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| Posted By : Lyn - 1/25/2008 2:26 PM | I've noticed (with some help) that I seem to gravitate to writing in first person present tense. We may have covered this already in a different thread, but what is your opinion on this POV? Thanks. Oh, and I'm surveying your preferred writing perspective, too. 
Lyn from ResAliens |
| Posted By : Daniel Ausema - 1/25/2008 3:29 PM | How about an option for all of the above? :-p I my own writing my most common is a deep 3rd, past, but I've used all of these, as well as 2nd person present and past and even a 1st person plural, past. Sort of. In reading what matters is what works. An ill-conceived 1st person is bad, but so is any other voice decision that doesn't pay off. I certainly don't ever decide whether or not to continue reading based on what voice and tense the writer used.
Twigs and Brambles (my writing blog) |
| Posted By : BarbT - 1/25/2008 4:55 PM | I cast my vote for 3rd person, past tense, and it's what I use most. However, one of my favorite stories (in the late Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine) started with a brief 1st person, past tense introduction; them switched to 1st person present for the remainder of the story. For that story, it just felt right.
-Barb
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| Posted By : Gustavo - 1/25/2008 7:35 PM | I've tried them all, and I tend to stick either to 1st person past or 3rd person past.
Present tense, though useful for some story types usually adds more difficulty to the writing than it brings benefits. If you can use it easily, then go ahead. I rarely bother with it unless I'm in on one of my litfic days, in which case I will consider it seriously.
What 1st person gives is an easy way to make the protagonists feelings evident. If you have a main character with a really strong voice, 1st person is a great way of showing it off.
Now, just for the heck of it, how about we put together an antho written entirely in 2nd person, plural, future tense. Criteria for inclusion is that the tense and person don't interfere with the story, and actually ADD something to it.
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 1/25/2008 8:34 PM | I'm not sure people would buy it. 2nd person tense is notoriously hard to sell, mainly because people don't like to be told how to feel.
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : Lyn - 1/25/2008 8:39 PM | 2nd person is great for "Choose Your Own Ending" type of adventures though.
I've got one started at my secret test site - lgptesting.blogspot.com/
Anyone want to help me finish it? lol, just kidding. I'm actually turning it into a traditional, third person past fantasy novel. But the plot is now so much different than the "paths" I've created online. Still, would be interested in any feedback you might have. Thanks.
Lyn from ResAliens |
| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 1/25/2008 8:46 PM | Totally worked for Fighting Fantasy, because in that case it really WAS supposed to be you going through the adventures, and there was zero internalization.
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : crystalwizard - 1/25/2008 9:50 PM | Lyn said...I've noticed (with some help) that I seem to gravitate to writing in first person present tense. We may have covered this already in a different thread, but what is your opinion on this POV? Thanks. Oh, and I'm surveying your preferred writing perspective, too.
I like first person. I have a problem with present tense. It depends, I guess, on the story and the person writing it, but usually what happens is that the story mixes present and past tense and makes me seasick.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 1/25/2008 9:52 PM | erazmus said...
First person present is used in several old radio shows quite a bit, and very effectively in show like _Johnny Dollar_.
Mike
I can see it in a radio show, or any live performance, because you are doing it and you're doing it now. It works, because it's easy for the actors to be in the moment. After all, they are doing whatever right then, in first person and in the present.
Sentences like
I go up the stairs and find a strange man in my bedroom
are awkward for me to read, but that's what you have to have for present tense.
I went up the stairs and found a strange man in my bedroom
flows better, but that (of course), is past tense.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 1/25/2008 9:55 PM | Gustavo said...
Now, just for the heck of it, how about we put together an antho written entirely in 2nd person, plural, future tense. Criteria for inclusion is that the tense and person don't interfere with the story, and actually ADD something to it.
You go right ahead and do that. I'll be cheering for you all the way (and hiding under my desk) |
| Posted By : M. A. Shah - 1/26/2008 10:57 AM | i havent tried 1st person present, but i like 3rd person present. Of course, doing something other than the traditional 3rd person past always restricts you in some way. But one of the best stories that i have ever read was in 1st person present.
All the non traditional POVs, tenses always have a certain gravitating quality to them, for me atleast.
