Can you write a Private Eye Monologue in the present tense?

I keep trying to stick to the past tense as the formula for these dictates, but it just sounds better to me when it's in the present tense. What should I do? Would anyone be willing to look over it and tell me what they think?

Post a sample and we'll tell you.

What demarquis said.

edited 1st Sep '14 5:32:20 PM by Madrugada

Explaining the context might take a well, but primarily I'm just interested in the grammar.

Well, the first thing I notice is that you don't use present tense consistently: "said" and "responded" (as well as other uses) are technically incorrect. Many editors will throw your manuscript on the reject pile for that.

Consistently using the present tense is extremely difficult if you aren't used to it. You should hire someone to check over your grammar and identify all your mistakes for you.

You should also be aware that many people these days think that the present tense is over-used. That's no reason why you shouldnt use it, but it could affect how many people see your work.

That said, you are in general using the present tense correctly- that is, you are doing it in a way that is consistent with the most commonly understood uses of the present tense: focusing on the protagonist, and creating a sense of immediacy. combining it with first person also fits fairly well with the private eye genre.

What demarquis said.

To stay in present tense,everything is happening now. ...I say, he says, I ask, he responds, I look, he slumps....

Which is partly why it's not usually used for noir-style PI monologuing — there's no time in it for the philosophizing and metaphors that are also typical for a noir-style monologue.

Hmmmm... I might have to rewrite this a bit then. Some of these sentences just don't sound that good in the past tense

As somebody who writes in this style (but in the past tense), I'll weigh in.

First off, what Maddie and demarquis said is all accurate. I'll also add this; part of the appeal of the first-person POV (especially with a Private Eye Monologue) is the idea that the main protagonist is telling the reader a story...which means said story has already happened. Which means in turn past-tense. I know that some writers have used first-person present tense before, but speaking as both a writer and a reader this has never made much sense to me.

Now, I said "a part of the appeal" because how much the protagonist is "aware" of the audience is entirely up to the writer. Jim Butcher has built a successful career with a protagonist (Harry Dresden) who is at least partially aware of the audience and occasionally addresses the reader directly...as if Harry were sitting down with the reader over some beers and recounting his adventure to them. How much of that facet of the first-person POV an author wants to include is a stylistic choice - I do it much less than Butcher does, because I feel that sort of fourth-wall mischief takes people out of the story. Again, personal decision.

I know present-tense has become popular recently because some writers feel it creates a sense of immediacy, but I dunno about that; I see it as a cheap trick with results better accomplished with other stylistic tools.

To answer your question; yes, you can write a Private Eye Monologue in the present tense, but my personal opinion as a writer, reader and published author is that you're better off sticking with the past tense.

Considering how much of the sample was in the past tense, it'd probably be easier to convert the present tense bits to past tense than the other way 'round.

Hmm. Good point, Wolf.

Past tense verbs in red:

Lycan. Aged thirty-two years. Scent of the pheromones leaking off him indicates he’s passed the point of full maturity. Seems to be a wolf-breed. Very traditionalist. Is he a problem? Probably not. Then again, just being a member of the police department doesn’t make you clean in this city. Better to be sure than sorry.

“You, ” I said, responding to his question. “Are you carrying your card with you?”

“My… card?”

He’s confused. Not a good sign. Not for him or this department.

“Yes, your card. Your license, identification and registration that lets people know who you are and what you are. As an officer of the law, you of all people should be carrying one at all times.”

The lycan sighed. He seems impatient. “Look pally, I got my ears on display and everything. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, ” I responded quickly, shooting him down faster than a German fighter pilot. “The letter of law states that you are required to have your card on your person at all times. You must be willing to display it at a moment’s notice. If your species’ unique morphological traits was sufficient identification, we would not need to hand out demihuman registration applications to orks, gorgons, harpies, vampires, and people of a semi-divine nature.” Amongst others. “I’ve had many problems with your kind of people before because you refuse to carry your licenses. Your ears do not help identify you in an investigation, nor do they serve as adequate proof of registration and citizenship.”

“<em>My</em> kind of people?” That made him angry. Upset. I should prepare for confrontation. Based on past experiences, he’s likely to become aggressive with me. That’s just how lycans are, especially out here in the Big Apple, where everyone wants a piece of everyone. We’re all just worms fighting for a piece of Lady Liberty.

I tried talking him down. Didn’t want nothing nasty happening here, or else we might see more blood than a vampire charity. “Yes, your kind of people. Demihumans. Ethnic groups of non-human heritage. I don’t see why this upsets you. That is how you identify yourself, right? If I sound racist, it’s only because you’re interpreting it that way.”

It didn’t look like it did much to earn his goodwill back. Still, it got him to calm down. That’s good enough for me. He sat back down in his chair with a harumph. I take it that means we can continue with business proper.

“As a police officer, you have a reputation to uphold for you and your fellow officers in this district. In the future, I’d ask you to refrain from being so casual on the job.” Adjusting my gloves, I asked, “I was told there would be toxicology reports for me to examine?”

“Yes, ” the other man replied. “Aaaaand no.”

Eyebrows were raised. Trouble. “No? What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I mean we don’t have them right now.. sir, ” he said nervously. It’s obvious he’s offput by having to surrender his seniority to a younger person that outranks him. Oh well. I expected that. It’s hardly the first time.

I sighed. “I don’t care how you address me, sergeant, I care about those toxicology reports. I was brought in here to do a job, and would like to begin doing so <em>immediately.</em> Now please tell me where they are.”

“If he says we don’t have ‘em, <em>we don’t have ‘em, </em>” the lycan said unhelpfully.

The sergeant hushes the lycan. “We loaned them out a few hours ago. Someone came into the office and requested them immediately following the autopsies.”

