National Storytelling Network Forum

Tim E · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:25 pm Post subject: The Use of Present Tense

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I know this is not really a storytelling business post. I posted it before there was such a category. I've requested this entire conversation be moved to the "Storytelling Discussion" forum.
--Tim
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For many of my stories, I unconsciously slip into the present tense.

I understand the importance of being consistent, i.e., not mixing up the past and present tense, while telling.

But why is the past tense preferable for stories?

Many of the solo theatre pieces I've seen in San Francisco are grounded in the present tense, but they are clearly stories in the past. (E.g. "It's 1967 and I am riding my bike down my street. I see Mary Jane. Hey there, I say...") It's an accepted convention in these parts to use the present tense for first person stories.

I've told fairy tales in the present tense in the third person, which coaches and audience members alike have found odd. ("The prince wakes up, looks around, and runs down the stairs" as opposed to "The prince woke up, looked around, and ran down the stairs.")

For me, the use of the present tense invokes dreamtime, and set the story in a world clearly not-of-the-here-and-now but at the same time always there, always happening.

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Tim E
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Paige218 · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 6 Location: NJ/WV

Ok--here's my thinking, flawed though it may be. At first thought, I considered that using the 3rd person/present to tell a story would suggest to the audience that the teller was making it up as he went along.

Then, I thought about how a story would sound in 1st person/present. Suddenly I recalled every movie seance sequence I've seen: the smoky, see-through dead person looks around in awe and describes where he/she is (i.e., I am in a large room in a dark scary mansion...who's there? What do you want? No, stop! Argh--you're hurting me...) and then fades.

I am sure there are wonderful pieces that can be told quite well in the present. I just can't get a sense of how that would work.

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mij · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Boca Raton, Florida

I like to think about what the listener sees in their imagination. Often, though not always, the listener is identifying with a character and I think present tense makes it more real and immediate.
However there are times when past is perfect.

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Mij
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Have I got a Story for you!

healy · Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 10:48 am Post subject: Present Tense

Is there a Supreme Court of Storytelling?
If so, I'd appeal a rule barring present tense. I find that present tense brings an immediacy to the imagery of many stories. It works in either 3rd or 1st person voice. It's also effective to vary the voices and tenses in a long program with only one teller. As either producer or performer, my experience is that the audiences follow perfectly. Though I can see that listening storytellers may be disconcerted if they're sitting there dissecting the presenter's technique and comparing it to their own. Granted, it seems these techniques are more effective with adult listeners than with children.

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ljohnson · Newbie Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 11 Location: Illinois

I have to confess, it drives me crazy when storytellers slip into present tense. Especially when the story began in past tense. To me, it's a sign of sloppy work.

my 2 cents, for what it's worth
Leanne

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Tim E · Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 2:54 pm Post subject:

Leanne,
I agree that haphazard use of past and present tense is sloppy.

But I have told fairy tales completely in the third person present tense, from start to finish. For example,

Quote:

The shepherd enters the palace. "Your majesty, I have come to make your daughter laugh," he says. And he takes out the magic ring, and offers it to the king. The king puts the ring on his finger, and immediately sneezes. He sneezes again. He cannot stop sneezing. And everyone in the court begins to smile...

And I've had two different coaches suggest that I knock it off and get back to the serious business of telling stories in the past tense. Mad

Then they took away my rice bowl, had me fetch water in a sieve, and made me sleep on the iron cot.

_________________
Tim E
http://www.storyteller.net/tellers/tereneta
http://www.myspace.com/storiesbytim
http://storytelling.blogspot.com
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healy · Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 5:12 pm Post subject:

Inconsistency bothers me, too. But it's not specific to present tense.

I'd value the useful advice received from such coachs; and recognize that tense is a personal preference. Such advice strikes me as irrelevant. The question is "Does it work?" I recently read an online text of a present tense ghost story from an honored and deceased Australian storyteller. So it's not an internationally held belief.

My pet peeve is the "Woulds" which populate past tense, e.g. "Mr. Fox would climb the stair. I would jump into bed. Dad would chop the wood.", etc. Sometimes I count the number in a single story and calculate the time time lost from my life listening to empty words.

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TexasMel · Newbie Joined: 24 Apr 2007 Posts: 12 Location: Texas

Tim E wrote:

Leanne,
And I've had two different coaches suggest that I knock it off and get back to the serious business of telling stories in the past tense. Mad

Then they took away my rice bowl, had me fetch water in a sieve, and made me sleep on the iron cot.

