Present Tense, No Quotation Marks

[Extollager]

I read relatively little current fiction and nonfiction. It seems to me, though, that there's a fad for use of present tense and the omission of quotation marks. This fad annoys me.

Thus, a few weeks ago I had Prophet Song by Paul Lynch in my hands. It has won awards. A near-future story about loss of liberties, etc. Probably I would have found it absorbing, but the mannered way of writing put me off -- long blocks of print with two or more speakers, no quotation marks. So I returned it to the library without finishing it.

I'm seeing this turn to present tense and to the omission of quotation marks (the latter derived from Cormac McCarthy?) rather a lot.

Whatever other discussion we want to have about this, would someone be able to answer this question? I was interested in John Lewis-Stempl's book Nightwalking, but my library says the only US library that loans it charges $15, so I might as well buy it. But if it's one more book written in present tense, I fear I would open it and experience a sinking feeling... So has anyone read it?

 

[HareBrain]

Whatever other discussion we want to have about this, would someone be able to answer this question? I was interested in John Lewis-Stempl's book Nightwalking, but my library says the only US library that loans it charges $15, so I might as well buy it. But if it's one more book written in present tense, I fear I would open it and experience a sinking feeling... So has anyone read it?

I tried to read a sample on Amazon UK, but the sample only contains the title and contents pages! Idiocy.

Anyway, one reviewer had helpfully posted an excerpt, and it seems to be in past tense (except where referring to current situations etc).

As for the general trend for present tense, it doesn't impress me either, and if I'm reading present it has to actually bring something to the book (i.e. not simply feel like a tense swap from past). I think a belief has grown up, maybe from its use in YA, that present tense is automatically more immediate than past, which I don't find to be the case at all. That said, I have come across books where I've felt it has worked well (and I've used it myself in writing).

the omission of quotation marks (the latter derived from Cormac McCarthy?)

I'm willing to give C McC a pass, as (based on All the Pretty Horses, the only book of his I've read) his writing derives some of its power from its lack of ease, and the absence of quotation marks adds to that and becomes part of it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

the omission of quotation marks

This seems to be s literary fiction, rather than a genre fiction issue?

 

[Extollager]

This seems to be s literary fiction, rather than a genre fiction issue?

I don't know. My guess is that the present tense fad began with literary fiction but will spread to genre. In fact I think it has shown up in crime fiction already. Wasn't it used sometimes in New Wave sf?

 

[HareBrain]

My guess is that the present tense fad began with literary fiction but will spread to genre.

I think it was the other way round. As a fad it really started with The Hunger Games (2008), and was then copied by other YA writers, to the point that it is now rare for YA to not use it, and it has become fairly common in adult fantasy. It probably spread to lit fic from genre (in that the overall reading public's greater familiarity with it gave writers/publishers more leeway to use it). Prior to Hunger Games, there were examples in lit fic but it wasn't common. I remember reading David Mitchell's Number9Dream when it came out (2001) and it being the first novel-length example I'd encountered (I think).

 

[Astro Pen]

My current WIP is first person present tense.
It is strange because initially, maybe the first 30 pages, it was hard work to write. Now 2/3 through, it is completely automatic and is no trouble at all to keep in line. ( I do however have normal punctuation. )

 

[Randy M.]

My impression is that present tense started before Hunger Games, and in literary fiction. I think Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying was second person present tense, which aggravated me, but the story was good enough to keep me reading. As for no quotation marks, doesn't that derive from James Joyce (maybe by way of Laurence Sterne?)?

 

[HareBrain]

My impression is that present tense started before Hunger Games, and in literary fiction.

Do you mean already gaining ground as a fashion? There were always scattered examples, sure, but I'd be interested to know if it was noticeably increasing in popularity before HG and the YA boom.

 

[Brian G Turner]

This seems to be s literary fiction, rather than a genre fiction issue?

Sorry, did you mean speech marks?

 

[Snicklefritz]

Whatever other discussion we want to have about this, would someone be able to answer this question? I was interested in John Lewis-Stempl's book Nightwalking, but my library says the only US library that loans it charges $15, so I might as well buy it. But if it's one more book written in present tense, I fear I would open it and experience a sinking feeling... So has anyone read it?
View attachment 130988

I haven't read it but would like to. I see that Blackwell's offers it for sale at $12.69 (free shipping) and has one-page preview along with a short review. It appears to be only 100 pages written in present tense as in a journal. What's in the preview is pleasant reading.