“... who?” The sergeant fidgets like a vampire in church. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it one bit. Where had those files gone, and who was the police handing them out to? “Tell me sergeant, who requested to see those files?”

“Marquis Allesandri, sir.”

I felt a bad taste take root in my mouth, like raw lemons washing over toothpaste. Marquis Allesandri. The illegitimate son of the head of the Allesandri crime family, Frankie Allesandri. Publicly, he heads a successful law firm and makes a living as a finance banker and a scholar. He’s quite well off. However, there are multiples lines of evidence and paper trails that point to him being deeply involved in his father’s illicit business dealings.

Bootlegging. Gun smuggling. Theft. Larceny. Destruction of public and private property. Money laundering. Insurance fraud. Production and distribution of illegal narcotics like opium and cocaine. The Allesandris have a hand in pretty much everything rotten that goes on in this city. A little bit here, a little bit there. Never enough to draw too much attention to themselves. They like to keep a low profile so they look good in the eyes of the people, but they’re just as guilty as any other gang in this city.

The department willingly gave the papers to a man like that?

The lycan stayed silent. He seemed determined to ignore me. I hoped this wouldn’t mean he’d become a problem.

Even some of the present tense stuff works in a past tense narrative. e.g. "That’s just how lycans are, especially out here in the Big Apple, where everyone wants a piece of everyone. We’re all just worms fighting for a piece of Lady Liberty."

It sounds like that's the way it always has been, was at the time of the incident, still is at the time of the tale-telling and is likely to be for the foreseeable future.

Hate to say it, present tense book, right now the only one that's even remotely readable is Hunger games. it's still a very uncomfortable tense when Collins does it.

OK, so, when is present tense appropriate? 1. Eyewitness journalism "So I go outside right, 'Cause I wanna see the storm comin' in, and right there *Bam* I see the trail comin' down outta the cloud. And I think, man I gotta get inside."

2. Game Design and choose your own adventure "The hero goes to the lady in the red dress for a healing. He comes out and talks to the blue lady for Mana. In the third house, a bearded elf says nothing to him but "I am error." Then he leaves town. If the hero should go fight monsters in the long grass turn to page 6, if the hero takes the path, turn to page 20"

3. Scripts "The actor enters stage left, crosses the center, and picks up a blue flower from the actress bearing a basket full of mixed flowers."

The rest of the time you cant avoid mixing tenses in present tense. Where do you see mixed tense present?

1. oral storytelling of a personal nature. Mixed because sometimes the story being told by the person has implications in the immediate present.

2. foreign language translation or cultural or dialect emphasis Not every language, and not even every dialect of English has the same tenses. sometimes it's completely legit to go back and forth between present and past tense. Listen to a Cajun some day. Cajun language doesn't have a separation between past and present tense, so when they try to talk to you in English, they mess up their tenses all the time. that problem bleeds over into the southern dialect.

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But when it comes to tenses in official English, past is king. Think about it like this: You've got a story. It's not going on right now, or else why are you telling it? It's written down, and things that are written down take time. Even if it is in the hero's own perspective, it's about something that has already happened, and the character has already learned from it and is regurgitating what happened. You are not giving your audience a choice on where this is going, and there is nobody acting out your narrative. A written story is not dynamic, it is static.

But P.I. stories as we think of them today, those are dynamic. they come out of radio theater. Your old Sam Spade and philip Marlowe, we don't think of the fiction that thy came from, we think of the made for radio programs. that provies you an opportunity to use present tense, but you have to be very careful about how you use it so that it feels comfortable and natural.

So let's talk monologue. Monologue is only possible with reflection, and reflection is only possible with the past tense. You do have an out for this absolute past when it comes to the action, however, if you think of Monologue in a P.I. story like the director's commentary on a DVD. It provides insight, but there is just this yak, yak, yak over the real action. All that monologue is, is a future self's interpretation of what was recorded for viewing. Y Ou can describe the action in the present tense but the monologue must always be separate from the action and always in past tense. When you have a clear narrator, you are free to describe the action in present tense as if your narrator is describing the events on a silent security footage to a blind man.

And that's not a bad thing. If you have turned on the director commentary of a movie, you do it on purpose. Same thing with a P.I. narrator. The reader picks up a P.I. story expecting that commentary to be there. You as the author just have to make sure that the commentary doesn't bleed into the mind of the narrator's past self, who is in the action.

edited 3rd Sep '14 12:33:37 AM by Lyredragon1

Says somebody who clearly hasn't read Charlie Stross. The Laundry Series are excellent present-tense writing; it's presented as the narrator writing down his experiences as he remembers them as a memoir for future agents. Matthew Stover's novelization of the third Star Wars film—which is leaps and bounds above the film itself—is another great example; it starts out along the lines of "this story took place a long, long time ago: it's also taking place now, as you're reading it", and proceeds to unfold the story in the present tense.

(A number of Laundry Files short stories are available online: The Concrete Jungle is a good starting point; Equoid dials up the horror. And before all of that, there's A Colder War, which is a much darker take on the genre, something of a proto-Laundry story where the Cold War was fought not with missiles and bombers but with slumbering eldritch horrors.)

edited 8th Sep '14 12:08:34 AM by SabresEdge

Given that all screenplays are written in the present tense, you might want to look at a few that deal with your genre. For instance, some people consider Chinatown to be the best screenplay ever written.

While past tense is more common for storytelling, present tense is used to give immediacy to the story being told so that the audience can imagine that they are watching it unfold before them. Again, screenplays are one example but joke-telling is commonly done in the present tense so the punchline seems as more of a surprise.

edited 8th Sep '14 1:36:10 AM by 66Scorpio

First-person present-tense is also how most Stream Of Consciousness stories are told, since the idea there is that you're seeing someone's unfiltered thoughts as they're happening.