I'm personally far more comfortable with third person, past tense, but I understand his point. My vote here doesn't count and I'll leave it up to you pantheons to judge for yourselves. Discuss it in the comments, debate like the analytical thinkers you are, and Joshua, if you'd put up a poll on the side for votes, I'd appreciate it. Writers only please!I'm finding it incredibly difficult to write third-person past tense. In the spirit of role play, it seems easier to me (as I voted when we decided these things) to write in first person. It makes me more involved with my character and less a puppeteer-narrator describing what he did. Though it's less important to me, present tense also helps to make it feel very "in the moment," rather than as if this story is something that's happened long ago and we're retelling it...Would you consider putting to the vote at least changing from third to first person after we cycle through authors once? Maybe present tense also, though, as I've said, it's less of an issue.
Dec 18, 2013
battle of the tenses
Joshua emailed me a little while back and expressed some concerns on tenses and persons and such. So I thought I'd share them with you and we could vote again, just in case experience has changed anyone's mind.
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As far as I'm concerned, I could swing either way with the tense. My norm is first person/present tense, but I'm enjoying experimenting with third person/past tense so it's cool either way. =)
ReplyDeleteI say keep it how it is. I think it's easier to keep track of who's who when you actually have to say the character's name. :P Also, it would be harder to limit the amount of information we release if we were writing first person. Did that make sense?
ReplyDeleteI, personally, am more used to first person present tense, however I do appreciate the variety and how it doesn't give away as much about my character. Hehe, 'cause she's got some secrets. So...I'm ambivalent.
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely against first person past for the reason that my brain just simply cannot write in that tense for whatever reason...
ReplyDeleteThird person past is what I put in a vote for, merely because I'm writing as a guy. I actually like first person present tense the best, but, when working with males, I tend to need the defense of third person past so that all of my feminine emotions don't come spewing out of this solid, dark male.
I'm late to the conversation...but I would love first person present tense. That's when I have the le ball in my court and I'm dribbling towards the basket. My editing consists of me going back and changing all my verb tenses to what they should be. Has anyone thought about each person writing the way they want. Or would that be too confusing. Probably too confusing. I'm pretty easy going so whatever works for you guys is best!
ReplyDeleteGuys, I'm so late to this, but I want to stick my two-sense in - even though ya'll have probably already voted, and this comment probably won't matter - BUT. I personally like first person SO much better. Honestly, it seems to tug at the emotions more when it's more "here and now, this is the problem, what am I gonna do?" situation... Somehow (Because we seem to be bringing up the Hunger Games a lot) The Hunger Games wouldn't have spoken to me as much had I been reading it from the third person. As for avoiding character confusion, the only person un-named in our posts would be our own characters which seem to have been introduced in our titles thus far.
ReplyDeletePoint being; I think first person helps to grab the attention of readers, and helps pull at emotions more than third person. Plus I'm way better at writing that way.
However, some of us have expressed equal emotions about third person as I have in support of first person. So I have to agree with Jo on this and ask if it would be possible to have all the writers write the way that works best for them? It might, like Jo said, cause confusion, but I think it would create more diversity in characters if they were all written slightly different.
And for all of you thinking, "why is she even saying anything about the subject? She hasn't even written anything for our blog." Time will tell my friends, but I promise I'm a writer, and I promise I'm gonna be involved with this a lot more in the following weeks, :)