Man is in some ways just like the moth, drawn towards the seductive flame of life, even though it burns, pains him. |
| Posted By : RHFay - 1/26/2008 4:57 PM | I will say that it often works for my poetry, but I don't think I've really tried it with a story.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!" Andrew of Armar.
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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| Posted By : Hermit - 1/26/2008 7:16 PM | |
agregious language deleted . . .
A well-rounded artist should be able to slip from one to any other POV with subtle shift. This can be done within a work as well as between works. A work (not spec) in progress by the very talented and genius poet Daniel E. Blackston I've been advising on does just this with almost seamless efficacy.
RHFay said...I will say that it often works for my poetry, but I don't think I've really tried it with a story.
Overall, I would say that consistency is most important - but there are always factors that can override that. I like what i call "camera-eye" perspecive, which is a specialized 3rd-person demi-omniscient that rarely goes into the psychological internal aspects of narration except in terms of figurative photo-realism. If you've seen that wierd Jackman film with the Tree of Life thing, you know what I mean. (Can't believe I'm blanking on the name of that film . . .)
"Serpent and the Rainbow" used it to lesser effect.
I am enjoying the first-person of my current novel, but prefer the above-stated 'camera-eye' view. It actually comes from my penchant for photographic portraitism and my motion-picture imagination.
Read me soon in The Return of the Sword!
Blog: http://bitterhermit.wordpress.com
Poetry Blog: http://fringemonkey.wordpress.com |
| Posted By : Todd Wheeler - 1/27/2008 12:47 PM | One of several novels-in-the-drawer I've written started in 1st person present. Like others mentioned, I found it hard to maintain the present, kept going into past tense, and wound up converting the whole thing to past tense.
Straying a bit off topic, I had an epiphany reading one of J.A. Konrath's books. The chapters with his series' detective are in 1st person past, interspersed with chapters in 3rd person past from the POV of the killer du jour.
I'm sure other writers have used this technique; first time I had seen it. In my book above, it helped to break up the tedium of "I, I, I" and provide a different perspective regarding the events affecting the main character.
~~~~~
todd-wheeler.com
todd-wheeler.blogspot.com |
| Posted By : Firlefanz - 1/27/2008 1:02 PM | I tend to use either 1st person simple past or 3rd person simple past in most stories. (I voted for 1st person simple past, though.)
The story I just sold to AlienSkin is in 1st person present tense, however, because that was the only way I could avoid a logic mistake. Even so, present tense is rather unusual, and I've heard people say it takes some getting used to. I want to sell my stories and not challenge editors, so I tend to use the more familiar tenses and POVs.
Yet I bet there are cases when all conceivable options are useful.
- Call me Firle.
Hannah Steenbock
Mystical Adventures
Sphaira
"Die arische Frau" in Pandaimonion - Die Formel des Lebens
"Der Weg nach Eridani" in Earth Rocks 3/2007 (pdf) |
| Posted By : Gustavo - 1/27/2008 3:10 PM |
crystalwizard said...
You go right ahead and do that. I'll be cheering for you all the way (and hiding under my desk) It will, of course be a Sword & Sorcery story (all of you will then rush up the stairs, skewer the guards and open the treasure room door. After that, the group will...), and, as soon as it's finished I'll send it to FS! You will eventually have to emerge from under the desk to send me the rejection!
On a more serious note, and to avoid hijacking the thread, I tend to agree that present tense sometimes makes for awkward reading. It is very difficult to do right, and to do consistently.
Visit my livejournal! http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/ |
| Posted By : tchernabyelo - 1/28/2008 6:00 AM | I've written stuff on all of those and others (I've used future tense on occasion: I've never used true second-person POV, though). Predominantly, I write past tense. I choose presetn only rarely and generally for particular purposes. For instance, I've done some retellings of Norse myth and I deliberately do those in present to give an immediacy that counters the "oh I'm reading stories from a thousand years ago" preconception.
Brian Dolton
Yi Qin stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25 "Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2 (forthcoming)
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
Other Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08 (forthcoming)
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32 (forthcoming)
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9 (forthcoming) |
| Posted By : Hermit - 1/28/2008 2:48 PM | | If you ever want a really horrific example of second-person past, check out Stuart O'Nan's "Prayer for the Dying". It's historical fiction, takes place during a cholera or diptheria epidemic in Wisconsin or Minnesota I think. Chilling and really darned uncomfortable to read. Good story, though.
