It's because that's how we tell stories, it's how we actually speak to each other most of the time.
Most of our conversations involve the past tense, you're telling people what you did. Sure we also talk about what we are up to now, and our plans for the future but most of it is the past.
You get to work and you talk about what you did last night, or over the weekend, what you saw on TV. You get home and you talk about your day, what you did, what you said.
Imagine listening to someone going on about what he's GOING to do. Yikes, boring.
So I guess we are just more used to talking and listening to stuff in the past tense.
Even Science fiction has to set the story into the future and then tell the story as if it has already happened.
As for naration in the present tense, it's just not possible, becquse the present is forever disappearing in the past. Even TV like 24, supposedly 'real-time' it is still as if you are seeing things that have just happened.
Most of our conversations involve the past tense, you're telling people what you did. Sure we also talk about what we are up to now, and our plans for the future but most of it is the past.
You get to work and you talk about what you did last night, or over the weekend, what you saw on TV. You get home and you talk about your day, what you did, what you said.
Imagine listening to someone going on about what he's GOING to do. Yikes, boring.
So I guess we are just more used to talking and listening to stuff in the past tense.
Even Science fiction has to set the story into the future and then tell the story as if it has already happened.
As for naration in the present tense, it's just not possible, becquse the present is forever disappearing in the past. Even TV like 24, supposedly 'real-time' it is still as if you are seeing things that have just happened.
'How can you say, "We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? Jer 8:8
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. Groucho Marx
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. Groucho Marx
