Slipping My Tenses

JustKia · May 20, 2013

I'm slipping my tenses.
I'm going from tried, took, pressed to willing, confusing, looking and back again. Then when I try to change the ing's to ed's I find it hard to make what I've written make sense.

Is there a trick to keeping your tenses in-line?

Should I just ignore them for now? Maybe it's my naughty inner procrastinator looking for excuses to do anything else other than what I want to do?

Susan Coffin · May 20, 2013

Can you give an example?

Bufty · May 20, 2013

JK, the tenses in your post are okay but I've no idea what you are talking about - can you be more specific?

writerjohnb · May 20, 2013

"It's okay to switch from 'ed' words to 'ing' words," he said, while looking over his shoulder for his grade school grammar teacher to appear. It depends on the circumstances. If you have trouble with tenses, you should probably have your work edited by someone who's well-grounded in that area.

Take care,

JohnB

Kerosene · May 20, 2013

With the others that we need an example.

It sounds like you're hung up on simple, perfect, and progressive tense--which have their own uses.

Tenses themselves are just reliant on the verb. Find the verb of the sentence, determine the verb's tense that you're working with.

writerjohnb said:
If you have trouble with tenses, you should probably have your work edited by someone who's well-grounded in that area.

Or just refer to any grammar book.

jaksen · May 20, 2013

Also, read it aloud. If it sounds fine, it prob. is.

JustKia · May 20, 2013

She tried to ignore the noise but it seemed to come from all around her. She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together willing herself not to throw up. The on-going noise was further confusing her as she tried to figure out what had happened.
...
Milly set off walking in the direction she had been driving.

------------
OK so I can make it "willed herself not to throw up" and "further confused her".

But I can't wrap my head around making an on-going noise into past tense. Same with "set off walking".

I think "had been driving" is OK because of the "had been" but meh I have a story in my head that wants to escape only my inner voice has awful grammar and doesn't care which tense it is thinking in and I end up with nonsense on the screen. Of course, I then fall into a noobie trap of trying to edit what I see at the cost of putting out any more words.

Will - that's pretty much my problem. Only I seem to slip between them without realising it until I read back what I've written and then I get unsure about which I've used and which I should be using.

Kerosene · May 20, 2013

JustKia said:
She tried to ignore the noise but it seemed to come from all around her. She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together willing herself not to throw up. The on-going noise was further confusing her as she tried to figure out what had happened.
...
Milly set off walking (Note: I'd rather have "walked" instead of "set off walking". "Set" is past tense, btw.) in the direction she had been driving.

All the words in red are the tense verbs. They are all correct. Remember, there's really only one per sentence that matters.

OK so I can make it "willed herself not to throw up" and "further confused her".

But I wrap my head around making an on-going noise into past tense. Same with "set off walking".

These aren't problem here. With "set off" that just needs tightening.

I think "had been driving" is OK because of the "had been" but meh I have a story in my head that wants to escape only my inner voice has awful grammar and doesn't care which tense it is thinking in and I end up with nonsense on the screen. Of course, I then fall into a noobie trap of trying to edit what I see at the cost of putting out any more words.

"Had been" is past perfect tense and relates to something deeper in the past. Still, that's not the tense here, but still talking in the past within the sentence.

Will - that's pretty much my problem. Only I seem to slip between them without realising it until I read back what I've written and then I get unsure about which I've used and which I should be using.

Your main problem is just with determining the verb tense of the sentence. For the moment. Read up on a grammar book reflect on published works to learn what you should be doing. Any grammar book should cover all the tenses and their forms.

Bufty · May 20, 2013

Nothing wrong with what you've written. I suspect you are needlessly worrying.

JustKia · May 20, 2013

Thank you.
Who knew getting an idea out of your head and onto paper/screen could be so challenging?
Actually I guess a lot of people -- if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
I've decided that tomorrow I'm not going to open any scene I've been working on today. I must write in any scene not opened today.

Susan Coffin · May 20, 2013

Kia, your examples are fine. My guess is that you are over-thinking.

Sonsofthepharaohs · May 20, 2013

I think you probably heard somewhere that narrative should be in simple past, and you eroneously assumed that meant that EVERY verb in the narrative has to be simple past.

Simply not true

All tenses can be used in a past tense narrative, absolutely without exception. ALL tenses. It's just a case of how you use them so that your action remains in the past.

Erin Latimer · May 20, 2013

Lord almighty. Just go with what sounds right in your head. If you read enough you'll know what sounds natural. After that you can send it off to someone else to pick at.

