OokamiKasumi wrote:...first person, present tense.
Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --
in English-- is written in
PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book --
any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.
Tempus wrote:...I did open a fiction book -- Rabbit, Run by John Updike -- and the first sentence reads, "Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it." The entire novel is in present tense. While the story isn't told in first-person, it could easily be and that would still be okay.
YES, I
am sure.
-- To put things in proper perspective, that list contains only 249 books -- many of which were originally written in
Other Languages, such as
All Quiet on the Western Front. German is written in Present tense. That this book is STILL in Present tense only
proves that the English translator did NOT do their job properly.
Just because a book is Published and Popular does NOT mean it's good. It
certainly doesn't mean that it's well-written.
Hunger Games is a prime example of published
garbage; not only is the grammar poor, the plot has holes big enough to drive a truck through.
50 Shades of Gray is even worse garbage because in addition to being badly written and having poor plotting, it was also badly researched. (BDSM is Not done that way!) I don't care how many copies these books sold,
Hunger Games and
50 Shades are badly written, and poorly edited. John Updike is no better. The books he puts out are so badly written; garbled grammar, confusing descriptions, and contrived plot conveniences...that after struggling through the first chapter of more than one of his books,
including the book mentioned, I threw them against the wall in sheer frustration.
To reiterate; out of 319,369 novels, 1,489,740 romance books, 254,919 adult-fiction books, and 665,496 historical-fiction books listed on that site,
only 249 are written in Present tense, and of them many were translated from other languages improperly;
All Quiet on the Western Front, are examples of Creative Writing; Margaret Atwood, or are just plain Garbage; Updike,
Hunger Games, and
50 Shades.
These books are EXCEPTIONS to the rule because their publishers ALLOWED it for marketing reasons -- NOT because it was RIGHT. My editors (I have four,) would flay me alive if I handed them crap like that. These books should
never be used as examples of good writing. Seriously. In fact, they should be held up as examples of what NOT to do.
Applegate wrote:Some Light Novels are also written in present tense, and some just disregard tenses.
Japanese is written in Present tense. English should
not be. That the light novel
still contained Present tense someplace Other than dialogue only proves that the book was Poorly Translated.
Applegate wrote:Write your stories the way that seems most natural to you─and don't let things like convention stop you from thinking outside the box. Creativity isn't about adhering to the rules that everyone's always been sticking to.
This I do agree with. One
should create a VN the way you want to, using any form of free-writing and creative grammar that you please.
-- However, once you try taking such a story to a publisher, all bets are off.