In the 25 years I've enjoyed creative writing, I've been part of quite a few writing- and reading-focused communities. One of the recurring opinions I've seen expressed is a disdain for first-person stories and, to a lesser extent, stories written in present tense. As a reader, I don't have much of a preference myself. When it comes to writing, first-person feels more natural and immersive for characters I've created, while third-person is reserved for fanfiction. There's an odd mental divide that my brain can't penetrate when I'm writing someone else's characters. It feels too much like I’m trying to replace the creator's ideas with what I think the characters should be. The distance helps me adopt a more analytical mindset, at any rate, which is perfect for character studies.

Still, what is it about first-person and present tense that make readers turn away from stories they might enjoy otherwise?

A story follows one or more characters undergoing some sort of struggle. I suspect that reading the finer, introspective details that plague the point of view character(s) on their journey can be hard to swallow after a while. After all, we feel compelled to help—or look away—when we see someone suffering. We want to do what we can to make the other person's suffering disappear.

But readers can't do that. They don't have control over the characters' suffering. The words have already been penned. The journey has been decided, and it's already over.

Perhaps readers feel guilty and helpless for this. Perhaps the intimacy of first-person makes them take on the experiences and emotions of the characters as if they were their own, as Bal and Veltkamp (2013) suggest. Perhaps readers need a bit of distance—enough to maintain immersion and interest in the story from start to finish, yet not so much that they feel responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong. Goldstein (2009) puts it another way, understanding that fiction is sought as an escape from reality and not a reminder of it:

If we allowed ourselves to feel empathy for victims shown in the news, we might have to contribute money or time to help them. However, we can allow ourselves to feel strongly toward fictional victims because we know we will have no obligation to them once the story or film is over.

Combining first-person with present tense adds an other interesting layer to consider. When reading in the tense, there's an unusual sense of urgency. Momentum makes it hard to stop to reflect on what happened, and anticipating future events feels futile when the relentless pull of a single moment in time is too strong for us to grasp a character's identity, let alone how they got to be the way they are. The narrative holds our emotions hostage, offering no relief until some semblance of closure is reached, whether at the end of a scene, a chapter, or the novel in its entirety. "In other words," Nikolajeva (2014) writes, "it constructs the fictional self as static and stable."