A Guest Post by Jim McDonald

I first met Jim McDonald at the Tottenham Public Library a week before the massive Covid shutdown of March 2020. His short story submission, ‘Ticket Out’ to Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers grabbed me from the first paragraph and never let go:

Fourteen months inside is a drag, except for my mopping buddy Deuce, who taught me how to crack the new digital Forte lock. Four hundred and twenty days in Crime University—Brockville Jail to the straights. I hate that Forte lock. During the jewelry store heist, I just couldn’t crack it. Didn’t have the chemicals. Then the heat was on me, and that’s all she wrote. My name’s Mikey. If I see a crack in the system, I’m gonna find a way to slip through it. Always been a night hawk. You can’t pick a lock at noon.

Notice how he uses present tense, and how effective it is to get us into Mikey’s immediate mindset. I asked Jim if he could write about using first person in fiction, and he was kind enough to share these thoughts:

The following passages have a common element:

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins:

“Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time …”

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey:

“He stands looking at us, rocking back in his boots, and he laughs and laughs.”

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood:

“I can’t believe I’m on this road again, twisting along past the lake where the white birches are dying.”

Hawkins, Kesey, and Atwood use present tense to tell their stories. Other books written in present tense are Bleak House (Charles Dickens), The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Room (Emma Donoghue), The Hours (Michael Cunningham), and The Help (Kathryn Stockett).

Why use present tense?

Present tense suggests that events are happening “right now,” which can augment the sense of urgency and immediacy, drawing the reader into the story as it unfolds. It can be particularly effective for suspenseful genres or narratives heavy on action, enhancing tension and urgency.

It can also help establish a direct bond between the reader and the characters. You feel like you are witnessing events at the same moment as the characters are experiencing them.

When writing a crime story in the first person, I imagine a man in his jail cell sitting on the edge of his cot, elbows on knees, telling a story to his cell mate. “Yeah, so we break through the skylight and drop a rope ladder. We climb down. I move my flashlight left and right, and then, there it is …”

When revising ‘Ticket Out’ for Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers I discovered that not all phrases can be expressed in present tense. For example, the idiom “that’s all she wrote,” cannot be written as “that’s all she writes.” Another example arose after the villain was killed. “He never knew what hit him.” This sentence couldn’t work as, “He never knows what hits him.”

As for what happens before…and after…in ‘Ticket Out,’ well, you’ll just have to buy the anthology to find out. Pre-order it at www.books2read.com/midnight-schemers and save (just $2.99 vs. $6.99 during this pre-order promo period).

About Jim McDonald: Jim has been judged a finalist for the prestigious Crime Writers of Canada First Novel Award of Excellence for his noir psychological thriller Altered Boy, available on Amazon. The winner will be announced on May 30, 2025.
Also on Amazon: Smash Palace, a collection of 32 short stories. Coming in 2026, his historical novel Counterculture Revolution, set in 1970, is about the anti-war activist group The Weathermen. Find him at www.jimmcdonald.ca.