 

[Extollager]

The bit of Lewis-Stempl's Nightwalking that I was able to check at Blackwell's is in past tense -- hooray!



The Beaumont Nightwalking or Night Walking is a book I had the college library buy a while back.

 

[Swank]

well it could certainly be worse authors could choose to throw all that punctuation stuff to the wind and let the reader figure out where one sentence stops and the next starts assuming that is irrelevant to the reading process or that formatting is an unnecessary stricture on the creative process creating an unnecessary barrier between the artist and audience in the futurethistrendcouldgetmuchworsefirstwiththeeliminationofspacesandlaterwiththettlhnnltnfvwls

thnkfthpprthtwllbsvd

 

[Swank]

On a slightly more serious note, the whole idea that dialogue and narration are different is a very theatrical one rather than literary. It is a little funny we have strong feelings about it since we don't really object to authors skipping the quote marks if they offer the dialogue as paraphrase. What is dialogue other than more precise paraphrasing?

 

[HareBrain]

It is a little funny we have strong feelings about it since we don't really object to authors skipping the quote marks if they offer the dialogue as paraphrase. What is dialogue other than more precise paraphrasing?

Yes, it's just a convention that has grown up to make reading comprehension smoother -- and it has worked, to the point that a lot of readers now find any alternative really jarring. In a parallel universe, we might instead have got used to having the speaker stated at the beginning of a line, like a screenplay.

 

[Randy M.]

Do you mean already gaining ground as a fashion? There were always scattered examples, sure, but I'd be interested to know if it was noticeably increasing in popularity before HG and the YA boom.

It's a writer's tool that seemed to gain traction in more "literary" writing in the '90s, and maybe even before that, in the '80s -- the bright young things like Jay MacInerny (Bright Lights, Big City) and Brett Eastman Ellis (Less than Zero) employed it -- before genre writers picked it up (later genre writers, that is; I expect New Wave writers used it prior to that). By their reckoning, it makes the reading seem like events are happening in the moment. For me, it always calls itself out too strongly, though I object to it less now than I once did.

 

[HareBrain]

By their reckoning, it makes the reading seem like events are happening in the moment.

When skilfully employed, I agree with them; it becomes a kind of stream-of-consciousness blending sensory experience with thought.

Against that, the recent bestseller Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros contains the words "I'm unconscious". That would seem to be part of a stream of something else.

 

[Randy M.]

When skilfully employed, I agree with them; it becomes a kind of stream-of-consciousness blending sensory experience with thought.

Against that, the recent bestseller Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros contains the words "I'm unconscious". That would seem to be part of a stream of something else.

My problem with present tense is I imagine the narrator typing furiously to keep up with what's happening in the moment.

 

[HareBrain]

My problem with present tense is I imagine the narrator typing furiously to keep up with what's happening in the moment.

Yes, it's not a natural form. You can view a first-person past-tense story as someone's written or spoken account, but present tense is obviously artificial. I can accept it if work has been put into it (for example, trying to match the speed of narration to the speed of what's happening, and using the word "I" as little as possible if the character is focused outside themself) but this kind of effort seems quite rare, and it just becomes a translation from past tense in the same way as a pub anecdote ("so I go up to him and I say...")

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm seeing this turn to present tense and to the omission of quotation marks

One of my pet hates. Apart from signaling that this is a "proper" novel, I see absolutely no reason to omit quotation marks at all. I can just about tolerate present tense, but I don't think it lends much, and it loses the sense of reflection that you get from the perfect tense, since everything has to be immediate. The one McCarthy novel that I've read (The Road) made me think that he was greatly overrated.

 

[Extollager]

Version 1. I got up this morning. I looked out my bedroom window and saw a squirrel chasing another squirrel up the elm. Three kids trudged on their way to school. I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen.

Version 2. I get up. It's morning. I look out my bedroom window and see a squirrel chasing another squirrel up the elm. Three kids are trudging on their way to school. I can smell coffee brewing in the kitchen.


There's an imaginary opening for a novel. The first, conventional version unobtrusively eases me into the story. Will it be a funny story about domestic life, a story of suspense, or something else? I don't know yet. This author has engaged my interest.

The second version seems, to me, to impart a bogus breathlessness to an undramatic scene. It's gimmicky. Someone's taken a writing course in college or majored in creative writing, or is imitating some current author(s). I do not trust this author.