What choice does Welles make that causes the radio broadcast to feel like it

is happening live?

O

A. He changes the tone of the story to be less dramatic.

O

B. He changes the details of the scene to be more frightening.

C. He changes the perspective to the first person.

D. He changes the verbs to present tense.

I believe the choice Welles makes that causes the radio broadcast to feel like it is happening live is:

D. He changes the verbs to present tense.

Explanation:

In 1938, future filmmaker Orson Welles broadcast a special Halloween episode on radio featuring an adaptation of the novel War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. The novel narrates a fictional invasion on Earth by Martians.

Welles made it seem as if the bits of the novel he was reading were actually news bulletins, interrupting the normal broadcast of music now and then with new details concerning an invasion. To make it sound more realistic, as if the events are happening live, he narrates them using the present tense. The excerpt below belongs to a transcription of the broadcast. Pay attention to the verbs:

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation, and describes the phenomenon as "like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun".

By using the present tense, the narrator conveys a sense of immediacy, as if the events are taking place in real time.