Before you start working on a writing project, be it a short story or a novel, you need to decide which tense you’re going to write in and whose point of view the story will be told from. These two things are vitally important to get right, so I’d advise that you think about them carefully before making your choice. But how do you choose?
Let’s start with tense. You have two options here; past or present tense. Some writers stick to the same tense for everything they write, and others like to experiment with both. Traditionally, the past tense was predominantly used by authors of fiction, but the present tense is becoming ever more popular. I recommend that you choose whichever tense suits your story best. If the narrator of your story is an elderly man/woman reflecting on events from his/her life, the past tense is necessary. If your story is action-packed and would benefit from a sense of immediacy, the present tense might be your best bet. It all comes down to what feels natural. If you start writing a story and realise after a few pages that something doesn’t feel right, it could be that you’re using the wrong tense. The good news here is that when a tense isn’t working, you’ll feel it soon enough – it’s instinctive. And once you spot the problem early on, which is usually the case, it’s easy to fix. Go with your gut on this one.
Viewpoint is a little trickier. Do you tell your story from the point of view of one protagonist, from a dual perspective, or from multiple viewpoints? My advice is to do what the story demands. If your story takes place across a large geographical area, and there are things happening all over the place, one narrator alone won’t be able to see all the action firsthand and tell the reader about it; therefore, multiple viewpoints would be required. If, however, this is not the case, and your story is very focused on the personal and emotional journey of one specific character, there is no need to introduce more viewpoints. Again, once you start writing, it will be fairly clear whether or not you’re going in the right direction. You might begin a story with the intention of telling it from one character’s perspective, and then find to your surprise that another character in the story is compelling enough (and important enough to the plot) to be a viewpoint character also. The important thing is to make sure that all the necessary parts of your story are being told, whether it’s through one narrator or nine. But remember too that every viewpoint character in your story must have a valid reason for being one; in other words, seeing parts of the story from their perspective must be essential to the plot, or else readers will wonder why they were given access to that particular character’s inconsequential inner musings.
As I’ve said before, there is no formula for good writing. You just have to trust your instincts, and hope that they lead you down the right path.
One Teen Writer To Another 