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Q&A

Varying POV and tense

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My novel is written in the third person. When changing POV between different scenes (or chapters), is it OK if the parts for different POV characters use different tenses: some - the past tense, and others - the present tense?

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This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/41439. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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It's a bit dicey. You'd have to have a good reason for it.

  • If Preston's POV is in the present, but Paola's POV is in the past, is the story happening in Preston's time? Is Paola relating things in flashback?
  • Is Preston an alien or someone who experiences time in a non-linear fashion, as compared to Paola who is a more bog-standard human?
  • Are you experimenting with storytelling techniques?

Shifting POV is fine; it's done all the time. Shifting tense usually indicates a break from the narrative. Dreams might be in present tense, for example, or a flashback from a present-tense story would be in past tense. But I think you would need a really compelling reason for Preston and Paola to have two different tenses in an otherwise straightforward narrative.

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