First, thank you for your time. I found this forum searching for an issue that a friend brought to my attention while reading a non-fiction piece I just finished. He felt that I wrote in past tense too often. Despite my attempts I haven't been able to determine if that is 1) a bad thing and 2) if it is a bad thing what books or sites can help me figure out exactly what I am doing wrong. I was hoping some of you might have experience in this case. Thanks!
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I think it depends on what kind of non-fiction you're writing. I write about how to do things, so writing in the past (about fixing mistakes), the present, or the future is possible. But if you're writing history, biography, memoirs, it's all about things that happened in the past and it would be extremely artificial to try to write about them in the present.
What are you writing about?
Were you writing in the past tense consciously?
Did your friend give you examples of where the tense could be changed?
What are you writing about?
Were you writing in the past tense consciously?
Did your friend give you examples of where the tense could be changed?
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