Person and Tense
Sep. 18th, 2007 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtiiThis post on person and tense made me think about how I used these in my own writings. I know that I've written several fics in the much-dreaded second person, and I feel like I use past and present tenses about equally. But I decided to go back to my index and make a list.
First Person (POV character is "I")
Requiem at Reichenbach (Moriarty is POV character, despite Holmes being addressed as "you") [present tense, but most of the story consists of flashbacks in past tense]
Permutations (River and Dawn as main POV characters, with interruptions; also includes, in sections, 2nd, 3rd, and every other person imaginable) [various tenses]
Questionnaire for High Council Peer Review: R. Giles (Giles as POV character, High Council members addressed as "you") [present tense]
Questionnaire for High Council Peer Review: D. Summers (Dawn as POV character, High Council members addressed as "you") [present tense]
The Ransom of Andrew Wells (Caprice as POV character, interspersed with third-person scenes with Dawn as POV character) [past tense]
Watcher's Burden (Dawn as POV character; Beatrice makes brief appearance as "you") [present tense]
Dear My Ideal Audience (Joss as POV character, despite both River and the Ideal Audience being addressed as "you") [present tense]
Second Person (POV character is "you")
On Her Knees (Wes is POV character, despite Lilah narrating as "I") [future tense]
Permutations (River and Dawn as main POV characters, with interruptions; also includes, in sections, 1st, 3rd, and every other person imaginable) [various tenses, but the 2nd person sections are present tense]
Dayswimming / Daywalking (Kennedy and Amanda, respectively, as POV characters) [present tense]
Incurable (The "All You Zombies" Remix) (The "two" Rivers--both of them referred to as "you"--as POV characters) [present tense]
A Chondrichthyes out of Hydroxylic Acid (Saffron as POV characters) [present tense]
Bullshit (Joss as POV character, interspersed with third-person scenes with Jewel as POV character) [present tense]
Third Person (POV character is "she," "he," etc.)
Everything else . . . my fic index is here. [ETA: 38% of my third-person fic is written in present tense; the other 62% is written in past tense. The longer a fic is, the more likely it is written in past tense; the shorter it is, the more likely it is written in present tense.]
[. . .]
The interesting thing here is that whenever there is a "you," regardless of whether "I" or "you" are the POV character, in every case but one the story is in present tense. In "Permutations" the shift from 3rd/1st person to 2nd person even happens to exactly coincide with the shift from past tense to present tense. When I stop and think about it, this makes sense. Having a "you" foregrounds the act of telling, even if it is only a character's internal monologue as she addresses herself during the story's events, so the story by necessity takes place as it is being told, whether it be Moriarty and Holmes plummeting to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls in "Requiem at Reichenbach" or Dawn preparing Beatrice for the Cruciamentum in "Watcher's Burden." Indeed, in "Dear My Ideal Audience," the telling of the story is completely inseparable from the events it described (a dynamic which is integral to metafiction, as we'll see below).
In the one instance in which a story with a "you" in it is not in the present tense, it is still not written in the past tense, but rather in the future tense. Since we know that it is Lilah who is speaking and Wesley who is being spoken to, though, we are also privy to an implied "now" in which the act of narration is taking place, one in which Lilah is imagining for Wes' benefit one possible future. What we end up with is a series of concentric circles.
The difference between "On Her Knees" and "Requiem at Reichenbach" is simply that the inner ring--the 'verse in which the diegetic act of naration is taking place--in "Requiem" is more fully fleshed out, whereas we have no idea where Lilah and Wes are or what they are doing as Lilah narrates the story to Wes. This difference is enough for me to refer to "Requiem" as being present tense; it's simply that the bulk of the narrative takes place in flashbacks. Even more bluntly, "On Her Knees" contains no present-tense verbs, while "Requiem" does. Compare, say, Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart."
As Ari says in the comments to "Incurable (The 'All You Zombies' Remix)," "Clearly where [one] need[s] a flowchart to understand the construction of [a] fic, something is right."
