Tense

I would probably suggest using past tense exclusively at first. Present tense can be hard to "stay in". Most people find it more natural to write in past tense. After that, spend some time with a grammar book or at online grammar website and get to know the complete verbs tense (even if you don't plan of using some of them at the moment). You don't have to try to memorize all the tenses, just get to know them.

If that's the way you write, then don't worry - mix up the tenses as you write, then decide which works best for the story and edit out the inconsistencies.

I'm not sure I understand the problem if you know the difference between the tenses, as you apparently do.

I'm not unsympathetic to your problem, but you do seem to know what the problem is -- so the obvious answer would seem to be, be more careful. Look at every verb you type and mentally compare past tense vs. present tense forms, e.g. He opened the door vs. He opens the door. / He went outside vs. He goes outside. / He checked his watch vs. He checks his watch.

-Derek

Read your writing and figure out which tense feels the best to you. Which sounds most natural? Which sounds good to you? Which comes most easily? Then choose that tense and stick with it. Don't necessarily dwell on each verb as you type, but go back through everything you write with a fine-tooth comb and correct all the inconsistencies. With more practice, it'll become easier deciding what tense works best for a particular story.

Phot's Moll said:

If that's the way you write, then don't worry - mix up the tenses as you write, then decide which works best for the story and edit out the inconsistencies.

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This seems like only partially a good idea. Sifting through a swamp of tense shifts can be an incredibly messy job.


I discovered present tense was more natural for me when I couldn't bear to stay in past, when I started writing. I discovered first person was more natural than third because I kept shifting into first--a pretty glaring inconsistency, so I gave in.

Maybe try writing in past, just because most people are more comfortable in it. If that doesn't work, try present. Don't get yourself all mixed up trying to edit a tense-shifting quagmire in a few thousand words.

I agree that past tense is probably the easiest way to go. Unfortunately, if you speak differently than you write, this might be difficult. In dpaterso's post above, his examples are perfect.

"He opens the door," and "He goes outside," end up sounding very valley-girl. People do talk like this but when you're reading it, it is confusing. So I'd say you have two choices. Either be more careful, or be prepared to go back and make lots of corrections. Do you belong to a critique group? That would be really helpful. People who write are generally (hopefully) voracious readers too. They will help you pick out inconsistencies in say, a chapter and then you can go back and make the changes in the rest of your book. Does that make sense?

The main thing though, is not to let this stop you from writing. I think we all have one hang-up or another but we have to persevere, and continue learning and writing. Years ago I was at a workshop and someone asked the lecturer a question about how to do something specific with writing-don't remember what it was. But I do remember his answer. He said, "Become a student of it." So that is my advice to you. If you know that you have trouble with tenses, become a student of it. Purpose yourself to learn more, whether by reading, and researching or by other means. But above all, keep writing! Hope that helps some. ~Karen

It's not quite clear from your question whether you really know the tenses. Can you recognize them (at least the basic ones) when you see them? If not, find a good grammar resource and study.

If you know the tenses, but aren't in the habit of paying attention to them, you need to form a better habit. dpaterso's suggestion is a good one, but some people may have trouble doing that while creating first draft. If that's a problem for you, maybe you could do it for the first 15-20 minutes each day, then go back to your usual writing method.

At the very minimum, I would suggest going back through each day's work--either later the same day or first thing the next day--editing for tense only. OK, you can fix any typos and misspellings you happen to notice, but don't get distracted by revision. It's important to do this daily. The sooner you catch the mistakes, the stronger the reinforcement will be.

I do this sometimes when I'm writing an action scene that where things are happening very fast. Sometimes, heh, I even miss it on a re-read or revision because, again, it's a fast paced scene.

I'd say try to stay in whatever voice you're in, make sure you re-read once just looking for tense (and any other niggling errors you might be prone to making). I recommed a) reading your story aloud and/ or b) reading the story BACKWARDS one sentence at a time just to check for those niggly problems. (Reading the story frontwards with a sheet of paper to stop you from reading too fast might help too-- it kind of did with me, but I was still prone reading and enjoying my story.)

