Present Tense, Third Person Omniscient

[Tom Wood]

I had a reading with our local writer's group and got quite a bit of complaint about the present tense and POV. I understand the complaint, it's different. What it does is create a 'narrator' who isn't in the story, but who is telling the reader what is happening in real time. A novel with a similar approach is Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, at least at the beginning. However, he frequently jumps into first person with each of the characters.

Because of the story setup I do have a way to create a character who is in the story and can see all the events, but should I have to? Otherwise, it's me, the author, commenting on the story as it happens. If it were a movie, it would be like having the voiceover like in American Beauty.

The present tense third person tends to make it read like a movie that is unfolding. Had complaints about that too, but that was my intent. I was told that I'm not being true to the form of the novel, by novelists. The book will only ever be on mobile devices, so I'm wondering if it can step away from the form. I might even add some easter eggs too which plants it firmly in a new format. The genre is cyberpunk.

Anyway, interested in thoughts!

Thanks,

Tom

Edit: Changed title from 'omniscient' to 'objective' since that is what I'm really doing. Curiously, it's also been called 'Third Person Cinematic'.

[TGS]

The question of what difference tense and POV make to the aesthetics, for want of a better word, of reading is an interesting one. I think one of the mistakes that we often make is that, if there isn't a character doing the narration then we think there isn't a narrator. A well known narratologist, Mieke Bal, argues that any story whatever has a narrator. Even a simple story such as, "John put his jacket on", has a narrator - the consciousness that is relating the event of John putting his jacket on in this case. But the narrator is not identical with the author: the narrator might say, "John put his unfashionable jacket on" - in which case the narrator is making a judgment about the jacket and it is possible that that judgment is not the same as my judgment. In other words, if I write "John put his unfashionable jacket on", it doesn't follow that I, the author, have this, or any, opinion, about the jacket, but it does follow that the narrator has such an opinion.

One way of thinking about it that I find useful is that, regardless of whether the narrator is part of the action or is omniscient, an author needs to give attention to the way the "character" of the narrator is developed. How does the narrator narrate, what kind of language do they use, do they narrate in long sentences with a lot of digressions or do they narrate in short sentences, is the narrator male or female - and how does that impact on the way they narrate, how old is the narrator, how reliable and impartial is the narrator, what are they not narrating but leaving out. All of these, and many other things, are decisions that an author has to make - just as they have to make them about any of the characters.

Sorry, this is a bit of a long-winded reply and I'm not sure it directly addresses your question, but I do think the narrator is probably the most important character in a story, and often the least thought about.

[mr ploppy]

I started a similar thread a few weeks ago, whether people like it or not seems to be a generational difference more than anything else. I have decided to create two versions, one present tense, one past tense, that should keep everyone happy. But the past tense one will be more expensive to reflect the extra work invovled and to steer people who don't care one way or the other to the preferred version.

[rudykerkhoven]

I'm continually amazed that people get riled up about tenses. It's a tense. It's used to set the tone of a story, and it can be quite effective.

I agree with Tom that the present tense, third person reads like movie. I'm working on something in that same style, and my idea was that I wanted it to have the feel of a documentary. It seems to be the perfect tense and person for that.

[bobavey]

The question the writer must ask themselves when using anything out of the ordinary -- pov, tense, etc -- is whether or not the use of such betters the story. If the story can best be told by 3rd person present tense then it should be told that way. However, if you're only doing it to be different you might want to rethink it.

[TGS]

Whilst I agree that using unusual tense and POV just because it is different is probably best avoided, there is more to literature than simply a story - there is also the way the story is told. Sometimes the way a story is told is actually more important than the story itself. Think of an analogy with painting - there is what the painting is a painting of - some sunflowers or a pope or a woman weighing some pearls for example. Then there is the means by which the painting is rendered - van Gogh's sunflowers are not a really very much like sunflowers and Francis Bacon's pope pictures are not very much like real popes. Tense and POV are tools in the writer's toolbox that they can use to bring about particular effects, just like laying on thick paint with particular brush strokes or smearing the paint so that the image becomes indistinct. The key thing is to use these tools consciously, rather than just using them because everyone does it that way - or alternatively, because nobody does it that way.

