Elyse M Grasso on Nostr: #WritersCoffeeClub 17. What was your motivation for choosing past or present tense? I ...
#WritersCoffeeClub 17. What was your motivation for choosing past or present tense?
I think the commonest traditional forms for very long form storytelling are the narrative (3rd person, past tenses) and the memoir (1st person, past tenses). Since I'm writing a pseudo-historical, one or the other seemed natural. And safer.
Present tense in fiction seems linked to specific genres and can slide into sounding dialectal (or worse, a parody of dialect ) in less urgent genres and at longer lengths.
I think the commonest traditional forms for very long form storytelling are the narrative (3rd person, past tenses) and the memoir (1st person, past tenses). Since I'm writing a pseudo-historical, one or the other seemed natural. And safer.
Present tense in fiction seems linked to specific genres and can slide into sounding dialectal (or worse, a parody of dialect ) in less urgent genres and at longer lengths.