I find your comments on present tense really interesting, because I seem to have almost exactly the opposite take on it.
I find myself, at times reading a story in past tense and trying to change it all to present in my head. I feel like, for certain types of stories, particularly those with the kind of immediacy a lot of fanfic has, past tense imposes an unnatural distance between the reader and the action. I sometimes have to struggle past the past tense to get drawn into a story.
I'm trying to see if I can figure out where the differentiating point is for me and I'm struggling. I think it's this -- most stories can work just as well in past or present, assuming the writer is comfortable in their tense. The stories that read off to me in past tense are ones that feel like they're taking place in real time, stories that take place all in one scene or in a series or scenes following immediately upon each other. But I'm not sure if that's 100% right either, it's a gut thing again, some stories jsut *feel* wrong in past tense to me.
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I find myself, at times reading a story in past tense and trying to change it all to present in my head. I feel like, for certain types of stories, particularly those with the kind of immediacy a lot of fanfic has, past tense imposes an unnatural distance between the reader and the action. I sometimes have to struggle past the past tense to get drawn into a story.
I'm trying to see if I can figure out where the differentiating point is for me and I'm struggling. I think it's this -- most stories can work just as well in past or present, assuming the writer is comfortable in their tense. The stories that read off to me in past tense are ones that feel like they're taking place in real time, stories that take place all in one scene or in a series or scenes following immediately upon each other. But I'm not sure if that's 100% right either, it's a gut thing again, some stories jsut *feel* wrong in past tense to me.