A good beta-reader can also help flag this sort of thing, too. I have one who's caught me with my tense around my ankles before. ;-)

It's not always that cut and dried. If you're writing first person past, there are times, such as in describing things, that present tense works better. Even times when a mixture works well. Just don't mix them up in the same sentence. Here's an example of slipping into the present tense, then back out in the first person description of an apartment:

"Blond wood paneling throughout gives it a homey feel, and the walls slope at different angles like a ship's cabin. When the wind blows in those San Francisco winter storms I can hear the upper part of the house creaking like a ship at sea... I had installed a cat door in the back so Louie could come and go as he pleased..."

You could also do the entire thing in past -- ""Blond wood paneling throughout gave it a homey feel..." It's a matter of style and preference.

Phot's Moll said:

If that's the way you write, then don't worry - mix up the tenses as you write, then decide which works best for the story and edit out the inconsistencies.

Click to expand...

Ditto. Writing exclusively in one tense or another will get easier with time. I used to do that all the time, and now rarely mix up my tenses.

One of the worst offenders is first person, which I write a lot of. So I have to remain VERY conscious of my tense. In first person, you have two things going on, the action that's being commented ON, and the comments themselves. It's quite easy to wind up with two different tenses in just a few sentences. For example:

"The water was cold, according to the captain---probably thirty degrees and hypothermia could easily set in after just a few minutes. Yeah. Uh-huh. No way in hell am I going in there."

See the problem? The MC is commenting on what the captain told him, but in real time, and when you're in your character's head, you're really THINKING the things in real time and typing them out. Of course, the proper final sentence should be, "No way in hell was I going in there."

But it's just that easy, and can happen a dozen times in a page, so I do know where you're coming from, bookworm. My best advice is to write it as it appears in your head and then go back and correct it after a few pages. At most, at the end of the chapter. That's the easiest time to spot it . . . when it's fresh in your head.

Does that help any?

This is one of the cases where the computer grammar-check can be your friend. Look at all the words it's flagged for tense mismatch, and evaluate whether it's right or wrong.

In every narrative, you have - potentially - two time levels: the time of the telling (tot) and the time of the story (tos).

Normally, the tos comes before the tot; this fact is expressed through the past tense.


The effect, generally, is one of telling a story as it happened.

Now, you sometimes get present tense in narrative:


How do we interpret this?

Either (a) things are as they seem and events occur at the time of speaking, or (b) using the present tense to refer to past events.

(a) The effect is one of commentary. Like sport reporting:


Basically, the narrator is with the characters, you are not, but you have a live link to the narrator.

(b) If the present tense is used for the past tense, the effect is that of visualising a memory.

Now, a lot of present tense fiction is ambiguous between (a) and (b), and you know what? In many present tense stories it simply doesn't matter which one it is.

For a summary we have: Past tense is the tense of narration proper (of telling something that happened); present tense, on the other hand, is the tense of commentary, or imagination.

Going back to my "memory example" above, you'll notice that there's a switch in tense. First, past tense ("this is what happened"), then present tense ("I'm remembering as I go"), then again past tense ("I'm giving you background information; you interrupted me - I'm no longer in imagination mode").

Notice that - in a narrative - what's important is not to mess up the sequence of events.


This is obvious. Nobody makes that sort of mistake. But, see, you can while you cannot have this event sequence, you can have this narrative sequence if you like. You guessed it, you'll have to manipulate tense:


Notice that, by changing the narrative sequence, you've taken the "knife-taking" out of the narrative proper and into background (it's now information on when he cuts bread). See how the perfect tenses signal information rather than narrative? Now, what if the "after-clause" had come before the main clause?


While now "event-sequence" and "narrative-sequence" match again, the "knife-taking" is still in the background. It's not conceptualised as part of the story events, but as background information. This is true even without the "after":


What's the difference between "past-perfect - past" and the more common "past - past"? In the above you imagine Joe with the knife in his hand, already (plus you have the information that he took it from a drawer). In the normal sequence, you imagine the taking of the knife as an event in the story. Both can be good choices, but you'll use the "past - past" constellation more often.

This does have an editing implication, though:

If you find a sentence like the one above, you'll have to ask yourself why you took that odd sequence. You can, of course, edit it to "past - past". But if that's what you wanted to do, you'd probably have done it in the first place. You should not treat this as a tense mistake. You can leave it as it is, if you think it works, but you can also - after figuring out what it is you were trying to do by this odd tense choice - address the point more clearly. So, if you wanted to create the image of Joe with a knife in his hand as an opening, for example, then you could do just that:


Note that general information can be framed as background within event-time, but also as background in story-telling time:


Framing general information as part of the telling-time doesn't automatically mean present tense, though:


Notice that it's not tense, here, but the word "still" that signals that the "owning knives" is framed as telling-time?