[Tom Wood]

I started writing in spec screenplays, so I'm used to present tense. It just feels 'right'. But I've also read that that is a common experience with writers who start in screenplays.

I was listening to some of the podcasts at Writing Excuses and they mentioned Snow Crash as an example of present tense. Scanning through it again, there is a very strong narrative voice but no physical narrator in the story.

First paragraph:

"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books."

It goes on like that for a while, then he dials it back and relies more on action and dialogue. Looking at the notes from my reading group, I see that I confused them regarding POV and they were wanting that to be clear from the very beginning. I really don't want to invent a character to be the narrator, so I'll focus on letting the reader know this is third person.

[khalleron]

It depends on whether it feels natural or not. In my experience, the only writer I've read who can really carry this off is Neal Stephenson. Whenever I've run across it elsewhere, it just feels contrived and annoying and throws me out of the story.

Stephenson changes tenses for different parts of The Cryptonomicon because he's changing times (although the past is written in present tense and the present is written in past tense), but it *works*.

Why it works for him but not for most people, I can't explain, but for most people it just feels contrived - as though the writer is being trendy or imitative. You might want to examine why you want to write in present tense and see if it fulfills the needs of the story. Everything should serve the story.

Just my 2 cents.

[raeveth]

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee is a good example of third person present tense. i definitely got the sense of its filmic qualities, but given the lack of a strong narrative voice, it has a similar effect to watching a handheld video recorder film i.e. less 'staged'

I think there is always going to be a narrator even if there isn't one in the text, we just place our own thoughts and narrative commentary into the book instead of receiving it from an explicit narrator.

[Lemurion]

Lem's first rule of writing is that you can do absolutely anything: just so long as you can do it well enough.

Some people really like present tense, saying it provides a sense of immediacy to a work. I understand what they're saying, but for me it's an artificial immediacy, and the artifice outweighs the immediacy.

Now there are books where it works (see rule one). Some authors can really pull it off and I salute them.

I'll admit that if I find I'm really noticing the tense I will drop a book and it happens more often in present tense than in past. However, the real reason I drop it is not so much that it's in present tense, even though that's the trigger, but that the writer has lost me to the point that I'm focusing on how they're saying things rather than what they're saying.

When I read for pleasure I want to read a story, not a tense or technique. I avoid present tense because it's more likely to turn off the reader and turn on the editor, and that turns my pleasure reading into work. I edit for a living, that's the last thing I want to do for pleasure.

If you're good enough that the editor never comes out, I'll happily read present tense. You just have to be good enough to do that - and I find that present tense seems to be harder to write well, so it's more likely that a present tense story will find something to feed the editor.

Do what works best for you and the story you're telling. If you can tell the story well enough, nothing else matters.

[Luke King]

Originally Posted by TGS

I think one of the mistakes that we often make is that, if there isn't a character doing the narration then we think there isn't a narrator. A well known narratologist, Mieke Bal, argues that any story whatever has a narrator. Even a simple story such as, "John put his jacket on", has a narrator - the consciousness that is relating the event of John putting his jacket on in this case.

I have also read a similar argument in writing books - that if you're trying to write from an omniscient viewpoint, you need to actually construct the narrator as a distinct personality, even though he does not actually appear in the story, and might have God-like qualities.

I suppose a good example is The Book Thief, where Death narrates the story, though even if Death hadn't been named, his particular personality would have influenced the reader's understanding of the events.

[bobavey]

Writers that tell stories in new, or different ways usually do so because, to them, it seemed the best way to tell the story. I don't think a writer should choose an unusual format just to be different.