: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I found the use of present tense in that novel less distracting, I imagine because the entire novel is written in such an unusual way. That book is about a time traveler and tells the story from the perspective of two different people, and there is a lot of jumping around in time.

Anyway, my take away from reading about verb tense in novels and from talking with Seth Harwood is that some people think writing in the present tense is modern and other people think it is trendy and annoying. It's kind of a risky move if you're trying to get your first novel published, but it didn't stop Seth. He got his book published. And although I did find the present tense in his book distracting, I still enjoyed the story. It had a lot of action and was a great book to read on the plane.

Also, If you go to Seth's webpage--sethharwood.com--you'll find a recording of our interview, in which we actually talk about tense and person.That's all. Thanks for listening.