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| Posted By : Anthony G Williams - 1/28/2008 10:01 PM | |
I agree with Gustavo: 1st or 3rd person past.>>
> >
I used 1st person in "Scales" because I wanted to emphasise the intensity of the experience of the main character. In "The Foresight War" I used the 3rd person because I needed the POV to keep switching from one character to another. It's horses for courses…>>
> >
One book I've read recently which plays around with POV is VanderMeer's Veniss Underground: 1st, 2nd and 3rd all in the same story. I posted a review on my blog. >>
> >
My least favourite to read is omniscient: I really hate it when the all-knowing narrator interposes comments like ""little did he know that this would prove a terrible mistake". I've stopped reading books at that point.>>
> >
Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Blog: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/ >>
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| Posted By : Gustavo - 1/29/2008 12:03 AM | I find omniscient good for humor. Wodehouse does it in some of his work (although with a much defter touch than the example you cite above), and Douglas Adams was a master (if a barking mad one) at this.
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| Posted By : Ana the Druidess - 1/29/2008 6:51 AM | I have used both first and third pov in writing.
I really like third person (mixed) past pov for SF because then everything/one has a chance to explain their actions/ideas/thoughts etc which so adds to the full spectum of the project's time and place.
Having said that, for quirky crime and humour I really like first person past pov because you are right in there up close and personal. Somehow it doesn't work for me (being the operative word - me) so well in SF as it's more difficult to get the accurate "feel" of that one individual in that very specific time zone *absolutely* right.
But...whatever you're happiest in will work best for you. Good luck! |
| Posted By : Nathan Jerpe - 2/4/2008 9:24 PM | I've heard fiction written in 1st person POV is harder to sell. Is there any truth to this?
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| Posted By : Daniel Ausema - 2/5/2008 12:26 AM | I think it's common for novices to feel more comfortable with 1st person...which results in a higher proportion of 1st person stories being rather rough, unready for publication. So the impression I've had is that sometimes this does translate into a bit of a knee-jerk reaction against 1st-person, at least among some editors. I'm not sure how pronounced that is, though. If you write a good 1st-person story, a good editor should be able to recognize that regardless of how many bad ones they've been digging through that week...but I guess it's up to you to make it clear how good the story is right from the start.
Twigs and Brambles (my writing blog) |
| Posted By : Charles Gramlich - 2/9/2008 11:08 PM | Most horror stories feel right with 3rd person past to me. Sword and planet fiction works best in 1st person past, I think. I like the immediacy of 1st person past but some tales just can't be told in that format.
Charles Gramlich
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| Posted By : ScrewMoonshine - 3/2/2008 1:49 PM | Anthony G Williams said...
My least favourite to read is omniscient: I really hate it when the all-knowing narrator interposes comments like ""little did he know that this would prove a terrible mistake". I've stopped reading books at that point.
Forgive me for digging up such an old post(I've been off the boards for a while), but I had to laugh a bit when I read this because I'm now reading Scales, and I just finished a chapter where you did the same thing in 1st person POV: "'OK, set it up. I don't see how it can do any harm.' That proved to be the most inaccurate judgment I had made for a long time."
Furthermore, you ended the very first chapter with another such all-knowing comment: "That was the first indication to me of the difficulties which lay ahead."
So I have to ask: Why do you hate this sort of thing so much in 3rd person, yet find it perfectly acceptable in 1st person? If anything, I'd think it would work the other way around, since it's illogical for a non-omniscient narrator to know the future.
(For the record, I saw no problem with either of those bits you wrote.)
Robert Orme
Out now:
"Time in a Capsule" in Unparalleled Journeys II (www.journeybookspublishing.com/)
"On the Tree Top" in Ultraverse vol.3 #5 (www.ultraverse.us)
"The Scab, the Man, and the I.V." in Mount Zion Speculative Fiction Review #3 (www.mountzionpress.com)
Coming soon:
"Replacing Someone" in Aoife's Kiss #26, September 2008 (http://samsdotpublishing.com/aoife/main.htm)
"More Than One Way to Protect" in Lords of Justice (www.carnifexpress.net/blogs/) |
| Posted By : Bill Ward - 3/2/2008 5:33 PM | ScrewMoonshine said...
