Tension

[tablesaw]

I just emended my previous entry slightly to keep it all in the same tense. I have a difficult time with it, especially when writing something that evokes my own emotions or sensations. I enter into the story I'm telling and narrate as it is recreated. I think it's an influence of theatre. When someone speaks in the past tense, the listener accepts a layer of distance. In the present tense, there is a demand on the listener to accept it as real-time reality as it happens. The messenger comes on stage and tells of how, just now, he saw Oedipus discover Jocasta. The audience sees the messenger's horror and sympathizes with it. But have that same messenger look offstage and tell the same story as it happens, and the audience is no longer the object of the messengers tale, but through him, they are participants in the scene themselves.

When I write, I want someone to be able to read it as an actor reads, becoming the character or the world actively. Or me.