Present tense for writing about literature

When writing about a work of literature, you may be tempted to use the past tense. The convention, however, is to describe fictional events in the present tense opens in new window.

Example sentence with editing. Original sentence: In Masuji Ibuse's Black Rain, a child reached for a pomegranate in his mother's garden, and a moment later he was dead, killed by the blast of the atomic bomb. Revised sentence: In Masuji Ibuse's Black Rain, a child reaches for a pomegranate in his mother's garden, and a moment later he is dead, killed by the blast of the atomic bomb. Explanation: The past-tense verb 'reached' has been replaced by the present-tense 'reaches'; the past-tense 'was' has been replaced by the present-tense 'is.'