Why Tense Isn’t Enough

Unlocking Temporality & Narrative Distance in Fiction

We don’t see a lot of discussion about temporality, sequencing, and temporal shifts in fiction, but it really is a subject that deserves discussion.

In the simplest terms, what I mean is whether or not the story on the page is over or is unfolding in real story time. And I know you’ll be shocked when I tell you that it also depends on narrative schema. There’s your little shocked face. Adorbs.

Yup, temporality is a function of viewpoint and narrative distance, not pronouns (I/me or he/him) and NOT tense.

Time in Fiction

Most stories are told in literary past tense.

• The main narrative is in past tense.

• Dialogue is in present tense, whether it is spoken or unspoken.

• Backstory (events that are over) are told in past perfect.

Backstory is a mini time-jump to the past, usually something remembered or explained. It is told in past perfect to indicate a completed action, but not a flashback which is its own scene.

Past-perfect:

We’d had breakfast together that morning.

In contrast to…

We were having breakfast together this morning.

or

We sat down to have breakfast.

The last two examples are unraveling in real story time, despite being in past tense (sat) or being ambiguous (were having).

Despite the use of past tense, the story is happening now. And yes, that includes flashbacks. Flashbacks are dedicated scenes that are somehow indicated to be flashbacks, usually via transitions or headers.

Twenty years earlier…

After that scene or chapter header or subheader or transitional phrase, the flashback is told in real story time’s past tense, NOT past-perfect, despite the story being a memory (first-retrospective) or being over (omniscient).

Why the switch to a dedicated flashback told in past tense rather than past-perfect? Because past-perfect, especially long stretches of it, are hard on the reader and slow pacing. Pair that with the knowledge that the past event was survived and/or it’s over, and there is a cost in tension whenever you go to a full-bore flashback, so use them sparingly.

Same with flash-forwards.

Thirty years later…

After that header/transition, the flash-forward is told in real story time’s past tense, NOT future-perfect, despite the temporal shift. Again, because future-perfect is hard on the reader.

He will have seen the money. He will have taken the money.

or alternately,

He will see the money. He will take the money.

Try a few paragraphs or pages of that, I dare ya!

Still with me? Wunderbar.

So let’s look at our narrators and how their presence and lack thereof relates to temporality.

Author Narration

The omniscient narrator is an author-narrator who is unstuck in time.

Omniscient

He alone can tell you what will happen before it happens because he alone is omniscient.

He alone can say:

Ruby leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”

Blake sighed and said, “I love you too.”

The omniscient narrator can pre-tag any and all dialogue because he is unstuck in time.

For the author-narrator (and omniscient is an author-narrator) the story is not unraveling in real story time. He knows the ending but is withholding that information from the reader, thus creating narrative distance between the story, its characters, and you, the reader. Because the author-narrator is unstuck in time he knows what the dialogue will sound like (shouted or whispered), what its tone will be (rueful or happy) and so on. He does not violate viewpoint when he pre-tags dialogue. Or when he foretells via a line like “She never saw the dog again.” It’s tension-killing to foretell, but it’s not a viewpoint violation or a temporal glitch.

Character Narration

What about third-close?

Here we have character narration and this type of narrator is stuck in real story time at all times. You the reader are discovering the story alongside the character so there’s no narrative distance between you the reader and the character. Furthermore, there is no author presence, much less author-narrator, in third-close, or at least there shouldn’t be.

Ruby, the character-narrator (rendered as the red woman in the graphic above), doesn’t know how the story will actually end. If she thinks she does, that’s just her opinion or speculation and should not be presented as fact, as in “Ruby never saw the dog again.” Ruby can’t know that she’ll never see the dog again, but she can be afraid that she might never see him again. “Ruby never saw the dog again” is a fact inserted via authorial intrusion and a violation of viewpoint. Ruby being afraid she might never see the dog again is viewpoint-compliant speculation.

In this narrative schema, the only pre-tagging that can take place is Ruby’s own dialogue. She knows she’s going to whisper or shout or say it ruefully, but she can’t possibly know that Blake (the blue man) or the gray people will.

Ruby leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”

Blake sighed. “I love you too,” he whispered back.

Ruby’s narration can’t tell us ahead of time that Blake will whisper because she is a third-close real-story-time narrator.

“I love you too,” Blake whispered and he sighed.

