THIS PIECE ON THE TENSES OF VERBS IS PUBLISHED IN
NEWSWRITE (March 2017), the newsletter of the New South Wales Writers' Centre
One: It’s the middle of winter, and snowflakes are
falling like feathers from the sky. A queen is sitting by her window; she’s
sewing.
Two: Once in the middle of winter, when snowflakes
were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat by her window and
sewed.
The tone of first one resembles directions for a
play or a movie, or a summary of a story; the tone of the second resembles the opening
of a traditional tale. They are both valid ways of beginning to tell a story or
an anecdote. However, unless the Jack
the Writer is skilled and practised, it will be more difficult for him to manipulate
order and duration with clarity and elegance if he sticks to the present tense.
To tell you the truth, the second one really should begin with the phrase:
‘Once upon a time.’ This phrase is of course a traditional English introduction
to a fairytale, an introduction that places the narrative, in a strangely
specific (once) yet airily vague historical time. And the tenses of the verbs
used in language are indicators not only of the era in which events took place,
but also of the minutes, days, years between one action and another.
Time is one of the key subjects of narrative. This
happened and then that happened, and then the other – a sequence of events
across time, until the end of the story or the end of time. Tempus fugit – for along with sex, the
other key subject matter of fiction is death, the marker of earthly finality.
When you write in an eternal present, you have the
luxury of denying the inevitability of death, and this can be a comfort to you
as the writer and also to your reader. In 1939 Joyce Cary published Mister
Johnson, a novel written in the present tense. The novel was seen as
experimental, and Cary explained he wanted readers to be ‘carried unreflecting
on the stream of events’ as the character ‘swims gaily on the surface of life.’
He wanted the reader to ‘swim, as all of us swim, with more or less courage and
skill, for our lives.’
As I write this it is 2016 – and by the time you
read it, it will be 2017 – and nowadays a novel written in the present tense is
not only unremarkable for its tense, but even fashionable. Perhaps this
fashion, which as far as I can tell began to gather momentum in Australia in the
1980s, is fading out, but much fiction and non-fiction, is still being written
in the present tense. With more or less
skill.
One: It rains so heavily throughout the spring,
that by early summer the leaves on the ivy are the size of dinner plates.
Two: It rained so heavily throughout the spring,
that now in early summer the leaves on the ivy are the size of dinner plates.
There are moves you can’t make without the use of
a past tense, but maybe you don’t want to make them. Because the present tense
gives you an eternal ‘now’, you can’t shift from ‘then’ to ‘now’. As I say,
perhaps you don’t wish to shift, although in the first one, if you think about
it for a minute, you don’t really know when ‘now’ would be. Not that ‘now’ is
invoked. ‘Now’ is inserted in the second one, affording this one an opportunity
to draw attention to the rhythm of the time shift, and also allowing a lilt in
the music of the prose. It is all a matter of you as the writer taking charge
of the effects you want. My examples so far have placed a certain reliance on
mention of the seasons, for the seasons are useful pinpointers of time. By
putting a season of the year in the narrative, I draw attention to the passage
of time, however slightly.
In Book One of My Struggle Karl Ove
Kknausgaard sometimes writes in what I call the Ecstatic and Eternal Present: ‘I stare at the surface of the
sea without listening to what the reporter says, and suddenly the outline of a
face emerges’.
This is just one example of a skilled and practised author whose work can glow
with the light of recollected truth, defying time, while deep within the fabric
of the work, facing the reality of death. David Malouf does this brilliantly in
12 Edmondstone Street, as does Hal Porter in The Watcher on the Cast
Iron Balcony. In my book Writing the Story of Your Life you will find
discussion of ten English tenses, and a detailed analysis of seven different
kinds of present tense.
As you read and as you write, try always to be alert to
the ways you and other writers are using tenses, and why.
