The Tenseness of Tenses

AKA, changing the tense of my novel made a big difference.

It probably should seem obvious that tense can make a big impact on a story, but I didn’t realize it until after I finished Iridescent’s first draft. I always knew that I wanted the story to be told through first person point of view, primarily because Aly wanted to be the one to tell her story. The tense hadn’t seemed as important at the time. I had been reading some first person, present tense stories and I had really enjoyed them, so I thought that I would give it a try. Interestingly enough, I hadn’t realized that a lot of people seem to dislike present tense until after I finished draft one.

Please note, I am not saying that you should avoid a tense just because some people don’t like it. I mean I know some people aren’t a fan of first person POV either, but that’s what works for my story. You should always go with the POV and tense that works best for a story. In the case of Iridescent, present tense wasn’t the best idea.

I had thought that present tense would make the story more suspenseful. The reader would be seeing and learning everything right as Aly did. However, when reading the first draft I noticed that the story really wasn’t flowing well. There was something off about it. So I decided that for the second draft, I would change the story to past tense and see how things worked then.

Turns out it made a pretty big difference.

I’m halfway through my second draft and the story is flowing so much better now. It also feels more natural to write. I discovered that there were some elements in the story that were a lot easier to convey once I switched to past tense.

I’m hoping that once this draft is finished, I’ll find that the flow of the story is overall a lot better than it was when I wrote the story in present tense.

So if you ever find yourself having trouble with your story’s flow, try telling it a different way. A change in tense may just be the fix you’re looking for.