Normally, you have a "master tense" - i.e. the one that expresses your telling-event constellation. The default method is to progress through your events one by one, using that master tense. But you may want to escape into the story's background. Whenever you do this, it's possible that you change tense. These tense changes are meaningful, even if they don't quite work. You (= your intuition) most likely had a purpose for the tense shift. If you figure out what you wanted to do, it's easier to edit. (Sometimes, a tense shift is just a mental hick-up; shifting from telling to imagination because something distracted you, for example. But it's always a good idea to wonder what you were trying to accomplish with the tense shift.)

An example. Here are the opening paragraphs from Walter Jon Williams' short story, "Incarnation Day":

Walter Jon Williams said:

It's your understanding and wisdom that makes me want to talk to you, Dr. Sam. About how Fritz met the Blue Lady, and what happened with Janis, and why her mother decided to kill her, and what became of all that. I need to get it sorted out, and for that I need a real friend. Which is you.

Janis is always making fun of me because I talk to an imaginary person. She makes even more fun of me because my imaginary friend is an English guy who died hundreds of years ago.

"You're wrong," I pointed out to her, "Dr. Samuel Johnson was a real person, so he's not imaginary. It's just my conversations with him that are imaginary."

I don't think Janis understands the distinction I'm trying to make.

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Let's take it verb for verb. (I'm only talking about verbs that take a tense, here.)

is ('s), makes. moment of speaking, current situation, explanation

met, happened, decided, became. story time, plot summary as introduction

need, need, is. moment of speaking, current situation, explanation resumed

is making. generic time. Happens often. Note the progressive tense to emphasise repetition. Recurrant event, still going on at the moment of speaking.

talk. generic time. Reason for above "making fun of" explained. Notice that there is no emphasis of repetition, here. The narrator's own actions are framed as a simple statement of fact.

makes, is. same as above, only now Janis' actions are no longer emphasised for repition. Our narrator has already made her point.

died. past event framed by moment of speaking - subordinate to "is" above.

I'm leaving out the content of the speech, as this is a special circumstance (although the "was a real person, so he's not imaginary" is an interesting argument tense-wise. )

pointed. Past event, framed in story time. This is the first instance of real narration, although it doesn't last long. It's about a specific event within the vague frame of "generic time" that's filled with "making fun of".

understands, 'm trying. Here the switch back to generic time (as opposed to "understood" and "was trying to make", which would still have been event time) underlines the idea that above event is exemplary. It's a singular event, but there are others like it, and they all have the same outcome. Janis doesn't understand, and our narrator keeps trying to make the point (this is why repetition is, this time, emphasised for the narrator, not Janis).

Eventually, the narration will slip into conventional past tense narrative, but there will always be interruptions framed by the "moment of speaking" (we're eavesdropping on our narrator's imaginary conversations with the real though dead and hence absent Dr. Samuel Johnson, after all). See how you can modulate tense for effect? A lot of writers do that quite automatically. Analysing (and thus editing) it is harder than writing it. Watch what you're doing, but don't regularise too much, or you run risk of depriving your stories of interesting word-tools.

Tense shifts, though often just slips, may work, and even if they don't they may constitute a failed attempt at technique that a simple "tense-alignment" might obscure rather than address. I'm aware that this is complicated, and I'm not at my height currently, but I'll hit "submit" anyway in the hope that I'm not causing more confusion than I'm solving.

I find it easiest to write in the simple past tense but occasionally, when describing something that happened before the past, (e.g. by the time Joe arrived she had drunk the whole bottle of brandy...) you have to use the past perfect (had drunk). However I've found to my cost that I need to use it sparingly or you tend to trip over the tenses!

Without an example, it's hard to understand jusat what you're problem is.

The main storyline is usually written in past tense while dialogue is done in present tense.

Otherwide, don't worry about all that stuff until you've completely finished your work and it's editting/revision time.

If you cultivate the right attitude (very lofty), people may think your tense switches harbor deep meaning and crown you as a lit'ry genus.