Writers use different tenses to convey when actions occur in a story.
What tense do you prefer to read and why?
Here are two examples:
Present tense: He bangs her senseless as she trembles orgasmically with pronounced shuddering and quivering.
Past tense: He banged her senseless as she trembled orgasmically with pronounced shuddering and quivering.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
Thanks for participating!
I much prefer past tense. I also find many writers have difficulty knowing when to change when they attempt present.
It depends. There are stories that sound best in past tense, especially when exposition is necessary to understand everything that's happening. Then, there are stories that carry a sense of urgency, irony or surprise that thrives with present tense.
I've found that I've often got problems to enjoy stories written in third person, present tense. I guess those are the hardest to pull off while keeping to narrative perspective. First person, present tense, is the "telling as I go" perspective and allows me to immerse myself in the main character's thoughts and emotions, though exposition and generalizations tend to pull me out of it easily.
Past tense gives more leeway. Time jumps don't feel as abrupt there and description is less likely to take me away from the story's flow.
I have always found present tense stories problematic. Part of it may just be writers lacking the skills to pull it off well, but part of it is that my understanding tends to be that a story is just that, a story, a recounting of a something that happened. Present tense just seems to break that for me. I know it is meant to be more "immediate" but the sense of following the person around as they go through the story just never gels for me as a reader. It feels unrealistic or something.
I love - with a passion - present tense. It feels so intense and natural during sex TO WRITE.
And it seems that in short story form here at Lushstories a lot of readers say they favor past tense - but are very receptive to how I write present tense. (I've spent a lot of time strengthening my 1st person skills - it shows)
However, the paying public is far more partial to past tense - so much so that I've started writing in it more.
Now - there are tense structures: present perfect / past perfect - etc. And all this depends on the character/narrator and what their natural mode of speech would be. I've written stories set in the future - and in other countries with multiple languages - so my narrative voices very widely.
Present tense gives you so much more immediacy. You are right here, right now! But you have to have the goods to pull it off. In other words, save present tense for when you really want to take the reader for a wild ride. Use it for standard storytelling and it loses its punch and gets annoying and gimmicky. Save it for when you really need it.
Having said that, it probably works better for erotica than most other genres, because you want that "right here, right now" effect.
It depends on the skill of the writer to adequately deliver a well written present tense story. In my time here I've found that there are few here that can pen a present tense story well enough for me to enjoy it.
I definitely believe in banging her, but not senseless, and in the present exceeds the past. I prefer she be able to feel everything.
Fascinating question.
Writing in the present tense is very hard. Not sure I even want to try.
Perhaps it is impossible to write in the present.
Maybe what we actually do is to use so called present tenses that really describe the immediate past.
Before anyone misunderstands that hypothesis, perception is a process which takes finite time, therefore what we perceive as reality is really the immediate past. So writing in the present tense is really a way of delineating the immediate past. This means the narrative has to recreate the act of perception. Thus writing prose in the present is a either creating a stream of consciousness or a screenplay isn't it?
It seems to me there is a technical problem with creating assigned dialogue unless a screenplay convention is used isn't there? Personally I found stream of consciousness writing quite heavy going as a reader (read Virginia Woolf as an adolescent), and tend to avoid it.
Clearly present tense works better in poetry and in short pieces.
Given that our conscious minds process events in the immediate past, and then re-process them to form part of our overall experience some time later, it is perhaps quite understandable that generally people prefer narrative to be in the past tense, because that is how we process most of our conscious experience.
Finally isn't it true that if continuing visual information is added to a narrative it is immediately experienced in the present? Radio is a past reality; TV is a present reality?
For me, it depends on the story. I like writing third person POV in past tense. I like writing first and second person POV in present tense. I don't at all enjoy reading or writing third person POV in present tense.
Past tense. All my stories are about things that have happened to me, or at least I would have liked to have happened to me lol
If I'm incorrect in my conclusions, would you clarify please?