First Person (POV character is "I")
Requiem at Reichenbach (Moriarty is POV character, despite Holmes being addressed as "you") [present tense, but most of the story consists of flashbacks in past tense]
Permutations (River and Dawn as main POV characters, with interruptions; also includes, in sections, 2nd, 3rd, and every other person imaginable) [various tenses]
Questionnaire for High Council Peer Review: R. Giles (Giles as POV character, High Council members addressed as "you") [present tense]
Questionnaire for High Council Peer Review: D. Summers (Dawn as POV character, High Council members addressed as "you") [present tense]
The Ransom of Andrew Wells (Caprice as POV character, interspersed with third-person scenes with Dawn as POV character) [past tense]
Watcher's Burden (Dawn as POV character; Beatrice makes brief appearance as "you") [present tense]
Dear My Ideal Audience (Joss as POV character, despite both River and the Ideal Audience being addressed as "you") [present tense]
Second Person (POV character is "you")
On Her Knees (Wes is POV character, despite Lilah narrating as "I") [future tense]
Permutations (River and Dawn as main POV characters, with interruptions; also includes, in sections, 1st, 3rd, and every other person imaginable) [various tenses, but the 2nd person sections are present tense]
Dayswimming / Daywalking (Kennedy and Amanda, respectively, as POV characters) [present tense]
Incurable (The "All You Zombies" Remix) (The "two" Rivers--both of them referred to as "you"--as POV characters) [present tense]
A Chondrichthyes out of Hydroxylic Acid (Saffron as POV characters) [present tense]
Bullshit (Joss as POV character, interspersed with third-person scenes with Jewel as POV character) [present tense]
Third Person (POV character is "she," "he," etc.)
Everything else . . . my fic index is here. [ETA: 38% of my third-person fic is written in present tense; the other 62% is written in past tense. The longer a fic is, the more likely it is written in past tense; the shorter it is, the more likely it is written in present tense.]
[. . .]
The interesting thing here is that whenever there is a "you," regardless of whether "I" or "you" are the POV character, in every case but one the story is in present tense. In "Permutations" the shift from 3rd/1st person to 2nd person even happens to exactly coincide with the shift from past tense to present tense. When I stop and think about it, this makes sense. Having a "you" foregrounds the act of telling, even if it is only a character's internal monologue as she addresses herself during the story's events, so the story by necessity takes place as it is being told, whether it be Moriarty and Holmes plummeting to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls in "Requiem at Reichenbach" or Dawn preparing Beatrice for the Cruciamentum in "Watcher's Burden." Indeed, in "Dear My Ideal Audience," the telling of the story is completely inseparable from the events it described (a dynamic which is integral to metafiction, as we'll see below).In the one instance in which a story with a "you" in it is not in the present tense, it is still not written in the past tense, but rather in the future tense. Since we know that it is Lilah who is speaking and Wesley who is being spoken to, though, we are also privy to an implied "now" in which the act of narration is taking place, one in which Lilah is imagining for Wes' benefit one possible future. What we end up with is a series of concentric circles.
Events of "On Her Knees" <-- Lilah narrating "On Her Knees" to Wes <-- The reader reading Alixtii's fanfic "On Her Knees"
The difference between "On Her Knees" and "Requiem at Reichenbach" is simply that the inner ring--the 'verse in which the diegetic act of naration is taking place--in "Requiem" is more fully fleshed out, whereas we have no idea where Lilah and Wes are or what they are doing as Lilah narrates the story to Wes. This difference is enough for me to refer to "Requiem" as being present tense; it's simply that the bulk of the narrative takes place in flashbacks. Even more bluntly, "On Her Knees" contains no present-tense verbs, while "Requiem" does. Compare, say, Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart."
Moriarty's memories of Holmes <-- Moriarty remembering (at Reichenbach, as he falls to his death) <--The reader reading
Metafiction operates by blurring the division between the innermost sphere and the ring which surrounds it, as in both "Dear My Ideal Audience" and "Incurable (The 'All You Zombies' Remix)."
River Tam and the Ideal Audience <---> Joss Whedon doing a creative writing exercise <-- Alixtii doing a meme in Ari's journal
River as agent of Wolfram & Hart <---> Ari as White Room Girl <-- Alixtii writing a remix of Ari's fic
River as agent of Wolfram & Hart <---> River in the asylum <-- Alixtii writing a remix of Ari's fic
River as agent of Wolfram & Hart <---> Ari as White Room Girl <-- Alixtii writing a remix of Ari's fic
River as agent of Wolfram & Hart <---> River in the asylum <-- Alixtii writing a remix of Ari's fic
As Ari says in the comments to "Incurable (The 'All You Zombies' Remix)," "Clearly where [one] need[s] a flowchart to understand the construction of [a] fic, something is right."