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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25707
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25707
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The tense used in a story is relative to the temporal POV (point of view) of the narrator, not to the actual calendar date. The modern novel arises from traditional storytelling, meaning that the default temporal POV is that you are telling a story about things that happened before the story is told. So even though your story is set in the future, the temporal POV is after the events of the story.

However, it is possible that parts of the story may be in the present relative to the temporal POV (universal or unchanging things, things in a frame) or in the future relative to the temporal POV (prophecy). In which case, they should be related in the appropriate tense.

Unchanging features are an interesting case. Statements about them are true in the present as much as in the past when they impinged on the events of the story. Thus statements about them in the past or present tense would be equally valid. The convention is to refer to them in the past in storytelling. Referring to them in the present might make sense if the story were in a frame that was contemporary to the storyteller.

When characters speak, of course, they speak in their own temporal POV, which is different from the narrator's temporal POV. (Characters speak in their present, not the narrator's present.)

There is a technique in which a story is told in present tense, meaning that the temporal POV is contemporary to the story as it unfolds. This can be used to create a kind of jittery or fragile feeling, or a sense of inevitability or doom -- the events are unfolding before your eyes yet you are unable to intervene or stop them.

Just as it is possible to change spacial POV in the middle of a story, it is possible to change temporal POV. However, this is much trickier and will likely just get you into trouble.

Original score: 5