Speaking In The Present: The Simple Tense Shift That Pulls People In

When you want to bring your audience into your world, use the present tense.

Even though your story happened in the past, use the present.

The present tense creates a sense of immediacy that the other tenses can’t.

Speaking in the present tense also allows you to visualize what is happening in your story. In turn, this will calibrate your emotions to the emotions you are trying to convey to the audience through the story. In short, it will make for a better story.

There are times when you should use the past tense.

One is when you want to tell a backstory. There are two main reasons to tell backstories in the past tense:

1. You don’t want two storylines happening at the same time. It’s confusing and will dilute the main story line, which you are telling in the present tense.

2. Using the past tense in a backstory makes sense, since it is in the past in comparison to the main story's timeline.

Another time you want to use the past tense is when you want to push an audience back in time before bringing them forward again. This creates contrast.

The final time to use the past is to distance your audience from certain subjects, such as bathroom talk. Some things are just better told so that your audience isn’t ‘present’ in the room.

The shift in tenses during your story will often just happen naturally, because it makes sense to do so.

The hardest part will be to speak in the present for your main storyline. For some people this will come easily. Perhaps you do it already when telling stories to your friends. For others it may take some practice.

If speaking in the present tense feels too awkward, don’t worry about it. Just speak in the past tense for your whole story. It’s better to tell a story well from the past than poorly from the present.

Many people think they should rehearse in front of a mirror.

Don’t.

The last thing you should worry about while you’re telling a story is what you look like.

It’s far better to practice in front of other people, or photos of people, or a wall. Anything but yourself.

And don’t worry about what to do with your hands. Thinking about them will make it worse. Just let them do whatever they do.