Illustrated Backstory Redesign

[Drashner1]

I suggest writing the article(s) in the past tense instead of present tense, since they are being written from the viewpoint of someone living in the 11th millennium for whom the initial AT years are in the dim, distant past.

Hm. I have mixed feelings about this.

The original intro text to the Primer is written in the past tense. I had actually shifted it to present tense as part of creating the mockup.

The current Illustrated Backstory and the rest of the Primer outside of the intro are also written in present tense.

Writing in present tense in this fashion is a literary device. It somewhat takes the reader outside of the fourth wall, but not always.

I think the main issue here is whether or not we consider the Backstory/Primer to be 'inside' or 'outside' the fourth wall. I tend to think that they are outside it, since they are mainly aimed at helping new people get up to speed on the setting quickly.

That all said, I'm not super-wedded to writing the intro text in present tense and can switch it back to the original version easily if the consensus is that it should be written that way.

What does the group think?

Todd