: Re: Shifting tenses in the middle of narration I am writing a short story where the narrator is recording a message to his daughter about some tragic event and in between the narration, the narrator

@Berumen699

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The actual switch in tense is fine. The context of one tense is simply different from the context of the other.

If the bulk of a story is in the past tense, but the narrator switches to the present tense in a few places, I often see such passages put in italics, simply to visually offset the different context. This can help with any possible confusion on the reader's part.

But while I find italics a nice signal of context switching, it's not essential—and it could also be handled differently. For instance, if you start every present tense passage with "Maribel,  . . . ," that would quickly be recognized as a cue for what is happening.

Other novels I've read have had different characters narrate different chapters—and also had some of those chapters (the characters' narration) be in different tenses.

So long as it's done in a way that isn't confusing to the reader, and so long as there's some level of consistency and order to it, there is no reason to avoid a change in tense.

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