Writer's Workshop: Tenses and Points of View

Hey, a double feature! How 'bout that? Let's go back to my roots and talk a little bit about verb tenses and points of view. Basically, when you start writing your story, you choose one of two tenses, past or present, and one of four points of view, first-person, second-person, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient. What do all those mean? Let's dig in and find out.

First, I want to talk about points of view. As I said, there are four points of view, each giving the story a slightly different feel. Second-person, for example, makes the reader feel like they themselves are performing the action. "You walk into the room and say hello to everypony." Usually, this "you" character is constructed to be an "everyman" so that any reader can put themselves into the character's shoes. But don't forget that the "you" character is a character, so they will ultimately end up having some unique traits. After all, they're probably either male or female (no disrespect to the intersex readers out there!), so whichever they are, they aren't the other one. In any case, the "you" character does allow you quite a bit of leeway with regards to characterization. However, it's also pretty uncommon, so you should probably only use it if you're trying to make a specific statement. (For example, "you" characters are more common in Choose-You-Own-Adventure books.) Oh, and one last thing. Second-person stories are almost always in the present tense, since it's engaging with the reader right here and now.

The first-person perspective acts as though the character is telling the story. "I walked into the room and said hello to everypony." This has a couple benefits. For one thing, it feels very personal and immediate. If the story is in the past tense, then the present narrator, the one telling us the story, is effectively a character in their own right as well. Another trick the first-person gives you is that you can hide or downplay the character's name or gender. The reader only knows what the narrating character tells them, so you can hide something by simply not having the character mention it and bring up later as a surprise. Similarly, the bias of the character is immediately felt, so you can twist the story quite a bit by letting the character's misconceptions bleed through. (A lot of this also holds true for second-person as well, but the first-person is more common and approachable.)

The two third-person points of view are very similar, but they differ in how much the narrator actually knows. "Twilight walked into the room and said hello to everypony." Third-person limited is like a camera hanging right behind a character's head. It's much like first-person, but it allows you some wiggle room to describe things that the character might not know or be able to see. It also allows you to switch characters if necessary, where first-person is much more sticky. One of my writing teachers claimed once that the third-person limited was superior to first-person in every way, but I disagree for the reasons I've explained. Now, the third-person omniscient is just like the third-person limited, only the narrator isn't limited to just one brain. "Omniscient" means "knowing everything," and that's exactly what this character does. An omniscient narrator can explain things that none of the characters actually know, see things that aren't actually visible, and connect the dots between things that aren't happening concurrently. It's a powerful perspective, but it's also very distant. At least how I feel about it, you don't get as personal into the characters' minds as you do in the first- or second-person.

Okay, but that's point of view. What about tenses? Most stories you read are in past tense. "The box fell on Derpy's head." The events of the story happened in the past, and the narrator is recounting it to the reader. This is pretty standard, and it won't steer you wrong. There's just one thing I feel needs to be explained: how do you describe things that happened in the past relative to the story? There's really only one way to do it: the past perfect. If I say, "The box had fallen on Derpy's head, so she ran into the lightpost," then you understand that the box fell on her head before I started telling you about her running into the lightpost. The past perfect, in this case, is pretty much the "super-past."

The present tense is pretty rare, though it does have its moments. It feels much more action-y and immediate, like the character is narrating it as it goes. "The box falls on Derpy's head." In this one, it's possible for the narrator to be surprised, considering they don't know what happens next any more than the reader does. In the end, though, I think you'll know if your story should be in present tense or not. If you can't decide, it should probably be in past tense.

Technically, there's one more tense: the future tense. But you'll never see a story written 100% in the future tense, because it would probably sound really weird. "The box will fall on Derpy's head." The only example I can think of where the future tense is used in narrative writing is in a whimsical present-tense story. "Now, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are about to leave for their vacation, but what they don't know is that they will be attacked by tigers before they make it to the airport." Something like that. You can use it here and there to punctuate the story with glimpses of the future. But like I said, you probably won't see a story written beginning to end in the future tense. (At least, not until I finish writing it.) There are also some other tenses, like the other perfect tenses, but they're mostly on a case-by-case basis. If you have any questions about those, you could just put a comment underneath this post. Anyways, hope this little review of tenses and points of view helps you with your stories!