Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [68]
There’s rather more to the use of the historical present than a simple change of tense. This becomes clear when you take a patch of prose written in the past tense and change it to the present. It will very likely be stiff and awkward, unnatural. In order for the historical present to be effective, the whole narrative attitude changes in subtle ways.
Whether or not to employ the historical present is entirely a matter of choice. In genre fiction I would consider it a poor idea, if only because category novels are hardly ever written in present tense. I wouldn’t care for the job of trying to sell a gothic or a western, say, written in the historical present, though I do not doubt for a moment that such a novel could be written effectively and might even find its way into print.
My own personal bias against the historical present is a very strong one, so much so that, when I’m browsing paperback racks looking for something to read, I’m inclined to pass up books written in present tense. The one time I tried to write a novel in the present tense I found myself incapable of sustaining the voice past a couple of pages. But that’s my personal reaction, and has nothing much to do with the relative merits of the two tenses.
First versus Third Person
Correspondingly, I’ve noticed in my paperback rack browsing that I’m distinctly biased in favor of books written in the first person. Perhaps this is not surprising in view of the fact that a majority of my own novels have been first-person narratives.
The conventional advice to beginning writers of fiction is to abjure the first person. It’s allegedly full of pitfalls for the tyro, serves as a distancing mechanism between the reader and the story, limits the scope of the narrative, and causes dental caries in children and skin tumors in laboratory mice.
For my part, I find I’m more likely to enjoy a novel by an unfamiliar writer if it’s written in the first than the third person because the writing itself is more likely to have a natural flow to it. The first-person voice is, after all, the one we all grow up using. First-person novels have an immediacy to them that helps close the gap between writer and reader. It’s as if the writer, clothed in the flesh of his narrator, is holding me by the elbow and telling me the story.
Some novels, to be sure, cannot be written in the first person. It’s only an option when your novel is to be told from a single point of view, and it becomes a sensible choice in direct proportion to your ability to identify with that particular character. If your lead’s larger than life—the President of the United States, a glamorous movie star, Al Capone, or whoever—the third person might be a wiser choice; you might be more comfortable writing the character from the outside, and the reader might be more comfortable reading about him that way.
Single versus Multiple Viewpoint
It’s probably easiest, in a first novel, to show everything through the eyes of a single lead character—whether the voice you choose is first or third person. Single viewpoint keeps a novel on a true course. It limits options and cuts down the opportunity for diffusion of the force of the narrative.
This does not mean that it’s perforce the right choice for your novel. Some books depend upon a broad scope for a measure of their strength. The story you choose to tell will very often dictate whether it is to be told from one or several points of view.
Whether you select single or multiple viewpoint for your novel, you would probably do well to avoid changing point of view within a scene, switching back and forth from one character’s mind to another’s. In a book in which the author maintains a consistent overview, never really getting inside the skins of his characters but describing all their actions from without, it may