This also works if the whisper precedes the sigh. Blake, however cannot both sigh and speak (Blake said, sighing). Those are two separate physical actions that cannot occur simultaneously. Go on and test that, if you want. This is an example of a sequencing error and it would be an error in any narrative schema, including omniscient.

What doesn’t work in third-close is the omniscient pre-tagging:

Blake sighed and said/whispered, “I love you too.”

It doesn’t work because Ruby, the character-narrator, can’t know that Blake is about to speak or at what volume.

Do people violate viewpoint in this way all the time? Heck yes. Does it ruin the closeness of third-close? Also yes. People tend to do this because they’re not aware of how much narrative distance matters. Or they’re just used to having it both ways because without “mixing things up for ‘reader’ convenience” they get a lot of thudding dialogue. The problem here is the thudding dialogue, which should be dealt with by reducing the thudding nature of it, rather than violating sequencing, temporality, and perspective to “mix it up.”

Limited Third Narration

What about in third-limited?

Third-limited is author-narration, but NOT omniscient narration. The perspective (which character is being used to filter the scene, sometimes called viewpoint character) is limited to what that viewpoint character can see and hear and know and Ruby can’t know how Blake will sound or that he’ll speak until he does.

Ruby leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”

Blake sighed. “I love you too,” he said/whispered.

If you want to convey that Ruby knew he was going to speak because it looked like Blake was going to, then conveying what is actually happening can be done this way:

Ruby leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”

Blake looked like he was going to say something. “I love you too,” he finally said.

or perhaps.

Blake hesitated, mouth agape. “I love you too,” he finally said. (or omit the dialogue tag altogether)

Thudding, repetitive tags, like those that occur when there are more than two people talking in a scene (especially for extended discussions), are a symptom of other issues that can’t be taken care of by violating viewpoint. Violating sequencing, viewpoint, and temporality trades one problem for another and doesn’t fix the problem of having thudding dialogue in the first place.

Depth

The deeper you’ve managed to pull a reader into intimate viewpoint (third-close) the more temporal shifts are going to affect the reader experiencing incorrect time flow during narration.

Temporal shifts that lead to time glitches, paired with other viewpoint errors tend to accumulate and destroy the intimacy of third-close, so be especially careful when pre-tagging in third-close. Keep it to the character-narrator and you’re fine, but don’t use it for non-viewpoint characters. That way you can “switch it up” without ruining immersion.

Pre-tagging is less of an issue with third-limited and not an issue at all for omniscient, making both of those narrative schemas easier to write. Their “natural” distance can be protective as long as you remain at room’s-length and/or arm’s-length. If you read a lot of books written in omniscient or in third-limited, the pre-tagging may seem “natural” to you, but it’s not natural to third-close.

In first-retrospective, if you have a true retrospective narrator (not just third-close using first-person pronouns) pre-tagging is fine for the same reasons it’s fine in omniscient—the story is already over and the narrator is recounting the past and knows how to tag the dialogue because it’s a “memory.” A “perfect” memory, which makes first-retrospective artificial for other reasons, but nevertheless, an accepted “perfection” except for when the author wants to pull the “unreliable” narrator excuse out of his assets.

Too Big to Edit

I’m in the process of listening to the Harry Potter series. JK Rowling’s narration is full of thudding tags:

“…” said Hermione, angrily.

“…” said Ron, scratching his nose.¹

“…” said Harry, pushing his glasses up.

“…” said Luna, dreamily.

“Snape!” ejaculated Slughorn.²

The thuddiness of these tags really comes through when listening as well as reading.

When listening there is the added factor of the narrator filtering the narration for the reader, via voices. The male narrator always uses a particular pitch/tone/accent for each character and after awhile, the tags become annoyingly redundant. You can always tell when Hermione is speaking because he makes her sing-songy from the start.

Just to be clear, as an omniscient narrator, Rowling can and does know ahead of time how each character will sound and she stays in author-narrator voice throughout, something I really appreciate about her writing. Five books in I don’t think she’s head-hopped or violated viewpoint once.

Nevertheless, Rowling can get away with doing all sorts of things that you won’t likely get away with. Once you get too big to edit you too will be able to get away with whatever you want to do, but I caution you against ejaculating your dialogue no matter how grammatically correct that tag may be. Same with thudding tags.

