Is it OK to use "I guess" in fiction?
Example:
I groaned. Why was I doing this? I guess I was afraid of losing him. Like it or not, he was my only guide right now.
Does it sound strange since the tense temporarily changes to the present? (and I guessed sounds even more weird).
Is this a common usage in fiction? If not, what's the correct alternative?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/15886. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
Word choice
What words and phrases you can use in your narration is determined by the character of the narrator and the stylistic distance you choose to employ.
If you chose a very distanced narrative style, you must use standard language and a neutral, almost formalised style. If you want to write close to the person of your narrator, you can come as close to how this person would talk in real life as you want, including ungrammatical sentences and wrong words.
"I guess" is somewhere in the middle distance: it is not impersonal enough to fit a distanced narration, but it is also not slang or dialect, but rather something any English speaker might say, even the Queen.
Tense
As for the tense of "I guess", it is quite alright. Let's analyze what you are actually saying with your example sentence:
[Back in the past, when the events happened:] I groaned. [Back then I wondered:] Why was I doing this? [I did not know back then, but now as I narrate this, and looking back at the events from a temporal distance, I think or, which means the same,] I guess [that back then] I was afraid of losing him. [You the reader may] Like it or not [today, as I tell you about it], [but back then] he was my only guide right now.
As you can see, it is not the "I guess" that makes readers stumble, but the "right now" at the end, because "now", if spoken by the narrator, refers to the moment of narration, not to the time in the past when "he was my only guide". So what you need to do is shift the "right now" into the past:
I groaned. Why was I doing this? I guess I was afraid of losing him. Like it or not, at the time he was my only guide.
Replace "at the time" with any reference to the past that sounds good to you – or simpley leave it out completely, it will work anyway:
Like it or not, he was my only guide.
The problem with a first person narrator narrating in past tense is that you can easily get confused with temporal references. This is why I either narrate first person present tense, or third person past tense. In the first case, the narration happens as the events happen, and everything is in present tense; in the second case the narrator is not the protagonist, and whatever the protagonist might have guessed or had will be in past tense.
Another good example for temporal confusion is the phrase "like it or not". It is said by the narrator, but can it be said of how someone feels in the past? Let's take an example in third person to check this:
She groaned. Why was she doing this? I guess back then she was afraid of losing him. Like it or not, but he was her only guide right now.*
As you can see, in third person narration "right now" works fine, simply because there is no present moment that it could refer to (because there is no reference to the narrator anywhere nearby). But what about "like it or not"? I feel that it is not how you would describe someone else's thoughts, so it feels incongrous. And because of this incongruity, the reader will attribute it to the narrator in your first person past tense example.
If you want the protagonist to "like it or not", you need to shift that verb into the past tense also:
Wether I liked it or not, he was my only guide.
What you must never forget is that everything outside of direct speech is said by the narrator. The narrator is always in the present**. All stylitic markers attribute to the narrator in the present of the narration.
Make sure that everything that happened in the past, including indirect speech or past thoughts reported by the narrator, are in past tense, and everything the narrator thinks or says is in present tense. Don't overlook verbs in figures of speech or formulaic phrases like "I guess" or "like it or not".
Notes.
* I use a female protagonist in this example, to avoid the confusion of "he was his only guide": he himself, or someone else? I'd use a name here, if it was two men.
** Unless you have multiple frames of one narrator narrating [in the present] how another narrator narrated past events in a more recent past.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15888. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads
You're right, it does sound a bit weird. That's only because of the tense of course. If you were writing in the present tense, it would be just fine.
While no professional, my suggestion would be to use a different word. In the above example, substitute was and make it a question.
Why was I doing this? Was I afraid of losing him?
It doesn't quite have the same sound as the original, so you could probably play with it to satisfaction.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads