grammar of dreaming in the past

I follow it and have suggested three small changes. The tense is decided by the initial 'when he finally earned' and 'they would'.

I assume you considered but rejected the idea of using dialogue.

goldmund said:

Please, could you help me? This is from my new WIP, a character's dreams are in reported speech, but as it's in the past, and he dreams about the future, the grammar is giving me a bit of the headache. Is this correct?

After several minutes of silence Paul, clearly battling the shame, began to share with Natalie his dreams of the perfect future. He was going to work hard and when he finally earnsearned enough to escape the rat race they would find a dwelling in the countryside and live the real life, surrounded with fields and forests. Their child would grow in the eternal cycle. And it would grow up to be a pure man, pure woman at last, one who didn’t wouldn't run away from the heritage, one who never severed wouldn't sever the ties with the Primordial Mother.

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Like this--

goldmund said:

After several minutes of silence Paul, clearly battling the shame, began to share with Natalie his dreams of the perfect future. He would work hard and when he finally earned enough to escape the rat race they would find a dwelling in the countryside and live the real life, surrounded with fields and forests. Their child would grow in the eternal cycle. And it would grow up to be a pure man, pure woman at last, one who wouldn’t run away from the heritage, one who would never severed the ties with the Primordial Mother.

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I'll leave Beth to explain why she altered it, but I left it as 'was going to' because - for me at least - it flowed on well from the previous sentence.

I think it's more of a style issue than a grammatical one.

goldmund said:

Hey!
Thanks you two, you're lovely.

BethS, is there any reason you've changed "was going to" to "would"?

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Bufty's right--it was a style thing. Or an "ear" thing. Nothing technically wrong with "was going to" but "would" is a little cleaner (less wordy) and it's consistent with the future tense in the rest of the paragraph.

I would like to make one more suggestion, and this is to do with word choice. "Never sever" bothers me because it's an inadvertent rhyme, to both the eye and the ear. How about if you changed that to something more positive? "...one who would respect the ties with the Primordial Mother" or perhaps "...one who would strengthen the ties...".