Past vs. Present Tense | Which is right for your book?

The tense of a story can have an effect on everything from the story's structure to its sound. Although it seems like a technical or merely grammatical choice, it can have a large impact on a story and its important to think through before you get too late into a draft--tense is not an easy thing to change! So let's talk about the qualities of both present and past tense.

Present tense has become more popular in recent years, and has the benefits of being immediate, suiting unconventional writing, and having an easy to follow timeline. Its drawbacks are that it limits your structural options and is, unfortunately often illogical.

Past tense is a classic choice that will mostly fly under the radar. It gives you endless freedom with the structure of your story and makes it easier to edit out redundancies. It can be complicated to write because of the inherent multiple timelines, so it's key use tenses correctly and make sure the timeline is clear.

TIMESTAMP:
0:00 - Intro
2:00 - Genre and category conventions
2:30 - Present tense
6:20 - Past tense

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