Originally, my novel was set in past tense. I'm converting everything to present tense for immediacy and ran into a problem. My narrator enters a trance-like state to write the novel. Most interior monologue converts to present tense just fine but in rare situations when he writes interior monologue in retrospect I need to stay with past tense for it to make sense and add to the story.
The past tense introspections are short and used sparingly; placed in the valleys of conflict to minimize jarring the reader from the story. In some cases, the past tense is beside a paragraph of present tense introspection.
Is giving the past tense its own paragraph enough? Or should it be italicized to separate past from present?
The past tense introspections are short and used sparingly; placed in the valleys of conflict to minimize jarring the reader from the story. In some cases, the past tense is beside a paragraph of present tense introspection.
Is giving the past tense its own paragraph enough? Or should it be italicized to separate past from present?
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