“Have You Ever Just Looked At Someone While They’re Doing Something Small Like Driving Or Laughing

hi! this is hard to explain but i’m trying to write my first proper story and i’m suddenly overthinking whether i’m writing in past or present tense. do you have any advice for that?

Hi and thanks for the ask!

As someone who tends to overthink things on a daily basis, I can imagine how troubled you might be about this. So I’ll try to make your decision at least a little bit easier.

In my opinion, choosing the tense you use is very much dependent on your personal preference. Although present tense seems to be more popular with today’s writers, personally, I prefer past tense. Apart from the question about popularity, though, there are different advantages and disadvantages for both choices. I’ll highlight the advantages and disadvantages for present tense only, since the opposite is obvious for the past tense.

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Advantages: Present tense has a more immediate feeling to it. Writing in present tense gives the reader the ability to experience the story in time with your characters. The moment a character changes, we experience that change in them as well. It also immerses the reader in the character’s emotions for longer than the past tense does. Moreover, handling tenses in general is a lot easier if you write in present tense rather than past tense.

Disadvantages: It’s a lot harder to manipulate the time inside a story. With present tense you usually only use past tense for the few things that actually happened in the past. That also makes it harder to create complex characters because phrases like “has always been” and the like can’t be used, since they would greatly disrupt the present tense’s main use. What’s more, the present tense author is experiencing the story at the same pace the characters do, so it is almost impossible to create a feeling of suspense. Even though you as the author, of course, know what will happen, phrases like “hadn’t known yet” and similar lines don’t fit well into a present tense story. Another possible trap the present tense sets, is misleading authors to write about mundane and trivial events that serve no plot function but would, of course, happen in a naturalistic sequence of actions.

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I hope this somehow answers your question and makes it easier for you to decide whether to write in present tense or past tense.

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

— Ambrose Bierce (via quotemadness)

“No matter how you feel. Get up, dress up, show up and never give up.”

— Unknown 

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

— Louis L'Amour (via quotemadness)

“You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life.”

— Chuck Palahniuk 

Writing Tip #235

If you want to get serious about increasing your writing output, you need to know what your baseline is. For a few weeks make a note of when you start writing, when you stop writing, the number of words you wrote, and where you were. Then analyze the information. You’ll quickly get a sense of if you write better in the morning or at night. If you write better at home or somewhere else (I know this isn’t as easy to do because of covid right now). Then when you can, write at the time and place that make you the most productive.

“I love it when I see old couples together, because it makes me believe that true love does exist.”

— Unknown