Immediate Past

Did I mention I hated writing in First-Person?

Actually, it isn't that. Or it isn't just that. It is writing in "Immediate Past" tense. First-Person just makes it worse.

I had two sequences recently in which my protagonist had to endure. Which meant time had to pass. But because of the "Immediate Past" tense I couldn't write, "another hour had passed" or "for the next two hours" or any of that usual narrative time bridge.

A way to look at that tense is as frames in sequential art. Any action that is captured is done so with a discrete snapshot. Comic Book artist John Byrne would talk about beginning writers who would say, "In panel #3 Spider-Man swings in through the window, notices there is a bomb, and swings back out just before it goes off." No, that's three panels. At least.

So what I've established at this point is that when my narrator speaks, she describes what is contemporary to the moment; "I was in the water." The only way for her to say, "I had been in the water an hour ago" is if something specific in the present moment had brought that to her attention. Say, "I looked at my watch again. Yup. I'd been in the water for over an hour."

When it works it is seamless and invisible, even if it does impart a slightly breathless quality to things. What it doesn't let me do is fast forward through the boring parts. I am either in the moment with the action, or looking back on the action.

Because Immediate Past tense is so rooted in the now, each jump has more impact and is more potentially disorienting. It takes more words; to re-establish the moment after each jump, and to prepare for the jump. This is on a paragraph level at least. The major jumps, I had established earlier actually went across a scene break.

I have a feeling it would be easier to deal with this in Third Person.