: Is it better the use the present or the past tense for a novel written in the first person I just started a book, but i cant decide if its better to use the present or the past tense

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There is no correct answer to this - the two tenses have different effects.

It is generally believed that the present tense is more immediate and gives a stronger sense of tension.

Whereas the past tense is more standard and tells the story in a more straightforward way. Personally I think you can build just as much tension in the past tense as in the present.

I would recommend writing the past tense if you're not that experienced, because it is the default standard for most fiction, and I believe it's best to focus on the story, rather than getting preoccupied by the format, when you're first writing a novel.

When you've written your first novel in a reasonably straightforward way, you will have learned an awful lot and you will be much better informed about whether you want to use one of the more unusual structures in your next novel, such as present tense. At that point you will be able to answer it for yourself, because you will know the impact it will have on your story.

One final note - because writing in past tense is so integrated into our psyche, you may find it harder to write in the present tense and will find that you often slip back into past tense without realising. Catching all these instances could be very tedious, but not catching them will make your writing look unprofessional. Just another reason to stick to past tense unless you have a damn good reason not to!

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It depends on what you are trying to do. Present tense creates tension because the reader doesn't know what is going to happen -- is the narrator going to live after the bomb explosion, for example? However, past tense can be advantageous if you want the reader to think that the narrator has learned from experience. Is the storyteller giving you the benefit of his/her wisdom after a long series of events? Is this a retrospective, or is it happening now?

A personal opinion only: I find it very difficult to write first-person present tense for anything longer than a very short story because anything I write seems rather false and 'pushed'. Of course, this is my limitation, but you might want to consider how many well-respected authors write this way before you take it on yourself.

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