Present Tense Excepted

Feb 04, 2011 09:14

I have things on my mind today.

Why do readers object to present tense?

rambling

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Comments 17

vodou_blue February 4 2011, 18:28:07 UTC
Two reasons.

1) People are used to reading past tense.

2) Present tense can be slightly jarring subconsciously, because everything is happening ‘now’. People have a small difficulty mentally tracking events when there is no ‘past/present/future’ to follow along with. It isn’t confusing; it’s just a quirk of how humans’ thought processes automatically want to track time. (this is a generalization, obviously; not everybody dislikes it)

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suebrownstories February 4 2011, 22:20:17 UTC
Two good ways of putting it.

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layne67 February 8 2011, 08:46:09 UTC
Those days when I still could write, I used past tense only until my beta then said I should use present tense instead and I found it a lot more interesting!

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