Some Thoughts on Present Tense

If you’re a regular reader of YA, one of the things you will probably have noticed is that in this genre present tense is not a rarity. In fact, in YA the amount of novels in the present tense actually seems to rival the number of dead parents.

Personally, unlike a lot of people who are concerned with the proliferation of present tense in YA because they perceive it to be a bad thing, I like present tense. I like to read in it as much as I do in any other tense, and I like to write in at as much as I do in any other tense.

So, why all the present tense, then? Why are authors using it?

To be clear, I don't think present tense needs to be justified to work. In the same way that there doesn't have to be a reason to use the past tense, there doesn't have to be a reason to use the present. But there are a few reasons, I think, that we're seeing a lot more present tense in YA these days.

The most oft-proposed reason for the use of present tense is that teens want immediacy, teens want to experience the novel with the protagonist. And present tense centres them in the action, allowing them to relate to the protagonist more intimately.

I think this theory holds merit, but I certainly don’t think it’s the only reason an author would select the present tense and I don’t think this means that novels written in past tense are automatically less relatable.

But, there are also other reasons why authors choose to write in the present tense that are largely ignored. For instance, if you intend to kill your protagonist at the end of the story and you’re writing in the first person, writing in past tense would be rather illogical (and yes, I actually have killed a protagonist at the end of a novel. I’m a bitch like that).

Or on a more theoretical level, an author might choose to employ first person narration to force the reader to consider the very construction of stories. One of the things I think is most interesting about YA, is that in a lot of ways it completely shifts away from the traditional constructs of merit/power/higher worth in literature.

Old, buttressed, canonized storytelling is – by and large, of course there are significant exceptions – masculine in its outlook and subject matter, objectively told in a past tense that contributes to a sense of a story being ‘told’, being absolute.

Using the present tense is a move away from that traditional scaffold that seems fitting given that this genre also moves the locus of power in terms of themes and point of view.

What I mean by this is that in YA, we are often less concerned with the story of a hero of noble lineage who saves the world, and are often more concerned with the story of everyday – and usually far less heroic – people, often female. And, seriously, I have never heard anything considered less worthy of being turned into literature or seriously discussed than the point of view of a teenage girl -- whose concerns must, by virtue of her age and gender, necessarily be completely trivial. Yeah, I’m rolling my eyes – I’ve got the whole rebellious teenager thing down ;)

My point is that we’re not high or traditional art, we’re an exact affront to that art. So of course, in a lot of cases, we’re not going to play by traditional rules.

Of course, present tense is also helpful in drawing attention to the fact that the story is being constructed in that the reader is aware that they are not actually in the mind of the protagonist, or author, and that these events aren’t actually occurring in real time.

There is a greater awareness that this can't be happening now, and never could have happened -- unlike with past tense, which makes the story seem like a possible retelling of real events in a lot of ways (although past tense narration draws attention to story telling in different ways).

So, present tense can be used to underscore issues of construction of self, text and society in a novel (usually I find this in postmodern adult fiction, though. But sometimes YA – I think Paper Towns by John Green goes there, if I remember correctly).

What are your thoughts on the abundance of present tense novels in YA? Does it make sense or is it just a bunch of people jumping on a bandwagon or what?

Personally, I’m waiting for someone to write a YA book completely in fourth person, future tense...