Past tense vs present tense in fiction: how to choose

Past tense tells the story as something that has happened (“she opened the door”); present tense tells it as it happens (“she opens the door”). Past is the usual choice and the easier one to sustain across a long book; present feels closer and more immediate, at the cost of some flexibility with time. Either works. What matters more is that you choose on purpose, and then stay in the tense you chose unless you have a reason to leave it.

The rest of this post shows what the choice actually changes on the page, a quick way to test it on your own story, and how to catch the tense slips that creep into every draft.

What is the difference between past and present tense in fiction?

Here is the same moment both ways. Lisa has come to meet her brother Tom at Café Mercer, on a wet October night.

Past tense:

Lisa reached the corner at ten past nine. The shutter at Café Mercer was already down, and a handwritten sign had been taped to it. Tom wasn’t there. Tom was never late.

Present tense:

Lisa reaches the corner at ten past nine. The shutter at Café Mercer is already down, and someone has taped a handwritten sign to it. Tom isn’t there. Tom is never late.

The events are identical. The difference is where the reader stands. In the past version, someone is telling us about a night that is over; we trust there is an end to it, even if we don’t know it yet. In the present version, we are on the corner with Lisa, and nobody, not even the narrator, knows what happens next.

Notice also what changed besides the main verbs. “Had been taped” became “has taped”. “Was never late” became “is never late”. Every tense has its own way of reaching backward, and that is where most slips happen.

Should I write in present tense?

Write in present tense if the story gains from having no hindsight. It suits:

• stories told minute by minute, where tension comes from not knowing;
• a narrator who couldn’t plausibly be looking back (someone in danger, a child, a person who doesn’t survive);
• short fiction, where the intensity doesn’t have to last three hundred pages.

Write in past tense if the story needs room to move through time. It suits:

• long novels, where readers settle into it without noticing;
• stories that summarize (“That winter, the buses ran late”) as well as dramatize;
• a narrator who reflects, compares, or knows more than they did then.

Present tense is not automatically more “literary”, and past tense is not old fashioned. The common worry about present tense is that it’s harder to sustain, and that is fair: summary is clumsier in it (“For three weeks, she waits” reads oddly), and flashbacks need more care. The common worry about past tense is that it feels distant, and that is mostly a point-of-view problem, not a tense one. A close third-person past-tense narrator can feel just as immediate. (Point of view and tense are separate choices, and it’s worth making them one at a time; first person vs third person covers the other one.)

A ten-minute test for choosing your tense

If you’re unsure, don’t decide in the abstract. Test it:

1. Pick a scene with a turn in it, a moment where something changes. Not your opening, which you’ve probably rewritten too often to read clearly.
2. Write or copy about 150 words of it in past tense.
3. Rewrite the same 150 words in present. Change every verb, including the ones reaching back (“had been” becomes “has been”, or just “was”).
4. Read both aloud. Note which one you stumble on, and which one sounds like your narrator rather than like you trying.
5. Try one summary sentence in each. Something like “Over the next month, Tom stopped answering.” If the present version (“Over the next month, Tom stops answering”) feels wrong and your story needs a lot of those sentences, that’s your answer.

Most writers know after step four. If neither feels clearly better, use past. It’s the tense readers notice least, which leaves their attention for the story.

When is switching tenses in a story correct?

Consistency doesn’t mean every verb is in the same tense. It means the narration’s main line stays in one tense, and every departure has a reason. These are the common, deliberate shifts:

• Flashbacks in past-tense stories. Enter with the past perfect for two or three verbs (“Tom had worked nights at the depot for a year when…”), then drop back to simple past. Readers follow you, and the prose stops sounding like a row of “hads”.
• Memories in present-tense stories. Use simple past for anything earlier: “Lisa checks her phone. Tom texted at six. He always texts.”
• Dialogue. Characters speak in their own time. “I’m here,” Tom said, is correct in a past-tense story. The quotation marks are a different clock.
• A frame. A narrator in the present looking back on the past, with each layer kept in its own tense.
• Separate timelines. Some novels tell one strand in present and another in past, by chapter or section. That works when the split is clean and the reader can see the pattern.