They didn't make you sweep the dungeons, too?

Tisk.

They're getting lax.

Like all rules, this one can be broken -- but it depends on the skill with which you break it. We've all heard the semiliterate on-the-street teenager yammering to a friend about their week "and then I go and talk to Jamie, see, and Jamie says that he's going to ..." It's jarring -- we know it's past tense and the person isn't actually reliving it before our eyes.

Stories in the present tense are awkward to write and awkward to frame. What they may be saying is that there's something a bit jarring about your delivery (I can't guess what it would be) or your setup for the story.

Have you tried taping yourself to see how you sound?

SeanBuvala · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 10:43 pm Post subject: reflections on tense

Tim E wrote:

Leanne,
I agree that haphazard use of past and present tense is sloppy.

But I have told fairy tales completely in the third person present tense, from start to finish. For example

Some time ago we posted a great article about the use of tenses at Storyteller.net:

http://www.storyteller.net/articles/65

Come take a look.

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Tim E · Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject:

My kids were just listening to Ed Stivender's CD, and one of his stories was in the present tense. I'll have to go back and see if he does that on all of them.

_________________
Tim E
http://www.storyteller.net/tellers/tereneta
http://www.myspace.com/storiesbytim
http://storytelling.blogspot.com
http://storytellersunplugged.wordpress.com

GrannySue · Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:01 pm Post subject: present/past tense

Here's what occurred to me as I read the posts on tense:

When in present tense, the teller is describing what he is seeing in his mind--like a baseball game running in there and he's giving the play by play.

In past tense, the teller is telling about something that happened, describing what actually took place. We assume that it is fact because he is saying it happened. In present tense, the action in the story is currently in progress. So perhaps we suspend our willingness to believe in the story because it hasn't happened yet.

Granny Sue

storyprof · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 3 Location: East Tennessee

This is a fascinating area to me. A little history: when I arrived at ETSU it was established dogma that "thou shalt not tell in the present tense." I believe the quote in the Basic Storytelling handbook was, "If the story happened in the past, tell it in the past." But I noticed that a lot of storytellers, both novice tellers and some living national treasures, would switch from past to present in the course of telling their stories, both personal and traditional. The difference with novices and masters seemed to be that there would be a sense of pattern and intention in the tense shifts of accomplished tellers, while unskilled tellers seemed to vacillate, and their tense switches gave a sense of summarizing rather than dramatizing, or of going in fits and starts.

As I've researched it a bit I've discovered that tense switches occur regularly in what we might call natural, or conversational storytelling, and they tend to occur more or less precisely at points in the narrative where the language shifts from orientation ("We used to go to the lake every summer...") to what the linguists call "complicating action ("so one day we met this really scary guy. And he comes right up to me and my sister and he says...."). And the tense shift itself signals the kicking of the narrative into a different dramatic register. Linguists have a name for the present tense used in the context of a narrative based in past time: they call it historical present.

So I've had to re-think the old dogma a little bit. I'm not totally settled on this yet, but I'm inclined to think that tenses are part of a complicated set of signaling devices that are avilable to us as tellers, and that we need to observe them closely before making rigid rules, in terms of what works and what doesn't in tellings that we admire as well as in tellings that get on our nerves.
Joseph

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Joseph Sobol, Ph.D.
Professor, East Tennessee State University
Storytelling Graduate Program Coordinator
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SeanBuvala · Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 9:48 pm Post subject:

storyprof wrote:

So I've had to re-think the old dogma a little bit.

This is completely true. Our artform is too diverse to have "dogma" about something as insignifcant which is the "right" tense to use.

Technical competency is good, however, and knowing why one chooses one "thing" over another is important. "Listening to yourself" is a skill few tellers have mastered.

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K. Sean Buvala
http://www.seantells.com
http://www.fulltimestorytelling.com
http://www.storytellingproducts.com

GrannySue · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:08 am Post subject:

Glad we're not getting tense over this! Ooooh, that's terrible.

I've noticed what storyprof mentioned too. As a teller (or a person engaged in conversation) becomes more involved in the story, the tense might shift as the action becomes more intense.

Perhaps where it's jarring is when the teller is very involved in the story, but hasn't brought the audience to the same level of excitement? They're still trying to figure out this storytelling thing, or who the characters are, or how to block out the band in the next tent. The teller, knowing the story so well, is deeply immersed and "seeing" the story, completely invlolved in the action (not unlike someone playing a video game).

If audience and teller are equally involved the shift might be so smooth that no one notices.

Random thoughts early in the morning.

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