So I have to ask: Why do you hate this sort of thing so much in 3rd person, yet find it perfectly acceptable in 1st person? If anything, I'd think it would work the other way around, since it's illogical for a non-omniscient narrator to know the future.
Not to answer for Anthony, but they really represent completely different things in 1st and 3rd person. In 1st, the narrator is a character, in 3rd the narrator is not...unless he starts dropping comments of that sort. In 1st, comments like that represent characterization, in 3rd they represent judgment and commentary, and they break the fourth wall in 3rd person in a way they do not in 1st person narration--which is by, and to, a person. 3rd is, now-a-days, a more objective and 'transparent' voice for narration, it isn't supposed to draw attention to itself in that way.
billwardwriter.com |
| Posted By : R. L. Copple - 3/2/2008 11:49 PM | That would be true of a first person, omniscient narrator type set up. More like the pov person is telling you the story that did happen rather than having it happen in the moment, so they can say things like that. But if your first person is limited to what he/she knows at that time, then it would break that pov as well. Past tense does lend itself more to throwing in omniscient comments like that, but I think that needs to be a consistent practice and an obvious intent, or else it can appear like an accident if it is just done on rare occasion without any seeming need.
Those kinds of comments tend to attempt to foreshadow an impending tension that is coming. But unless it is intentional first person omniscient, it would be better to foreshadow that in the story itself rather than to break the reader out of the "now" of things happening to dish up info. But each person has their own feel for that, when it becomes an intrusion rather than part of the story's flow.
BTW, CS Lewis does this a lot in his Chronicals of Narnia series, he intentionally writes more omniscient third, and frequently makes statements like: "But what Shasta didn't know was..." (My fourteen year-old-son didn't like that, he wanted it to remain a mystery until Shasta found out, if ever. He said it took all the tension out of the scene. I keep asking him if he wants to be a writer, but he says no. He's got the brain for one, though.)
R. L. Copple
blog.rlcopple.com
www.raygunradio.com
www.haruah.com
Infinite Realities available at Amazon.com |
| Posted By : Anthony G Williams - 3/3/2008 2:35 AM |
ScrewMoonshine said...
Anthony G Williams said...
My least favourite to read is omniscient: I really hate it when the all-knowing narrator interposes comments like ""little did he know that this would prove a terrible mistake". I've stopped reading books at that point. Forgive me for digging up such an old post(I've been off the boards for a while), but I had to laugh a bit when I read this because I'm now reading Scales, and I just finished a chapter where you did the same thing in 1st person POV: "'OK, set it up. I don't see how it can do any harm.' That proved to be the most inaccurate judgment I had made for a long time." Furthermore, you ended the very first chapter with another such all-knowing comment: "That was the first indication to me of the difficulties which lay ahead." So I have to ask: Why do you hate this sort of thing so much in 3rd person, yet find it perfectly acceptable in 1st person? If anything, I'd think it would work the other way around, since it's illogical for a non-omniscient narrator to know the future. (For the record, I saw no problem with either of those bits you wrote.) Robert Orme
It's a fair cop guv! 
I'll take refuge in Bill's explanation... 
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| Posted By : Bill Ward - 3/6/2008 11:42 PM | First person is only ever limited to 'what it knows at the time' if it is in present tense.
First person, past tense, in presumed to have been written after the fact--by definition it would have to be. It's not a question of omniscient or limited omniscient, its not like 3rd person in that respect at all (ie an observer not part of the action).
The example you give for Lewis doing that is 3rd person is so far removed from a first person narrator saying it as to be a different animal entirely. First person is supposed to play that game, third can't do it anymore without sounding like...C.S. Lewis.
I'd go so far to say that a first person narration in past tense that doesn't take that into account has failed--its supposed to be written from a point in the future, the narrator knows things you as the audience do not, and it should color his narrative. Not saying he should drop a hint about everything, but some of the impact of the events of the story have to be there in the narrative for it to seem plausible. If they aren't, it should have been third person to start with.
And you're more than welcome to seek refuge in that Anthony, 'cause its true! 
...and I'll go even further to say that the only narrative that can't break the 'now' is present tense, however the modern tight third, past, limited has become understood to be a sort of false 'now' that when the storyteller foreshadowing or commentary thing shows up it seems weird now. It wasn't always understood to be so, after all it is 'past' tense, their were no rules saying the 'now' of the story was a horizon the storyteller couldn't see beyond. Modern 3-past has evolved into a transparent narrator, a camera--but a first person narration cannot afford to be transparent like that.
billwardwriter.com |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 3/6/2008 11:53 PM | First person present tense:
I am walking down the street, looking through the windows. Inside one house, I can see a man and woman fighting. I wonder, why are they fighting? Don't they know that the world is about to end?
