Over the last week, I’ve been writing flash
fiction. This is pretty new for me, but I had a whale of a time doing it –
hopefully once the pieces find their way to publication I’ll be able to share
one or two on here.
As part of writing those pieces (five in
all), I had a bit of an epiphany about tenses. The choice of tense (usually
past or present) is often key to a piece of writing. A few years ago, the
present tense became so trendy (especially in SF), that it went full circle and
has started to become frowned upon again. Past tense, in the third person, has
always been the ‘default’ for fiction, and to be honest has always been my
favourite mode of writing. In fact, fiction written in the present tense put me
off. Fiction written in the first person present would cause me to drop any given
book like a hot (and mouldy) potato.
Although these prejudices still stand on
the novel, to a point, my mind was opened by flash fiction.
I began to write these pieces – which amount
to around 1,000 words or so – in the usual third person past. I varied it up by
writing one in the first person (I’m such a rebel). But then a weird thing
happened. I slipped into present tense. I didn’t realize it until the pieces
was almost done – it was subconscious. The story wanted to be written in the present tense. At the risk of sounding
arty-farty, I listened to the story, and rewrote parts of it accordingly.
This made me go back over the other pieces.
Sure enough, it suddenly made sense to me, in the framework of flash fiction,
to write a few more of them in the present tense. It lent the stories a sense
of immediacy. It restricted the viewpoint and forced me not to delve into backstory
or external events (integral if you want to keep the word count low). It forced
me to think about my character’s voice. I even wrote on in the first person
present, feeling a little sullied at first, but warming to the idea with every cool
phrase that my protagonist uttered ‘in the moment’.
Now, all of those benefits, which work so
well for flash fiction, have equal and opposite drawbacks. Present tense novels
always feel disjointed to me – each chapter reads like a short story, not
revealing as much of the world or history as you’d like. The dénouement of each
scene is rammed home more forcefully, because it’s compensating for its own
relentless immediacy. And if you also write in the first person, this is only exacerbated. Despite this, I have recently started to read the acclaimed novel, Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway, which is written in the present tense. The style is almost alienating, and it took me about fifty pages before I got to grips with it and started to engage with the story, but I'm glad I did. It's like retraining your brain!
My experiences this week have
taught me not to be so judgemental about my own style and voice. Listen to your
own stories. Be flexible as a reed in the wind, and hopefully your work will
remain fresh and engaging as a result.
