You are three days into a trip and one scene keeps returning: the woman at the market who held up two fingers, then laughed when you handed her the wrong coins. You open a notebook and the first sentence arrives one of two ways. “The market is loud and I have no idea what I’m doing.” Or: “The market was loud and I had no idea what I was doing.” Both are true. Both work. But they put the reader in different rooms — one standing beside you in the crush, the other sitting across the table while you tell it afterwards. That is the whole argument in miniature, and it is worth settling before you write a single good line.

What Tense Actually Does

Tense is not grammar housekeeping. It is a distance control. Present tense shortens the gap between reader and event; past tense lengthens it and, in exchange, hands you hindsight. Neither is more literary. Neither is more honest. The question is only which distance your particular story needs.

Look at what changes in this pair:

Past: “We missed the last bus and walked back along the river. Nobody said much.”

Present: “We miss the last bus. We walk back along the river. Nobody says much.”

Same facts. But the past-tense version contains the knowledge that you got home, that the silence eventually ended, that this is a story with a shape. The present-tense version is still happening. The reader does not know yet whether the night turns out fine, and that uncertainty is the point.

Present Tense: The Camera Rolling

Present tense is at its best when not-knowing is the subject. Arrivals, first hours in a city, the comedy of getting something wrong in a language you do not speak, a border crossing, a night walk when you have lost the address. The reader is inside the confusion with you, and confusion is much funnier and more tense when it has no exit yet.

It also suits the short piece. A 900-word scene holds immediacy beautifully. A 5,000-word narrative in unbroken present tense often starts to feel airless, because the reader is never allowed to breathe, summarise, or skip ahead.

Where present tense trips you up

The main cost is reflection. The moment you want to say “I understand now that she was being kind,” you have stepped outside the frame you built. Some writers handle this with a present-tense narrator who addresses the reader directly — “I am telling you this because of what happens next” — but that is a voice decision, not a free pass.

Watch, too, for the flatness of rhythm. Present tense tends toward short, clipped sentences, and a whole page of them starts to sound like stage directions. Vary your openings and let a few longer sentences in.

Past Tense: The Voice Across the Table

Past tense gives you the two things travel writing usually needs: compression and meaning. You can move three weeks in a clause — “By the time we reached Naples, the map had fallen apart” — and you can let a small detail carry weight because the narrator already knows why it mattered.

It is the natural home for journeys with an arc, for stories where the point lives in hindsight, and for anything with backstory or time jumps. It is also more forgiving of digression. A reader will happily follow a past-tense narrator down a side street of memory; the same digression in present tense can feel like a stall.

Where past tense trips you up

Distance cools. Write a whole piece in past tense and you may end up with a tidy report of a trip rather than an experience of it. The other trap is the “I remember” fog: remembering becomes the action, and the scene dissolves into commentary. If you can cut “I remember that” and the sentence still stands, cut it.

A Side-by-Side Comparison

• Reader position: present puts them beside you; past puts them opposite you, listening.
• Suspense: present keeps outcomes unknown; past signals that you survived, which is its own kind of comfort.
• Reflection: past handles it effortlessly; present needs a deliberate device.
• Compression: past can cross weeks in one sentence; present must play time out.
• Best length: present shines in short scenes; past carries long narratives.
• Typical failure: present goes airless and clipped; past goes vague and tidy.

Choosing Tense Scene by Scene

You do not have to pick one tense for a whole piece, and many strong travel stories do not. What matters is that each switch is deliberate and signposted. Try this sequence when a draft feels stiff:

1. Name the job of the scene. One line only: “This is the scene where I realise the ferry is not coming.” That tells you whether you need immediacy or hindsight.
2. Ask what the reader should not know yet. If the answer is “whether I get out of this,” write present. If the answer is “why it mattered,” write past.
3. Draft the first paragraph both ways. Two sentences each, no more. Read them aloud. One will sound like your voice; the other will sound like a writing exercise.
4. Choose the frame. A reliable pattern is a past-tense frame with present-tense insets: “The taxi left us at the edge of the old town. Now I am standing in front of a door with no number.” The reader always knows where the ground is.
5. Place the switch at a border. A section break, a new day, a return home, a change of place. Never switch mid-paragraph without a signal.
6. Sweep for leaks. Check time words first — “now” in a past-tense passage, “that day” in a present-tense one. These small words do most of the damage.

Two Habits That Cause Most Tense Trouble

The first is decoration. Writing a past-tense essay and dropping into present tense for a pretty paragraph reads as an effect rather than a decision. If the switch does not change what the reader knows, undo it.

The second is hedging. “I find myself thinking,” “I start to notice,” “I begin to realise” — all of these delay the verb and blur the moment. Strong present tense needs plain verbs: I notice. I realise. I stop.

A Practical Test Before You Publish

Read the piece aloud. Present tense should sound like a voice speaking close to your ear; if it sounds like a script, the sentences are too even. Past tense should sound like someone who has finished the journey and knows what to leave out; if it sounds like a logbook, look for the paragraph where you stopped feeling anything and only recorded.

Then run one last check: pick your three most important scenes and ask, for each, whether the tense you used is the one that makes the reader lean in. If a scene feels flat, try rewriting its opening two sentences in the other tense. You will usually know within a line. Tense is a craft decision, not a personality test — and the best travel stories tend to use both, with the past holding the story together and the present letting it breathe.

Photo: valerioerrani / Pixabay