Mixing Tenses

Nightd

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So I recently got some excellent comments back from a beta reader. A few of her comments has kind of made me half doubt myself in the usage of tenses. I always thought in first person narrative, we have a bit of more leeway of mixing past and present tense. Here are some of the examples that were highlighted:



We stepped out the elevator and was greeted by reception. I take that back. Not so much greeted. The reception person was just there at a desk and yapping away on the phone. She gave us a glance. It did not sound like a work-related call.



Chester Cloverfield and his merry gang of four. He had tight bushy eyebrows, which made him always look like he was angry. His hair was a quarter shaved -- a butch cut I think it's called. Think he always cut it that way to make himself look tougher than he really was.



She said the bones were from a play she did a long time ago with her students. When it came time to clean up, she thought they added flair to the otherwise dull, boring room. So, they left them out. She even had a skull -- pretty sure it was not real -- somewhere in a box in the back room. She'd take it out whenever she taught Shakespeare.

Oh, and there she is.


The door creaked open, and she stepped in stumbling with some bags in her hand and posters between her arms.



Am I doing it right? Or I shouldn't be mixing tenses here.
 
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lizmonster

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When you mix tenses in a first-person narrative, you're essentially telling the story to an unseen third party. It's doable, but you do need to be consistent. Imagine yourself relating an anecdote to a friend, and you can avoid most pitfalls.

In your examples, the first two are workable, tense-wise. The third is not. In the first one, the narrator is rewinding the narrative, not the events. In the second, the narrator is making a general observation about a character they're introducing. In the third, though, the narrator is changing tense while relating linear events.