Writing a Children's Book

Lesson 5: Beginning your Book.

Tense

Tense

Most novels are told in Past Tense. This doesn’t cause many problems except when it comes to flashbacks and to first person narrative

In a flashback, you take the readers back from the designated present of the story into a time in the past. This is accomplished by transition sentences, but you do need to watch out for some verbs that act differently in the immediate past tense from the way they react in the flashback.

Using past tense in a first person narrative can have a bad effect on suspense. If your main character is “telling” the story in hindsight, then it’s perfectly obvious that s/he survived the events of the story. This doesn’t matter unless your novel is a thriller, but what if it is?

There are several ways you can avoid this lessening of suspense. One is to couch your narrative in the form of letters or journal entries, so that each one is proof only that the narrator survived to write that particular letter/entry.

Another technique is to set the narrative within a frame. For example, your frame story might be the narrator and another character waiting somewhere to be rescued, and the narrator tells the other character the story up until “now”. This still leaves doubt in the readers’ minds about what will happen after the spoken narrative is finished.

One other construction you need to watch in a first person/past tense novel is what you might call continuing truths.

It is perfectly correct for your narrator to say:

“Dad and I went for a picnic that day,” because that is true past tense.

It becomes more difficult if you continue the passage like this: “Dad and I went for a picnic that day. We took sausages to cook. Dad loves sausages.”

Here we have two past tense verbs (“went” and “took”) and one present tense verb (“loves”). This might seem wrong, but if you move the whole passage to past tense and say: “Dad loved sausages”, then you end up with a false sense that suggests that either Dad is dead, or else that he no longer loves sausages.

Generally, if what you are describing is a continuing situation, then it’s OK to use the present tense verb.

Present Tense Narrative

Telling a story in present tense is a good way of maintaining suspense, but you do need to be careful with those verbs. Even in present tense, some facts and actions lie in the past, and the verbs should reflect this.

“I wait for the dog to reach me. I can see its ears flopping as it runs. Its chops flop too, and at every step its fangs flash into view. I am more scared than I have ever been before. This is even worse then the time I fell off the diving board at the quarry.”

Using the past tense verb “fell” there is perfectly correct, because the scene at the quarry happened in the past.

Present tense narrative is usually used with first person viewpoint, but it is possible to use it with third person limited or even with multi-third person. Here is the same passage in present tense/third person.

“Jack waits for the dog to reach him. He can see its ears flopping as it runs. Its chops flop too, and at every step its fangs flash into view. Jack is more scared than he has ever been before. This is even worse then the time he fell off the diving board at the quarry.”

Think carefully before you write a book in present tense narrative. Quite a few readers dislike it, because they find it distracting.

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