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I'm poking at a Mary Pevensie character study from my Narnia genderswap AU (which still needs a 'series' title, btw -- does anyone have any ideas? because I am seriously at a loss here) which for reasons beyond my understanding has decided it wants to be in second person present tense and have four sections, one for each sibling and one for her parents as a unit.
I never set out intending to write in second person. It's too odd a technique to use as a regular thing. But every now and then a story refuses to be told in any other voice. (Parseltongue, Knives, Along the Way, Prayers to Broken Stone... though that last is different in that the addressed 'you' is the reader, not a character in the story) And for some reason, when I think in second person, I think in present tense -- I can't seem to write second person past tense. I think this is because I associate second person with a sort of immediacy and/or immersion, and that fits better with present tense than past tense.
I tend to associate first person with present tense as well, though that's not quite as ironclad as second person. This may be because first person present tense reads to me like a person telling a story, whereas first person past tense reads like a person writing a story, and then I start wondering why the teller is bothering to write it all down.
Third person I can go either way -- present or past. They both sound and feel perfectly natural in my mind, and I have no real preference between them.
I am rarely sure why any given story wants to be in any given tense. Length has something to do with it, considering all my novels and most of my chaptered fics are written in past tense, but then again, "Tides" is in present tense, and so are some of my longer oneshots. I think past tense is easier to write, in some ways -- I am less likely to make tense errors, and it feels more, I dunno, stable -- but when I am doing a quick and dirty outline version of a story, I always fall into present tense no matter what tense the actual story is in. (I also start forgetting to put quotation marks around dialogue. I think both quirks may be related to sliding into a more conversational style, as if I'm retelling a secondhand version of the story to myself.) Possibly present tense feels 'faster' in some way, but I think I've written more action scenes in past tense than in present, so what do I know.
Anyway, getting back to the initial point of this post, I am writing about Mary. It's an interesting exercise because her motivations and the effects of her behavior have a severe disconnect at times, which is always fun to explore. (575 words and counting!)
I never set out intending to write in second person. It's too odd a technique to use as a regular thing. But every now and then a story refuses to be told in any other voice. (Parseltongue, Knives, Along the Way, Prayers to Broken Stone... though that last is different in that the addressed 'you' is the reader, not a character in the story) And for some reason, when I think in second person, I think in present tense -- I can't seem to write second person past tense. I think this is because I associate second person with a sort of immediacy and/or immersion, and that fits better with present tense than past tense.
I tend to associate first person with present tense as well, though that's not quite as ironclad as second person. This may be because first person present tense reads to me like a person telling a story, whereas first person past tense reads like a person writing a story, and then I start wondering why the teller is bothering to write it all down.
Third person I can go either way -- present or past. They both sound and feel perfectly natural in my mind, and I have no real preference between them.
I am rarely sure why any given story wants to be in any given tense. Length has something to do with it, considering all my novels and most of my chaptered fics are written in past tense, but then again, "Tides" is in present tense, and so are some of my longer oneshots. I think past tense is easier to write, in some ways -- I am less likely to make tense errors, and it feels more, I dunno, stable -- but when I am doing a quick and dirty outline version of a story, I always fall into present tense no matter what tense the actual story is in. (I also start forgetting to put quotation marks around dialogue. I think both quirks may be related to sliding into a more conversational style, as if I'm retelling a secondhand version of the story to myself.) Possibly present tense feels 'faster' in some way, but I think I've written more action scenes in past tense than in present, so what do I know.
Anyway, getting back to the initial point of this post, I am writing about Mary. It's an interesting exercise because her motivations and the effects of her behavior have a severe disconnect at times, which is always fun to explore. (575 words and counting!)