First person past tense:
I walked down the street last night, and all around were sirens blaring, dogs barking and the sound of machine guns. Ah, life in the city. Music to my ears. I love it here.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Hermit - 3/7/2008 10:59 AM | Just to toss this out there . . .
First person is going to be as subjectively related and as linear as the character narrating. Which is to say that a hyperactive space monkey speaking via universal translator will be more frenetic and might tend to be a very non-linear, oh and by the way . . ., kind of narration, whereas a merc captain reporting to his employer will have a more objective narrator - and a franchised military commander reporting to the higher ranks will be nearly as objective as third-person spycam. There will also be very distinct diction among narrators. There's also the fun of deciding how reliable the narrator is; because it is subjective, very few 1st-P narrators will be completely reliable and some may be outright decesptive using the truth as much as outright lies and hyperbole. That can add whole new dimension to the story - and if done poorly it can tear it down.
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| Posted By : R. L. Copple - 3/14/2008 1:46 AM | I understand there are two versions of 1st past. Keeping in mind, with a limited pov like limited third or first person, the "now" is what the character is experiencing as he/she experiences it. That's a pov told that way because present tense tends to be jarring for most people. But the first person pov has the advantage of being able to get deeper into that character's way of seeing things that limited third even. Plus, as mentioned, you can keep the pov character in the dark better. But, the first person allows the writer to have the reader really experience it through their pov, however perverted or error prone it might be, so that you can experience it as that person experiences it. Third person, limited, accomplishes some of that, but not as deep. The reader keeps a more objective view of the events and the narrator can't validly "lie" to the reader, you assume you are experiencing things as they are really happening, aside from some writing tricks where things simply aren't as they seem.
But both third and first have a more omni viewpoint that can be taken, where the narrator, whether first or third, is "apart" from the story as its happening, and can give a broader view of events. In first person's case, by sounding more like a person who has sat down to tell you a story, and occasionally breaks in to comment on what's happening. In third person, like someone telling a story, but also has the freedom to go into other heads or tell about events that none of the characters know is going on.
Either way, the omni view takes the reader out of the story as it is happening (the "now") and you are in the narrator's pov, like Lewis and Tolkien tended to write. While past tense in either first or third allows that omni view to happen, whereas present tense doesn't at all, it is a real "It's happening now" viewpoint, you can restrict them to just what the character knows is happening at the time it's happening in the story, with no narrator breaking in to add commentary. But if you "limit" the past tense pov to what the character knows at the time it is happening, the effect is to have the reader stay in the story, or as I called it, the "now" of the events as they happen.
This isn't to say, "limited, good, omni, bad," but only that both are valid forms of pov in either first or third past tense. But, the difficulty in using a more omni, first person, past, is not only the smoothness of the shifts between "in the story" and "in the narrator's telling of the story" so that they don't jar the reader out of the magic, but also that, like a good story teller, you don't give too much away to keep the tension up, as well as not using it simply as a means to create artificial tension, "If I had known then what this would lead to, I would have run from them like a dog on a conveyor belt." Sometimes, those are difficult lines to find, and why writing a good story in that style is hard to do, especially in these days when that style isn't as much "liked" as the more limited first past and third.
But, one of the reasons I wrote my novella stories in that first person, past (limited) view point was to have the reader experience the story through his eyes. That fact plays a significant role in the novel sequel I've written and am currently editing in a critique group, and I'll be interested to see their reaction to it when we get there. But his narration never assumes he knows what is coming, as if he is outside the story, relating it to us. It's all, "in story."
Anyway, that's the points I was making. While there are other reasons to write in first person past, I don't think they mean that writing in a first person, past, limited, means you might as well do third. There can be valid reasons for using that point of view instead of limited, third, past. All depends on how you want the reader to experience the story, as to what pov you use. And you use the one that will get the job done the best.
R. L. Copple
blog.rlcopple.com
www.raygunradio.com
www.haruah.com
Infinite Realities available at Amazon.com |
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