Post by account_disabled on Dec 23, 2023 23:17:12 GMT -5
I often wonder what the best tense to use in a story is , to get the reader's maximum attention and also maximum effectiveness. In this case by narrator I also mean the so-called "narrating ego". I have always written stories by narrating them in the past tense, also because it seems logical that, if you are telling a story, those episodes have already happened. Yet there are those who write in the present tense, so I imagined the two ways of narrating and tried to draw some conclusions or, better yet, some starting points for discussion.
Write in the past tense The narrator tells what happened. Therefore the action must necessarily take place in the past tense. The tenses used, depending on the case, are four: past perfect , imperfect , past perfect and past perfect . Remote past It is the time that, in my opinion, best represents the action, the one that makes the reader more involved in Special Data the situation a character is experiencing. It is the verb used to “show” readers what the characters are doing. The gas machine rumbled and the smell of coffee spread into the room. The old man got up, without answering, went to the stove and turned off the gas. He opened a cupboard door and took out a tray.
He placed it on the shelf, then from the same compartment he took four mismatched cups with saucers and four teaspoons from a drawer. He put everything on the tray. He poured the coffee into the cups, then took a sugar bowl and brought the coffee to the table. The song is taken from my story Zefiro , written for the Royal Rumble. The scene is completely “shown” to the reader. A deliberate exaggeration, in this case, otherwise such a scene would have to be "told". Imperfect I see it as an ideal time to introduce the reader into a scene, to describe a setting, a state of mind. It is therefore the time used to "tell" something that cannot be shown or that it is not necessary to show.
Write in the past tense The narrator tells what happened. Therefore the action must necessarily take place in the past tense. The tenses used, depending on the case, are four: past perfect , imperfect , past perfect and past perfect . Remote past It is the time that, in my opinion, best represents the action, the one that makes the reader more involved in Special Data the situation a character is experiencing. It is the verb used to “show” readers what the characters are doing. The gas machine rumbled and the smell of coffee spread into the room. The old man got up, without answering, went to the stove and turned off the gas. He opened a cupboard door and took out a tray.
He placed it on the shelf, then from the same compartment he took four mismatched cups with saucers and four teaspoons from a drawer. He put everything on the tray. He poured the coffee into the cups, then took a sugar bowl and brought the coffee to the table. The song is taken from my story Zefiro , written for the Royal Rumble. The scene is completely “shown” to the reader. A deliberate exaggeration, in this case, otherwise such a scene would have to be "told". Imperfect I see it as an ideal time to introduce the reader into a scene, to describe a setting, a state of mind. It is therefore the time used to "tell" something that cannot be shown or that it is not necessary to show.