Dear New (to me) Author

[meganbmoore]

 That person who told you first person present tense was a good stylistic choice?  That it worked really well for you?

THEY LIED.

Comments

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

what book?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I couldn't even get through half of the first one. Absolutely exceruciating, and I usually dig the whole "GIRL POWER" thing. Just, uh, when appropriate.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I'm around page 50 or so now. The thing is that in plot, setting, and even character(assuming there's character growth) the thing is practically MADE for me...but the narrative style makes it torture.

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

I just cannot stand the cognitive dissonance of a young lady from that time period sounding exactly like a modern teenager. I'm really all for shaking up the patriarchy, boarding schools, cool magic, and mysterious love interests--but if you're going to go that far, just make it a fantasy series outright instead of expecting me to swallow such a modern tone.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think that's where the present tense really hurts it. Present tense always lends a more "modern" tone to writing.

[oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com]

First person is always bad, present or past notwithstanding.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I vastly prefer third person, but first person can usually be made to work. But the present tense combination is awful.

[oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com]

I hate first person 99% of the time.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

First person and present tense sounds like a really, really bad idea. Maybe you could manage it for a short story but not for a book.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It is quite possibly my least favorite narrative style.

[melengro.livejournal.com]

I like first-person past because, yay, unreliable narrator! But first-person present? It's like a WALKTHROUGH.

'I go over to the refrigerator. I get out the jar of pickles. I eat a pickle. I...'

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I prefer third person past tense with a single narrator if the author wants to limit perspective, but I appreciate the value of first person past tense.

First person present tense is tedious, especially with extremely simple sentence structure.

[melengro.livejournal.com]

Third person past tense is kind of the default mode for fiction. First person past tense allows greater penetration into a single character and works well for philosophical novels centred on a single character.

First person present tense should die in a fire.

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

...uh oh...I just bought that book.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

If you can get past the narrative style, it's pretty good.

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

I shall tell myself it's for narrative effect. (Even if it isn't.)

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Hey, my last short story was in first person present! XD;;

I think pov and tense are really determined by the story, not the author. At least, that's how it is for me. It could work horribly for the book you're reading, though - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read it. Admittedly a lot of authors like to use present tense these days to be "edgy" or artsy-fartsy or something. I'm just a hard-core believer in using whatever pov and tense a story seems to want.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

present tense can work in short stories pretty well, it's the longer stuff that's a problem.

I think the "edgy" thing is what it is...it's not common, so it has the novelty factor, BUT SOMETIMES THINGS ARENT COMMON FOR A REASON!

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

I read a YA novel recently called Breath that was in first person present that I thought worked really well, but yeah, most of the time it doesn't work as well for longer works.

...Incidentally I read the story as part of research for the story I wrote. Maybe stories about the pied piper legend always want to be in first-person present? IT IS A MYSTERY.

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Present tense? I thought that was the sort of experiment that anyone with even a vague interest in writing got out of their system in fourth form English... and when they figure out it doesn't work at all, give it up and go on to experiment with other things. (I know that's what happened to me...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

ly it is meant to be edgy and inventive. Or something.

[fivil.livejournal.com]

I love present tense in shorter stories and I think in some styles of writing it could work even in first person but then, I don't know. It's rare and you'd have to be REALLY good to pull it off.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it can work in short stories, but not a 400 page book. It's an especially bad choice for a historical work, because present tense always gives it a more modern feel.

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. When I was thinking of authors who I think might've done it, they're very modern, focusing on modern things and situations.

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

And here I thought you were talking about GRIMSPACE, heehee.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Just...ugh. Although it simply cannot be less readable than the MS I just read (and was paid to read, though not enough, never enough) in which the author mixed past and present totally randomly, even within the same sentence. Only one of the book's myriad problems, but the really sad thing is that there was an interesting story buried in there, though I doubt he'll ever be able to effectively tell it.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Ok, yes, mixing past and present sounds much worse.

[enkiae.livejournal.com]

First person done wrong sounds very self-indulgent. First person *present* makes it self-indulgent and hipster-er than thou.

But it could be worse. It could be second person present ;)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Eeeew...second person present...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The only time I've been able to handle first person present tense was for the audiobook version of Angie, I Says, because the novel is narrated from the POV of a busybody friend, and with the audiobook narrator it was like she was sitting down next to you and telling you the story, like a friend gossiping with you about what-all she'd been doing recently. I'm not sure I could have got through more than a few pages if I were reading it on the page.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Yeah, I can see how it'd be OK in audio format.

[surgingshark.livejournal.com]

Once again recommending "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie ;)

It's a mystery novel, so don't look it up on google!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've seen all the A&E Poirots.

[surgingshark.livejournal.com]

But the narrative on the novel pulled things off so well =D

[ilona-andrews.livejournal.com]

LOL.

The book beckons. It waits for me on the table, a simple rectangular object of wood and cloth. A hidden world shivers beneath its dark cover, a world rife with possibilities and magic. Adventure permeates its pages; emotions clash: danger, love, compassion, all there, ready to pluck me from my comfortable reality and drop me into theirs.

I reach for it. The cover swings open under the light touch of my fingers. My gaze scans the first page.

Present tense.

God damn it!

:thud:

:P

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

YES!

I read a book last year that pulled it off fairly well. I forget the title, but it was Marianne Mancusi. It still irritated the heck out of me, but it was a very useful narrative tool, as the whole thing was about finding out what the character and world were.

[irenak.livejournal.com]

I will say: I've seen it work for noir fiction (or at least noir fiction that involved dinosaurs (http://www.amazon.com/Rex-Eric-Garcia/dp/1400039746/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215013795&sr=8-2)) and god knows, I've abused the present tense in my own writing, but it's pretty tough to pull off in long-form fiction. I'm still a little baffled by people who make that stylistic decision.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

You might enjoy reading this rant (http://deepad.livejournal.com/19495.html) from someone who hated it for numerous problems deeper and skankier than the stylistic quirks...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Is it spoilery? Because i'm still reading. (Still at the same point as last night, but...)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm...maybe a little? It does mention some plot points including a scene from the ending of the book, although not having read it I don't know if any of the plot points are major or minor? It's more focusing on the egregious errors of cultural/historical inauthenticity, RESEARCH FAIL, and various other skanky race/colonialism issues. A couple of non-spoilery sections:

<sub>After all, I've read (and loved) reading about Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox being sent back from India because the climate wasn't good for children, right? (White children, obviously--even I as an 8 year old in Delhi could figure out the books were a reason of why we threw the British out.) You'd think I'd be used to another British school story where the heroine comes from India.

And hasn't there been a rash of Anglophile Americans writing about a historical Britain that they think research qualifies them to talk about? Ms. Bray, who in her author bio is described as being raised in Texas and living in New York, has a list of people she mentions in her acknowledgments--agent, book cover designer, French correcting readers, people who provided her actual Victorian clothes to study.
Guess how many actual Indians are thanked in the book. I suppose we were a rarer commodity to come by, and less important to get right.

Frankly, this seems a fairly sloppily written book for the time it purports to be in. The casual references to rebirth, lack of specific Christian morality, and the dialogue between the girls all combines for a 'My Feminism and New Age-ism is Pasted On Yay' sort of effect that you expect from a bad POTC fic.</sub>

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I can't comment much on most of it, but she's out of India and in England by page 25 or so. I don't know how much India or anyone from India will play into it, but I get the feeling she she grew up in India primarily to give her an exotic background anmd make her an outcast, but that it won't play into the plot much.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/bibliophages/8118.html

A review. (Spoils the whole book, so don't read it yet.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, give me reviews once I've finished and posted on it.