JustKia · May 20, 2013

Erin Latimer said:
Lord almighty. Just go with what sounds right in your head. If you read enough you'll know what sounds natural. After that you can send it off to someone else to pick at.

Ah, I do apologise that you were forced to read my inconvenient post. I am very sorry that my hope to learn to do things the best way possible as early as possible is such an annoyance to you.

----------------

Many thanks to everyone else. The help, pointing in the right direction, feedback and suggestions are all very appreciated.

Roxxsmom · May 20, 2013

Your examples are fine. You might want to read up on things like gerunds and participle phrases, as well as past progressive/continuous tense, as these are examples of where it is perfectly legitimate to use an "ing" verb form in a past tense sentence.

And as the pink hippo said, there are ways to work other tenses into past tense narrative as well.

Some intentionally silly examples.

Spelunking was how she met new people and polished her social skills.

The pigs did not appreciate Bob's singing.

Singing like an opera diva, he jumped into the pig pen.

She was spelunking when she received the news of Bob's death by pig.

Shaking, she walked away from the pig pen.

Torgo · May 20, 2013

I've been editing books professionally for more than a decade now. I've edited novels and picture books and nonfiction and basically anything for kids you can think of. I wrote a novel last year in present tense third person omni and realised that tense consistency can actually be absurdly hard even if you have a good ear for language. Don't beat yourself up (and don't let anyone else beat you up either.)

(I'm a structure/story guy, not a copyeditor, so I console myself that I'm not actually entirely incompetent about this stuff.)

rwm4768 · May 20, 2013

Your example looked fine to me, though you do need a comma before willing in the first sentence. You're not mixing tenses.

Erin Latimer · May 20, 2013

JustKia said:
Ah, I do apologise that you were forced to read my inconvenient post. I am very sorry that my hope to learn to do things the best way possible as early as possible is such an annoyance to you.

----------------

Many thanks to everyone else. The help, pointing in the right direction, feedback and suggestions are all very appreciated.

My "Lord almighty" was more that you are over thinking things. It wasn't meant in a negative way. If it was taken that way, I offer my apologies.

bonitakale · May 21, 2013

Erin Latimer said:
My "Lord almighty" was more that you are over thinking things. It wasn't meant in a negative way. If it was taken that way, I offer my apologies.

Didn't sound negative to me. Sounded like a pat on the back.

dondomat · May 21, 2013

Just Kia, see how your favorite authors write, copy-paste relevant bits into word files to see them out of context, and learn from them.

Sooner or later well-meaning but overworked and rulebook fetishizing editors will begin trying to hammer your text into a square hole, and you have to be ready for that.

You have to be self-confident, and be able to produce instant arguments and examples from successful people doing X, so that X doesn't get turned into high school generic prose.

I've had to compile sheets of scenes by Chandler, Fleming, James Patterson, Stine and others, just to illustrate that sudden insertions of present tense for a sentence or a paragraph should be left alone if they work, not laboriously turned into the 'correct' past tenses. But at least in this case it worked, because the publisher and the editor actually cared. In other cases the house rules are so rigid, one must count oneself lucky if at least a quarter of the past perfect sentences haven't been turned into past progressive ones, undermining the rhythm and atmosphere in ways some overworked house editors can not even begin appreciate.

So, not only do you have to choose what works best, then you have to be able to defend your choices.

JustKia · May 22, 2013

Thank you.

What I wanted to try to avoid was slipping into random tenses all over the place (due to my own ignorance!) and then to have to spend at least one re-write just getting everything into the correct tense. I'll have enough revising and re-writing to do filling out some bits and cutting others without making hours of extra work just because I didn't take a little more time in the beginning.

dondomat · May 22, 2013

Well, I wouldn't count on it

Putting in a quality effort is always a must, but the endless re-writes are unavoidable for most people, and that's before even the editor-mandated tweaking begins. If I were you I'd make your peace with that.

A book is finished when it's published. Even then one may want to tweak it every few years. For months and maybe years there will be a number of parallel projects in different states of 'last edit ever'. Before a project is truly published you will grow to hate the very sight of certain sentences and it will all seem like cliche crap with a faulty structure and characters whose necks you want to wring already but it's this bit that separates many of those who could've but didn't from those who did.

JustKia · May 22, 2013

Don't get me wrong - I understand there will be revisions and rewrites. My point is I don't want to create more revisions and rewrites than necessary simply by doing something totally daft that I could have avoided in the first place.

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