I juggle struggle with what tense to use in stories sometimes. Most of the time when I start to imagine my story I also imagine the tense and point of view it is told in (example: third person past tense), but there are some stories (sneaky little things) that seem to want to be told a way I'm not used to, or I keep changing my mind on.When I work on my screenplay there is order in the "tense world"; it all fits because frankly, it has to. When I work on short stories and novels there are plenty of POVs and tenses available. I'm not a huge fan of present tense because it has to be done so well to make for a flowing read. I usually (as in ALWAYS) write in past tense, so deciding on POV is all that is left for me.
The novel that I just finished with another writer (I love you Mums) was written in first person past tense. The only thing is, as I read back over it, I kept wanting to change it to third person. What to do? I've decided that I'm going to make two versions of the doc and read them over to see which one tells the story the best.
Do you fight the POV and tense war sometimes? How do you resolve it? What is your preferred writing style? What format do you like to read?
photo: Faeryan
