Forum: Editors/Reviewers Hangout

May a writer use said in the Present Tense?

I have heard, and read, various perspectives. The totality of perspectives seems to be that said and some similar words are least obtrusive. Said "sounds" right when I read dialog aloud, no matter if in the Past Tense or Present Tense.

From Stack Exchange .com:

Even in a past tense story, dialogue is spoken from the temporal position of the speaker, which is always from their present. This proves that not all verbs must be past tense in a simple past tense story. So, the short answer is yes, you absolutely can use both past and present tense in a past tense story.

What about a story told in present tense? It depends. If you are using the ubiquitous present tense format rampant in a YA or middle grade novel, the tendency is to use nothing other than present tense verbs. But this does not mean you have to do that. If that seems to be a rule to you, the truth is you can break that rule any time you wish, legitimately, as long as you do it consistently. Because that rule is false.

It honestly does not matter how adamant your creative writing teacher is about following the YA format. If Charles Dickens can write a book like Bleak House (which will be in the canon forever) in present tense and NOT use the YA conventions rampant today, then you can, too.

Thinking that to tell a story from the perspective of the protagonist being live in the scene means that all you need to do is use only present-tense verbs in place of where one would use past-tense verbs is not an effective way to tell a story, regardless what you are being told. Even John Updike couldn't make that work believably.

But there are ways to use both present and past-tense verbs together to do exactly that—express a story or scene as if it is happening right now, rather than being a telling of a story from the past. It has the advantage of no distance compared to past tense stories, and it has the advantage of not being fuzzy and ridiculously confusing and amateurish-sounding that the YA present tense convention has.

It can also be invisible instead of sounding like an egoic author affectation or a gimmick.

I have five novels written this way that are living proof of this.

Some think the rule is 'don't mix tenses'. But that is NOT a rule. The rule is, much more accurately, 'Use the proper tenses in the proper places'. Since each verb modifies a subject or object apart from what every other verb in a sentence does, you can use both, properly, together, without 'mixing' them or having them clash.

The reason your line ending in 'he asked me' works, is because a line of dialogue is an incidental event and not an ongoing condition. Once the line has been delivered, it is over, meaning it is not precisely in the present. It's now in the immediate past, and can and should take a past-tense dialogue tag. The dialogue tag is there to inform us who said the line that was just delivered, and not there to inform us who the line is being said by directly at the moment it is said.

And if you do it this way, it still maintains the 'live in scene' aspect, completely.

It is logistically impossible for events even in a present-tense story to be expressed only by present-tense verbs, because even then there is a moving timeline where incidental events are immediately pushed into the immediate past. Everything that is observed by a protagonist is reported to the reader after it happens, not as it happens, which would also be logistically impossible.

(I added the Bolding.)

I mostly write in the ("modified") First Person, Present Tense.

I am inspired by authors such as Louis L'Amour, Tom Clancy, and R.A. Heinlein.

Here is an example of how I intend to write; using some action and dialog from The Rustler from 2008. I will atempt to identify Past Tense using Italics and Present Tense using Bold.

Wyatt sighed holding his hat in one hand. "I can't promise you that, Sarah," he said. She hadn't done anything wrong, to his way of thinking, but a lot of people had entrusted her with what savings they could scrape together and lay by against hard times. "I need to think it over."

She started to speak, stopped herself, nodded once.

He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. She felt soft as moonlight. "I meant it when I said I would stand by you," he told her. "For now, for tonight, that has to be good enough."

Behind them, towards the center of town, shots erupted. Six of them, rapid-fire.

"Damn!" Wyatt cursed, turning from Sarah, starting for the steps.

She caught hold of his arm, and he was surprised by the strength of her grip. She was a small woman, delicately made, but her fingers felt steely against his flesh.

Don't go, her eyes said.

Gently, Wyatt patted her hand and then removed it from his arm. He turned, sprinted down the walk, and vaulted over the gate, not wanting to spare the time to open it.

More shots splintered the night.

As he ran for Main Street, Wyatt told himself it was just a few of the boys, whooping it up on payday, and he wouldn't have to shoot anybody, or get shot himself.

There'd been a gunfight, directly in front of Jolene Bell's, and three men lay in the street, sprawled on their backs and bleeding, their arms flung out wide from their sides. The smell of gun smoke still tainted the air, though he figured the battle must have been over, because a dozen other men were riding out at top speed, and ordinary folks had begun to gather on the sidewalks.

Keeping the .45 at the ready in his right hand, Wyatt scanned the crowd, reached the first victim, crouched to put a hand to the pulse at the base of the throat, though he could see the man had been hit square in the center of the forehead. His eyes were wide-open, staring in affronted surprise at the starry sky.

As I understand it, this is a sentence written in the Present Tense: He opened the jar, before spearing a pickle.

Because one action must occur before the second action. Thus the first action is written as Past Tense, and the second action as Present Tense.