I don't buy any of this - for myself at least. Tense (mis)used like this is like talking about the colour of the paper - "we used green for this section because

I don't buy any of this - for myself at least. Tense (mis)used like this is like talking about the colour of the paper - "we used green for this section because it shows they're in a meadow". Reading is far too high-level an interpretation to be affected by tenses except where the tense is part of the story. When I read I don't see words, it's much more like a cinema playing in my head, and I'm watching. It's a process of filtering (discarding), synthesising and reconstructing. You might as well play with font size or typeface - it won't make a whit of difference to me in the end because it's low level stuff that gets discarded.