The Current Tense Trend: Mixing Past and Present Tense Conventions

One of the main choices an author has to make when writing a narrated story is which verb tense to use. Many readers and writers alike will tell you that you have only two tenses to choose from: the past or the present. 

(Because English does not actually have a future tense—i.e., an inflected future tense—stories written in English are not told in the future tense, and if any writer attempted a whole story in the pseudo-future tense, the reading experience would be extremely irritating with all those repeated instances of the helping verb will.) 

However, there is a way to blend some of the conventions of the past and present tenses, and many modern-day published authors are already doing this. This is a phenomenon you may or may not have consciously noticed. Before we delve into the specifics, let’s talk about the evolution of tense in narrative storytelling. 

The past tense was the favored tense for a long time. Read any literature written in English from before modern times, and you will be hard pressed to find any narratives that don’t employ the past tense. The use of the past tense seemed a rule, a function of storytelling as we then knew it (more on that later). 

However, recently, the present tense has become quite popular, particularly in young adult and contemporary literature. Some people call it “the historic present,” meaning that the present tense is used to convey a past event. Yet some readers don’t see it that way: some readers feel that the events are happening as the reader is reading them. (And some writers write their stories so that readers perceive the events to be unfolding as the reader is reading.) 

Despite its popularity, there are still readers who feel turned off by the present tense. Many think the preference for past tense might come down to the love for the familiar, especially since the past tense was the favored tense for such a long time. 

Because the past tense was once so heavily favored, when the present tense started becoming popular, there existed this idea that writers needed to have a really good reason to use it—for example, if the main narrator dies at the end or before the end of the story. (After all, a dead character can’t narrate the story from a future moment that doesn’t exist because they’ve died.) But this became problematic: if the present tense was only used because the main narrator died, then wouldn’t its use always give away the ending (or, at least, the narrator’s, ahem, ending)? Now, writers use the present tense for a variety of reasons. 

The primary reason, discussed widely across writing circles, is the sense of immediacy the present tense offers. The effective use of this tense can make readers feel like they are right there, in time and in place, with the character(s). 

The past tense was originally a function of our ideas about storytelling: namely, that stories have to be experienced and then told—that both cannot occur simultaneously. Stories were once always thought to involve a narrator who was telling the story after the events of that story (just like real life, in which we share stories about ourselves after we live through them). Some stories are even structured to include a story within a story in which the narrator is shown narrating the story (e.g., Wuthering Heights, The Name of the Wind, etc.), giving readers a clear idea of the exact moment from which the story is being narrated, in addition to other details (e.g, why the story is being told, who the story is being told to, etc.). 

Surprisingly, in such stories structured to include the very act of storytelling, we seldom think about from whence the outer story is being told: from which future point (when + where) is the storyteller giving us the details about the storyteller giving us the details about the story?  

Such story-within-story structures seem to be falling out of favor, as does the idea that readers have to imagine that a story is being told from some future moment just because the past tense is used. In other words: many readers don’t begin reading a story and automatically think about how the story is being told from some future time and place (unless this future moment is made explicit). 

The popularization of the present tense has led to a strong desire for novels that feel present or immediate, but an equally strong preference for past tense conventions has remained. The reconciliation between these has resulted in a tense style that relies heavily on past tense conventions but sprinkles in some lite present tense conventions. 

Strict past tense conventions demand not only past tense verbs but also other specific word choices. For example, stories written in the past tense use words like there and then, while stories written in the present tense use words like here and now. The narration in stories that mix up past- and present-tense conventions might rely heavily on the past tense but favor words like here and now over words like there and then.

Additionally, modal verbs (also called helping verbs), which do not have past tense forms, are used in stories written in the present tense, but they aren’t typically used in stories that strictly use the past tense, with some exceptions (including dialogue). However, writers that mix up past- and present-tense conventions do use modal constructions. Here are the ten modal verbs: 

• may
• might
• must 
• can 
• could
• shall 
• should 
• will 
• would 
• ought to 

For example, a story that exclusively uses the past tense won’t say something like this directly in the narration: “George shouldn’t have eaten the pie.” This sentence uses the present continuous, thus breaking away from the strict use of the past tense. Such a story might use this phrasing in dialogue, though (e.g., “Claire told George, ‘You shouldn’t have eaten the pie.’”) The phrasing might also be used after a past tense construction (i.e., “George knew he shouldn’t have eaten the pie.”) However, this phrasing would be used directly in the narration of a story that mixes up tense conventions.

Here is a comparison of a story told in the past tense, the present tense, and a mix of past and present tense: 

This text relies on past tense conventions and includes the following tense constructions:  -simple past -past progressive -past perfect -past perfect progressive -conditional perfect	Twelve-year-old Ryan couldn’t believe he was there, on the Major Plunge mountain bike trail, by himself. Feeling apprehensive, he tightened his grip on his hand brakes as he descended the steep mountain path. He felt the tail of his mountain bike coming skyward as his head went closer to the ground, and before he knew it, he was falling over the handlebars and tumbling down the hill with his bike. He had probably gripped his front brake too hard and forgotten to lean his body back. Right then, as he lay sprawled out on the dirt path, the pain of his injuries began to make itself known. If he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, his injuries would have been a lot worse.
This text relies on present tense conventions and includes the following tense constructions: -simple present -present progressive -present perfect -conditional perfect progressive -conditional simple	Twelve-year-old Ryan can’t believe he’s here, on the Major Plunge mountain bike trail, by himself. Feeling apprehensive, he tightens his grip on his hand brakes as he descends the steep mountain path. He feels the tail of his mountain bike coming skyward as his head goes closer to the ground, and before he knows it, he is falling over the handlebars and tumbling down the hill with his bike. He must have gripped his front brake too hard and forgotten to lean his body back. Right now, as he lies sprawled out on the dirt path, the pain of his injuries begins to make itself known. If he wouldn’t have been wearing his helmet, his injuries might be a lot worse.
This text relies on a mix of past and present tense conventions and includes the following tense constructions:  -simple past -past progressive -past perfect -past perfect progressive -conditional simple	Twelve-year-old Ryan couldn’t believe he was here, on the Major Plunge mountain bike trail, by himself. Feeling apprehensive, he tightened his grip on his hand brakes as he descended the steep mountain path. He felt the tail of his mountain bike coming upward as his head came closer to the ground, and before he knew it, he was falling over the handlebars and tumbling down the hill with his bike. He must have gripped his front brake too hard and forgotten to lean his body back. Right now, as he lay sprawled out on the dirt path, the pain of his injuries began to make itself known. If he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, his injuries might be a lot worse.

Some traditionalist readers and grammarians probably see this mix of past and present tense conventions and consider it bad grammar. But the use and endurance of mixed conventions in modern literature seem to show that writers and readers alike might actually prefer this, even if it comprises objectively “bad” grammar. After all, many people agree with the descriptive-grammar school of thought: grammar evolves over time.

Some writers might use the new trend without much conscious thought (perhaps adopting the mix of conventions from other writers), while others might use it intentionally to add a sense of immediacy to their writing without relying on the present tense alone and ousting those readers who don’t prefer the present tense.  Some writers might have other reasons for adhering to the new trend (including brevity; e.g., it takes less words to say, “This must be his teacher” than “This had to have been his teacher”).

Which tense conventions do you prefer, as a reader, writer, or both? Have you consciously noticed this trend? What are your feelings about mixing past and present tense conventions?