SimonDoom
Kink Lord
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2015
- Posts
- 15,751
However, I do have thirty- something stories posted here. And some of them are pretty good, maybe not in a literary sense but people like them.
I started out reading stories here and elsewhere and said to myself, "I can write better stories than this, and I have things I'd like to say." So here I am.
I knew there would be problems with point of view or tense so that's why I started this thread, to learn and improve my writing while I still can!
I hate stories where poor spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and other problems distract from what the writer is trying to tell us. So I try very hard to make my writing NOT distract from the story telling and maybe even ADD to the pleasure of reading it. Off to root for the black and gold Saints!
A lot of people may disagree with me about this, and I don't hold this opinion in an iron-clad sort of way, but my view about tense and point of view is that your default should be third person limited omniscient in the past tense, and you should have a reason to want to write from another point of view or in another tense.
Third person gives you a lot of flexibility. You can do just about anything that you can do in first person, and you can do things you can't do in first person (the problem you cite is a good example -- it's not a problem in third person, it's a problem only in first person).
Past tense is much more common than present tense, and readers are more accustomed to it. The great majority of fiction is written in the past tense. There's a reason for that.
You have absolutely no obligation to stick with this point of view/tense, but if you are going to choose one of the alternatives I think it's good to ask yourself why, and what you want to accomplish with the story, and how those choices will help the story. Ask yourself what problems the adoption of a different point of view or tense may create. Chances are, third person and past tense will not create any problems. You can navigate your way through or around just about any narrative problems with them.