Philip Pullman calls time on the present tense Source Guardian

If every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness

Last week, the Daily Telegraph printed a story headlined "Philip Pullman and Philip Hensher criticise Booker prize for including present-tense novels".

Not for the first time, a statement bellowed forthrightly in a headline became rather more muffled and provisional in the text below it, which carefully avoided having me say directly that I was criticising the Man Booker shortlist. I hadn't done that because I hadn't read the books. I'm quite prepared to believe that each of the listed novels that's told in the present tense is a miracle of literary art. What I did say, in an email to the Telegraph journalist who asked me about it, was that the use of the present tense in fiction had been getting more and more common, and I didn't like it.

Here's why. Like any other literary effect, the present tense is an expressive device; but expression works by contrast. Take this example from Jane Eyre: "They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house . . ."

That works beautifully because it emerges from the context of a narrative told in the past tense. Jane's sudden use of the present conveys View complete article

What does he mean by "its limited range of expressiveness"? Why is present tense narrative more limited than past tense? Surely the limitations are simply different?
To go off at a slight tangent ... present tense narrative seems to be a lot harder to write than past tense. I don't think I've come across a single present tense narrative on YWO where the writer got everything grammatically correct. It's not just the verbs you have to get right, it's the progressions of tenses: what would be in the pluperfect in a past tense narrative has to be in the perfect or the past continuous in a present tense narrative, etc etc. Even trickier are words like "now" and "these," for example, in present tense narrative, which in past tense narrative should sometimes, but only sometimes, be "then" and "those."
Hardest of all is changing your mind, and trying to put a past tense narrative into the present tense, or vice versa. I know, I'm struggling with the latter at the moment. Mind you, now that Philip Pulman has made such daft comments about callin time on present tense narrative, I'm starting to think maybe I'll stick with it after all.

Scias te fortasse Romanum esse si animal convivialissimum arbitreris esse caprum (Henricus Barbatus)


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I think part of the answer to the issues you raise about writing revolves around the question 'just how literary is your fiction'? By which I mean I tend to write very colloquially, even out of dialogue, because these are how my characters express their thoughts (rather than say in stiff, formal constructions) - exacerbated by my writing in the 1st person. Very few people speak grammatically perfect sentences and we do tend to think inside our heads with the same syntax and vocabulary as how we speak. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

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