A better technique is to break up the thudding dialogue with physical beats and transitions. Don’t bury your dialogue when you do that though. Until your writing has the same high value imparted to it by something else, you won’t be able to get away with doing things the way BigNameAuthors do.

I mention this because almost every time a discussion ensues about technique, I hear, “But BigNameAuthor does it.”

You’re Not Too Big to Edit

When you run afoul of an edit on an item that you immediately end up responding to with “But BigNameAuthor does it,” I want you to pause and ask yourself two questions. The first is, “Am I BigNameAuthor?” Use a mirror if you have to. The second is, “What else did BigNameAuthor” have going for him? Or “What else did this debut novel have going for it?” Also relevant, “Was this written one hundred years ago? Fifty years ago?” and adjacent to that we have, “Am I writing for dead people?”

At some point in the past, “it was all a dream” was acceptable too. Today, not so much. Why are “it was all a dream” stories bad? Because “it was all a dream” stories are all fake—the stakes, the conflict, the jeopardy, and all the feelings you had while you were reading. Same for its twin, “it was all a simulation” and its cousin “the amnesiac.”

So not only did that successful-for-some-reason author or their book have something else going for it, from luck to timing, to connections, but that was then and this is now. Lots of things have changed since head-hopping³ was an accepted way to do things. You go on and put in kids having sex in your book and let me know how that goes for you. Big Name Privilege is a thing.

The brutal truth is that some things sell DESPITE the bad writing/technique, not BECAUSE of it. This is important to know as a writer because when you sit down and put together a mish-mash of bad techniques, there is a cumulative effect.

Think of it as an old fashioned balance scale, with “bad” on one side and “good” on the other. You want to pile as much on the good side as possible. Which entails knowing why editors consider some things to be bad. And errors in temporality are not limited just to pre-tagging dialogue, but they can be the gateway drug to other temporal issues as well, weighing down the wrong side of the scale, because they betray a lack of, or indifference to, the logic imposed by sequencing requirements. Temporality and sequencing are two sides of the same coin. Lack of awareness of one is usually paired with lack of awareness of the other.

It’s not just a pet peeve that dialogue should be tagged a certain a way. It’s an issue of the tagging calling attention to itself. You don’t want your tags speaking louder than the dialogue they are tagging. Thudding, repetitive tags⁴ do that, no matter who writes them, but have you already made millions for your publisher? Were those things not addressed because it was under deadline? Do you have millions of fans waiting to buy your next book regardless of what’s in it? Do you have characters that have already captured the imagination of millions to the point where they won’t notice the tags?

The dialogue tags in the first couple of HP books were not as bad as the ones in later books, by the way, leading me to the “too big to edit” conclusion. There’s also a lot more talking (especially one character explaining things to another and hence to the reader) in the books than the movies, so if you’re a fan because all you’ve consumed are the movies, you may not appreciate what I’m talking about here.

While thudding tags often make it into early drafts as the writer focuses on getting the story down, they should be dealt with during editing and revision. A good editor can catch sections of dialogue that need reworking but those issues may be invisible to an author who has either read the thing too many times or who is focused not on granularity but on the bigger picture.

Absent an editor, reading the content out loud or having a screen-reader read it to you, are both techniques to catch issues. Time away from the manuscript so it can be read with fresh eyes, can also be particularly useful. That “sick of the story” feeling we all get at the end or near the end also makes it difficult for us to see things we don’t necessarily want to deal with, so be aware of how your own emotions can color the editing process, whether it’s self-editing or edits done by others. So can visceral reactions to edits/criticism. They are visceral for a reason, usually that you know there’s something there in that criticism that is right and are embarrassed about it. Take a deep breath or two. It’ll be all right. It’s all fixable, if not in this manuscript, then in the next one. That is how we get better.

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1. Not meant to be direct quotes as I didn’t stop to write them down. Listen to five of the books in a row and their spirit will stick with you though.

2. This one is a rather famous direct quote that evokes the exact wrong thing in most readers’ minds.

3. Dune is the an example of egregious head-hopping.

4. For Pete’s sake, don’t default to creative tags like “ejaculated” to get rid of repetitive tagging. Don’t. Do. It. I swear, Rowling was trolling people with that one. Stick to standard dialogue tags as much as possible and learn how to write dialogue properly.