A Question of Tense – part 3

If you’ve read Parts 1 and 2 of this blog title, you’re probably sick of hearing about verb tenses by now.  I’m going to start thinking about something else, I promise, but here’s the last thing I’ve got to say on the subject.

Suppose, we are sitting having a drink in a cozy pub and I try to explain to you Napoleon’s tactics at the Battle of Waterloo.  I start by saying, “So Napoleon is with Jospehine, the night before battle, and his Generals come up and tell him that…”  In this case, we both know that Waterloo took place in 1815, and neither of us supposes that we have actually moved to 19th Century Belgium.  We’re still in our comfy armchairs in a 2014 barroom.  I’ve simply put a false time stamp on my exposition so I can use the present tense and my argument can feel more immediate.

This seems to cntradict everything I said previously about text having a natural tense, but wait, we were assuming that the narrative sticks to rational constructions.  Who said writers stick to the rules?  Writers are like Caribbean pirates, the rules are more like guidelines than an actual code of conduct.  Sometimes a bit of irrationality here and there goes a long way.

I define ‘Irrational constructions’ as aspects of the narrative structure that are in conflict with natural laws, adopted conventions, or are otherwise dysfunctional.  These ‘aberrations’ are generally used by authors to deliberately draw attention to particular events, emotions or themes within the story; you might colloquially imagine them as ‘shouting when you have something important to say’.

How do these irrational constructions impinge on Voice?  An example of an irrational construction associated with the tense of voice is created by ‘false time stamping’.  In ‘false time-stamping’ (as I’m doing in my Napoleon story), the narrator falsely time stamps the telling event in the syuzhet timeframe, so that the ‘tense’ used to tell the story is at odds with the assumed syuzhet/fabula relationship.  In this case, I’m trying to make the story more real and immediate, so I draw it up close to you and invite you to imagine with me that you are actually there.   “PAY ATTENTION, THIS IS THE GOOD STUFF,” is roughly what I’m conveying.