What doesn’t work is the shift with no reason: a paragraph that slides from “she walked” to “she walks” because the writer got caught up in the moment.

How to fix tense shifts in your draft

Accidental shifts cluster in the most exciting passages, because that’s where you stop watching your verbs. Here is a typical slip:

Before:

Lisa tried the door anyway. It was locked. She steps back into the rain and looks up at the flat above the café, where a light is on.

After (past):

Lisa tried the door anyway. It was locked. She stepped back into the rain and looked up at the flat above the café, where a light was on.

To find them, work in this order:

1. Search for the giveaway words. In a past-tense draft, search for “ is “, “ are “, “ has “, “ does “ and “ says “. In a present-tense draft, search for “ was “, “ were “, “ had “ and “ said “. Skip the hits inside dialogue; look hard at the rest.
2. Read the scene’s climax aloud, slowly. Your ear catches what your eye skims.
3. Check every flashback’s exit. The usual slip is staying in “had” too long, or never coming back out of it.
4. Watch for “now” and “today”. “Now she knew” is fine in past tense; it means “at this point”. “Today is the day” in the middle of past narration is usually a slip.
5. Leave general truths alone, or don’t, but decide. “Mercer Street ran down to the harbour” and “Mercer Street runs down to the harbour” can both be right in a past-tense story. Pick one habit and keep it.

If your scene is thin as well as tense-jumpy, fix the tense first, then add. (For adding, how to describe a scene walks through it with before-and-after examples.)

How tense works in ProseSpun

ProseSpun is a fiction writing app for people with more story than sentences, and it lets you tell it which tense your story is in.

On a story’s Details tab, beside who tells the story, there’s a Tense choice with three options: Follow the prose, Past, and Present.

• Past or Present names that tense for every tool that writes prose: Describe, Dialogue and Rewrite on a selection, and Draft and Compose from a beat. The story’s header then shows it too, as in “Third person limited · Present tense”.
• Follow the prose is the default. Draft and Compose read the tense from your sentences around the beat, the ones before it first and the ones after if there are none before. In an empty scene, Compose writes in past. When they read the tense, they leave quoted dialogue out of the count, because characters speak in their own tense.

That matters more than it sounds. If you write beats, they are notes, and notes are naturally in the present (“Lisa finds the café closed”). A present-tense note is not a reason for past-tense prose to switch, so once your scene has prose, or once you set a tense, ProseSpun names the tense to write in rather than leaving it to be guessed from the note.

Changing the setting doesn’t touch anything you’ve already written. Your sentences stay in whatever tense you wrote them. And whatever ProseSpun proposes arrives as a proposal, with the changes marked, for you to accept, discard or try again. (How it keeps the rest of a long book in view is in A novel is bigger than any model’s memory.)

Related reading: First person vs third person and How to improve your sentences.

Frequently asked questions

Is present tense harder to write than past tense?

Usually, yes, over a long piece. Present tense handles moment-to-moment scenes well but makes summary and time jumps more awkward, and slips back into past are common in revision. For short stories the difference is small.

Can you mix past and present tense in a novel?

Yes, when each tense has a clear job: a past-tense timeline and a present-tense one, a frame and the story inside it, or present-tense narration with memories in the past. What readers stumble on is a mix with no pattern, such as a single paragraph drifting between the two.

Which tense is best for a first novel?

Past tense, unless you have a reason for present. It’s the default readers expect, it lets you summarize and move through time easily, and it leaves you fewer places to slip. You can always test a chapter in present later.

Does dialogue have to be in the same tense as the narration?

No. Dialogue is in whatever tense the character would naturally speak. In a past-tense story, “I’m cold,” Lisa said is correct. Only the narration around the quotation marks follows the story’s tense.

Take ten minutes, write one scene both ways, and keep the one that sounds like your narrator.