Make It Immediate & Present

Issue 7: April 2013

Make It Immediate & Present

In today’s fast-paced, cybernized, Twitter-it-now world, it can be difficult to get a reader’s attention and keep it. We are all so dazed by the multiple e-mails, instant messaging, newsletters and podcasts that there is little time for the new kid on the net, especially if the new kid doesn’t capture the reader’s attention. So the two challenges we face as writers are) 1 getting the reader’s attention in between those multiple light speed communications and 2) keeping their attention once we have it.

The first issue of getting attention is in a category of its own: marketing. We writers tend to be weak in that area, but we can all improve as we go along. We can definitely improve the second issue of keeping attention by doing what we do best: work on our writing technique. One of the techniques I’ve noticed in popular fiction is the use of present tense. “Andy runs through the dense jungle” as opposed to “Andy ran through the dense jungle.” Present tense has the advantage of placing the characters and action in the here and now. It gives readers the feeling immediacy that encourages their attention. It also reduces your word count, especially if you’ve been using past perfect. That last sentence is a perfect example. “If you use past perfect,” instead of “If you have been using past perfect.” Bam! Three words are reduced to one!

In the last issue of The Prodigal’s Daughter I talked about The Hunger Games and character. Well, The Hunger Games is an example of a novel written in present tense. I enjoyed the book so much I decided to use present tense in my novel-in-process, A Long Winter’s Night. I edited the entire manuscript, changing past and past perfect tenses to present tense and guess what… I cut about 200 words out of each chapter and tightened the writing at the same time. However, I didn’t change the flashback scenes to present tense. I left them in past tense to help the reader know that these events happened before my opening page.

I’m currently reading The Host The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer. She uses this technique in reverse. The sequences written from “the souls” point of view are in past tense, while the scenes written from “the hosts” point of view are in the present tense, even though they occur prior to the soul taking over the host. The beauty of this reversal is that it makes the hosts seem more immediate, more important, more prescient than the souls. Kudos to Stephenie Meyer for applying the tense-shifting technique to focus on her heroine! Though I’m only on Chapter 5, I recommend you read this interesting twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

 

Writing Challenge #7: Swim Little Fishes, Swim!

So did any of you take the plunge into the deep end and submit a story for publication? Remember, sink or swim, accepted or rejected, that’s why we write. You can’t earn the cash unless to take that risk. I’ll admit it…I haven’t submitted anything since January 2013. I could get on a guilt trip about it, but that won’t change anything. So if you, like me, didn’t accept last issue’s challenge, there’s always today. In the every present hope’s of reaching our writing goals, here’s another challenge. Come on little fishes and swim with me! The sharks may be big and scary, but even little piranha have teeth!