Using Present Tense to describe a Fact on a story that uses Past Tense
newcomer here, and I have a question.
I have a story that starts with the sentence, 'the ocean is vast'.
However, I'm actually going to write my story in past tense form but changing that 'is' to 'was' sounds off to me.
I feel that saying 'the ocean was vast' somehow implies that the ocean was once a vast body of water and it's just doesn't seems very strong and concrete than saying 'the ocean is vast'.
So my question is,
[1] Should I use present tense to describe an everlasting/obvious fact even if the whole story is told in past tense?
Excerpt:
The ocean is vast.
Capt. Harris could actually hide his supply ship, the Clement, in the endless stretch of the ocean and not trouble himself with worry regarding any attacks from prowling raiders. Of course if said raider was equipped with the most sophisticated radar equipment that 1939 could offer, then that would pose a problem. But then again, he was currently steaming along the southern parts of the Atlantic, what chances were there for a German surface raider appearing out of nowhere?
Thanks.
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2 answers
Stories do not have tenses. Individual verbs have tenses. Even an individual sentence can contain verbs in different tenses.
Tom is saying that Jane promised that she will marry him in September.
Stories may be told in the narrative present, meaning that the narration is framed as if it were taking place at the events of the story unfolded, or in the narrative past, meaning that the narration is frame as if it happens after the events of the story. This has nothing to do with the tense of verbs using individual phrases in individual sentences in these stories.
In the narrative present, there will be numerous occasions to refer to events that happened in the past relative to the current moment of the narrative, or that will happen in the future. These are described using the appropriate verb tense.
In the narrative past, there will, similarly, be occasions to refer to events that happened in the past relative to the current moment of the narrative, or that will happen in the future. These are also described using the appropriate verb tense.
And in either the narrative past or the narrative present, there are statements that are describe permanent things, like the vastness of the ocean. Statements of permanent features are usually made using the present tense, since to use the past tense would imply that they have ceased to be true, and to use the future tense would be to imply that they are not yet true. The choice of tense in this case is determined entirely by the particular statement being made and is entirely independent of the rest of the sentence, paragraph, or story.
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Adding to Dale Emery's answer, and maybe clarifying it a bit, I would say that the tense depends on the narrator.
If the story is narrated by an omniscient narrator, then the ocean is vast, because that is what the timeless and universal narrator knows about it. If the story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, as he experiences the events, then the ocean was vast, because the protagonist perceives it as vast.
I feel that most writers do not have a clear understanding of their own narrator and switch back and forth between omniscient and personal narrator, sometimes even between first and third person (like Stephen King in Carrie). This works for some books and writers (as the success of Stephen King shows), but depending on your writing style you might want to think about who is telling your story and stick to that viewpoint and only deviate from it if you know why you do it.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16214. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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