A question came up recently on Twitter (My favorite hangout to talk to other writers.) about, ‘what voice do you write in?’ Many fellow authors and writers were able to choose 1 combination of narrative point-of-view and tense, yet, to my pleasure, I was able to say, I can’t, because I’m not even published in only one voice. Yes, my big works are all in third person past, but my shorts and flashes, which I use to experiment, are produced in a myriad of forms.

What are voices, and what are narrative points of view and tenses? A voice is the style of writing that the narrator chooses to tell a particular section of the story, and it is a combination of parts, two of which I will go into more detail.

The key is, whatever time you choose as an author or writer to work in, you should try and stick with one voice for that particular section of a story. If your world has multiple characters, and different time periods expressed within, yes, you can have a multitude of voices and styles, but you had better make darned sure that, wherever you’re in, you keep it consistent until that section, be it a chapter, a few paragraphs, an excerpt, remains the same so as to eliminate confusion.

Let’s start with the, The Tense, A.K.A The Time period. When do the events of the story happen?

Note the caps in the example below. Each of the examples use almost the same sentence, only changing the time period with which they were concerned by altering one word, (Or two, I know you nitpickers are waiting.) So, to go more in depth:

The Future is what will happen, whether in a few seconds, or a few eons from now, it hasn’t happened yet, but it will or may occur.

• Shannon WILL BECOME the leader of the free world.

The Present is what is happening immediately, right now.

• Shannon IS the leader of the free world.

The Past is something that has happened, something that is over and done with. It occurred, period.

• Shannon WAS the leader of the free world.

Who the heck is Shannon? Should I shake her hand or was she a despot, is a despot, will be a despot? I’ll let you be the judge.

Anyways, there’s your time, or chronological division.

Next is your Point of View, or how the narrator is choosing to explain a particular part of the story to the reader in order to immerse them. There are three primary points of view, 1^st (or first) person, 2^nd (or second) person, and 3^rd (or third) person.

First person is what I jokingly refer to as the selfish person because it’s all about me. (Not Me me, but me.) This is where the writer tries to cast the reader as the narrator.

• I was the leader of the free world. (1^st person past)

• I am the leader of the free world. (1^st person present)

• I will be the leader of the free world. (1^st person future)

In all of the examples above, the narrator is trying to involve the reader directly, telling the reader events as if they are speaking to them directly, making for a very personal experience, but not nearly as personal as-

Second Person, or all about you. 2^nd person is when the narrator decides to make tell the story as if you, the reader, are directly involved, and if YOU are the character in the story.

• YOU were the leader of the free world. (2^nd person past)

• YOU are the leader of the free world. (2^nd person present)

• YOU will be the leader of the free world. (2^nd person future.)

Third person is about them, he, she, others than you or the narrator. While the most informal, there are ways to make things more intimate, but we won’t get into that too much. So, what is third person? It is the absence of first and second person, but still tells an idea. This is the he, she, they method, and/or using the name of the subject.

• SHANNON / SHE was the leader of the free world. (3^rd person past)

• SHANNON / SHE is the leader of the free world. (3^rd person present)

• SHANNON / SHE will be the leader of the free world. (3^rd person future)

So to SIMPLIFY Everything, here is a small Cheat Sheet

	Past	Present	Future
1st Person (I, me, myself, us)	I Was	I am	I will be
2nd Person (You, They )	You were	You are	You will be
3rd Person (He/She, Noun, them)	She was	She is	She will be

This is not the limit of how far you can stretch this definition of narrative voice. Those who study language or literature will be quick to include other things, such as Singular VS Plural person, and Perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous tense, but that’s more in-depth study for another time.