When you first sit down to write a novel, there are a couple of big choices you can’t avoid for long. One of them is deciding on a narrative tense – which normally means telling your story in either the past tense (“I went into the forest and got lost in the trees…”) or present tense (“I go into the forest and get lost in the trees…”).
Whether it’s a conscious choice or not – and I’d encourage you to ensure it is! – it can have an enormous impact on your book. But your choice can also lead to some confusion later down the line too.
So if you’ve ever wondered how to write about the past when you’re already writing in the past tense, or paused over a mix of present-tense dialogue and past-tense narrative, this blog is for you!
First, we’ll look at how to use both of the two main narrative tenses and then we’ll look at how they impact dialogue and thoughts…
Past tense
Past tense is by far the most popular choice of narrative tense for books – and for good reason. We’re brought up on past-tense fairy tales (“Once upon a time, there was…”) and it’s the tense someone would use around the dinner table when telling a story about what happened to them earlier that day. This means it tends to feel the most natural for readers.
A book written in the past tense uses the past tense of verbs to represent the action or “present” of the story, describing the events as they happen. For example, if a character in your book explores a spooky abandoned building, you might write something like the below:
- I shivered as I walked down the dark corridor. The air smelled musty, and the ancient carpet was stained with mould.
Sometimes though, you might need to talk about something that happened before the “present” of the story. But if the current events are already described in the past tense, how do you describe something that happened before that?
You can’t simply use the past tense again, since there is no discernible difference to the reader between an event that is currently happening and one that has happened before.
Instead, you need to shift past events one step further back, into the past perfect tense (sometimes called the pluperfect tense). This means changing “I did” to “I had done”, “I was” to “I had been”, “I ate” to “I had eaten”, etc.
Continuing our example from before, let’s imagine your character picked up a mysterious book before entering the building. Note that the past-perfect verbs describing what happened before the current action are underlined, but the new sentences also contain some past-tense verbs that relate to the present of the story (“turned”, “flicked”, and “filled”).
- I shivered as I walked down the dark corridor. The air smelled musty, and the ancient carpet was stained with mould. I turned my attention to the book I had picked up earlier, and flicked through the pages again. They had been blank before, but now they were filled with glowing symbols.
Present tense
Present-tense narratives are much less common than past-tense ones, but the present tense is actually a great choice for something like horror. It feels immediate and it’s really effective at building tension, since the reader experiences the story at the same time as the character, which allows for lots of unknowns (rather than the story feeling like a retelling of something that has already happened).
It’s also much simpler to use.
A book written in present tense uses the present tense of verbs to represent the action or “present” of the story, describing the events as they happen. That same character exploring an abandoned building might now look like:
- I shiver as I walk down the dark corridor. The air smells musty, and the ancient carpet is stained with mould.
To describe events that have already happened, you can simply shift the events back into the past tense.
In the example below, note again that the past-tense verbs describing what happened before are underlined, but the new sentences also contain some present-tense verbs that relate to the present of the story (“turn”, “flick”, and “fill”).
- I shiver as I walk down the dark corridor. The air smells musty, and the ancient carpet is stained with mould. I turn my attention to the book I picked up earlier, and flick through the pages again. They were blank before, but now they’re filled with glowing symbols.
Dialogue and direct thoughts
No matter which main narrative tense you choose, any words spoken aloud in a scene or a character’s direct, in-the-moment thoughts should be written exactly as your character would say or think them – ignoring any tense shifts in the narrative text. They are, after all, direct quotes.
A newspaper wouldn’t change a direct quote from a politician who said at some point in the past “I am not a fraud” to report: The politician said “I was not a fraud.” Likewise, the dialogue and direct thoughts of your characters should be reported in exactly the words they say or think, there and then.
I’ve added some dialogue to the beginning of our examples in both main narrative tenses, and a direct thought at the end, to show what this would look like.
Note that while the quoted words are reported exactly as the character said or thought them, the dialogue tags – which are part of the narrative, rather than reported speech – are in the same narrative tense as the rest of the book.
Present-tense narrative:
- “What is this place?” I whisper, though I am acutely aware there is no one else here to answer my question. I shiver as I walk down the dark corridor. The air smells musty, and the ancient carpet is stained with mould. I turn my attention to the book I picked up earlier, and flick through the pages again. They were blank before, but now they’re filled with glowing symbols. I need to get out of here, I think.
Past-tense narrative:
- “What is this place?” I whispered, though I was acutely aware there was no one else there to answer my question. I shivered as I walked down the dark corridor. The air smelled musty, and the ancient carpet was stained with mould. I turned my attention to the book I had picked up earlier, and flicked through the pages again. They had been blank before, but now they were filled with glowing symbols. I need to get out of here, I thought.
Indirect thoughts
Indirect thoughts (sometimes called “indirect free speech”), where a character’s views are absorbed into and form part of the narrative, should use the same tense as the rest of the narrative. You can see the difference below, using the past-tense version of the earlier example.
Direct thoughts in present tense, despite past-tense narrative:
- They had been blank before, but now they were filled with glowing symbols. I need to get out of here, I thought.
Indirect thoughts in same past tense as rest of narrative:
- They had been blank before, but now they were filled with glowing symbols. I really needed to get out of there…
As you can see from this blog, it’s very easy for tenses to become complicated quite quickly – and I’ve only touched on one or two different areas here!
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