Last week we talked about Point of View so I thought this week it would make sense to talk about verb tense and how that affects the viewpoint choices we make.  The choices are pretty simple and there are only 2: past and present.  (Yes, there’s also future tense, but, really, have you ever seen an entire short story or novel written only in future tense?  If you have, please post in the comments and you will make my day.)

When it comes to tense in fiction writing, there’s one essential “rule” to remember: be consistent.  If you decide you want to write in present tense, stay in the present.  If you choose the past tense, stay in the past.

But how do you choose the verb tense to begin with?  The best way is to understand the benefits and limitations of both, then decide which one serves your story best.  Here’s a little cheat sheet to help you choose.

• Immediacy – You feel like you’re right there with the main character.
• Suspense –  This is especially important if your story is one where the POV character is in peril.  If the story is in present tense, the reader won’t know until the end if the POV character survives.
• It Can Sound a Little Unnatural – Let’s face it, present tense is relatively new in the world of fiction writing.  Our ears are more used to hearing stories told in past tense (e.g. “Once upon a time there was a…”)  This is not to say that all present tense sounds weird, but for some writers, it may not come as naturally and could end up sounding hokey or gimmicky.  The trick here is practice, practice, practice.

• Distance – The narrator has more distance from the events in the story it because they happened in the past.  This gives the narrator some perspective about those events and allows the narrator to have some hindsight.
• Location in Time – Using the past tense, you also need to consider where the narrator is telling the story from.  (This is especially important if you’re using 1st person.)  Is the narrator an old man looking back on his early life?  Is she telling the story just after having lived it?  Depending on where the narrator is NOW, it can effect how he or she tells the story.
• Less Suspense – If you’re writing in 1st person or 3rd person limited and it’s past tense, the implication is that the POV character has lived to tell the tale.  In most stories, this is probably not a problem and won’t kill much of your suspense, but if your novel is all about whether or not the POV character survives, then past tense could lessen the suspense.

Choose wisely.  Be consistent.  And don’t tear the fabric of the space-time continuum.

Step 1: Wake up at 3:42AM with an idea.  Decide not to write it down because your notebook is in the other room and if you go get it, you’ll be too awake to fall asleep again and then you’ll have insomnia.  Convince yourself that it’s OK to go back to sleep without writing the idea down because you’ll remember it in the morning.

Step 2: Don’t remember it in the morning.  Remember just enough to know that you lost a superbly awesome idea.  Beat your head against the wall.

Step 3: Never fear.  Said idea will come back to you at another, even more inopportune moment, like in the shower.  This time you’ll be ready with a notebook.  Write it down.

Step 4: Spend precisely 12.667 days obsessing over how awesome said idea is and how you can’t wait to write it.  (Number of days may vary depending on the awesomeness quotient of the idea.)

Step 5: Sit down in a frenzy and write exactly 613 words (give or take), exploring said idea.  Read it over.  Decide that you’re the worst writer ever and you’ll never be able to capture such an awesome idea on paper.  Beat your head against the wall.  Again.

Step 6: Read a novel or two, or twelve.  Obsess about how amazing those books are and how unbelievably sucky your writing is and how you might as well do something else with your life, like collecting rare edible fungi.

Step 7: Have a good cry.

Step 8: Read what you wrote again and find one moment, one turn of phrase that’s not completely awful.  Decide you’re not utterly hopeless (just 99% hopeless).  Try again.

Step 9: Fall in love with a character.  Start seeing the world through her eyes and realize you kind of like living in her head.  Decide you’ll stay a while.

Step 10: Stop obsessing about the idea and start obsessing about your character.  Make long character bios for her and all her family and friends (even if her family and friends have nothing to do with the story in the first place).  Write outlines, mind maps, charts, whatever it takes to keep your ideas straight.  Sleep with your notebook under your pillow.

Step 11: Practice some stealth writing.  Hide in a dark corner of a coffee shop and write.  Jot down ideas while riding the subway.  Talk to yourself.  Listen to the voices in your head.  Write down everything and don’t look back.

Step 12: Repeat Step 11 and keep moving forward until you get to the end of the story.  When you hit a wall, remind yourself why you fell in love with this character and this story in the first place.  When all else fails, ask your muse to send you strength to carry on.

Step 13: Carry on.

This post is part of the “What’s Your Process?” Blogfest, hosted by Shallee McArthur.

There’s a lot of research out there on reading and how people learn to read.  Scientists use fancy terms like “sub-lexical” and “phonemic awareness” to talk about how readers give meaning to and make sense of the little black squiggles on a page.  Essentially the research boils down to this:

Scientists use their big scientific words to explain the whole “learning to read” part, but what happens when readers get to the “reading to learn” stage?  Is that all there is?  Is that as good as it gets?

I don’t think so.

The way I see it, there are lots of different ways you can “read to learn” and it all depends on what you want to get out of the thing you’re reading.  Here’s my take on the stages of reading that happen once you’re “reading to learn.”

The Collector:  This reader collects clues and information from the text.  She reads with a pen in one hand and a highlighter in the other.  She underlines a lot.  She makes careful notes in the margin and copious outlines.  For her, language is a means to an end; it is simply a way for a book to convey valuable information.  Boring textbooks tend to bring out the Collector-Reader in many of us, mostly because underlining helps keep us awake.

The Interpreter:  This reader is constantly asking “what does it mean?”  He wants to know exactly what the author was trying to say with each phrase, each sentence.  This quest becomes all the more urgent if the author is no longer alive and therefore cannot be asked directly.  The interpreter believes in the infallibility of literature: that if Shakespeare put a comma in that precise spot he must have done it on purpose and therefore it has to mean something.  Just as Freud believed there are no accidents in life and all actions stem from a deeper meaning, the Interpreter-Reader is certain that there are no accidents in literature and if the author wrote it that way, then there has to be a reason.

The Revolutionary:  This reader doesn’t worry about what it all means, because to her it doesn’t matter.  Meaning is relative.  Instead, when she reads something, she wonders “how did the author do that?”  What’s the author’s agenda and what slight-of-hand tricks is he using to pull it off?  Writers are almost always in this category because they know that when authors write something, they’re just trying to get a reaction or response from the reader.  Writers know this because they do it all the time themselves.

The Revolutionary realizes that by putting words on a page, the author is trying to shape the reader’s interpretation of those words.  Whenever an author chooses one word over another and puts that word down on the page, he is making a decision that will shape or manipulate the reader’s response.  The moment a reader recognizes that this is happening, he or she can decide whether or not they will allow themselves to be manipulated.  It’s just like realizing that televised news broadcasts are not objective, but have specific agendas; once you recognize that, you can see past it and look for the actual information.

More importantly, though, writers know that when look under the hood to figure out how a piece of writing works, you’re not too far from learning to build an engine from scratch.  After all, the moment you ask: “how did the author do that?” you’re just a half-breath away from asking: “how can I do it?”  And that’s what writing’s all about.

So it turns out that the collaborative project for Fridays is not ready to be unveiled just yet.  All I can say is that it’s going to be super-awesome!  Anyway, I’m excited and sad that I can’t tell you all about it today, but never fear.  All will be revealed soon enough.

In the meantime, have a kitteh.  Or two.  Or more.