I see this word thrown around a lot.... Tense. I have to admit I recognise this as a weakness, I work to get the right tense in my stories, but sometimes it gets a bit muddled... you know, should I say going or gone. When I experiment it changes the whole sentence and I mull over it for ages wondering if its right. (I do have work beta'd, but every sentence is a lot to ask!) Can some of you more experienced writers give me ideas on getting this right! Thanks!

The biggest breakthrough for me as a writer (many years ago now) was tht you can't just chang the tense of a word. Often, you need to then change the whole sentence - or even paragraph - to fix that tense change. For example: He goes to the door and opens it. To change the tense, you can't just change "goes" to "gone" or "opens" to "open" or "opened". You need to change the whole sentence for it to make sense. And then - depending on your perspective, or even the tension you want to portray, depends on the words you use. Phew!!

Most fiction is written past tense. (That sentence, and this one, are in the present tense.) Past tense implies the action took place (duh) in the past, even as recently as a few seconds ago. My reviews are usually in present tense, describing the action as if I were narrating it as it happened. (Sports announcers do the same thing.) (There are some simple, and entertaining, books about grammar available. When I say 'simple', I mean that they're written in an accessible style. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is the title of one, as is The Girl's Like Spaghetti is another. You might try them.)

I mostly use past tense, but I think there are times when its the paragraph as Maddy suggested. You know, one or two sentences becomes a different tense. LOL!! I have a confession to make...I fall asleep reading those books...I mean I liternally have, woke up the next to have a page print on my face. Its not that I don't think its important...just needed it to be more entertaining. I'm still interested to hear from others on the board too, there's nothing better than a rounded prospective on it. Maybe I should post a paragraph and you can tell me where I'm going wrong with it... i find I learn better that way. I can't handle tones of theory, I need to see it working. Does that make sense???

The books I recommended were written for young adults, so I'm pretty sure they're entertaining, with plenty of examples. Post the paragraph(s). We'll be happy to analyze the heck out of them.

Thanks for the idea behind this thread, Ebony! It will surely help me also!

okay I'll pick something to post...random most likely. Glad to hear I picked a useful topic for you Gatchamarie...hugs I missed you around here. (know what its like with little kids though, my two toddlers keep me away from most threads.)

Hugs back, Ebony!

I think most people are comfortable with the difference between past and present tense... certainly I've seen this in my reading and writing. But a lot of people (myself included) have more issues with past tense and pluperfect. For example, if you are writing a fic in past tense, you may then need to refer to something that happened in the past of your fic. For example: Ken walked into the Snack J. He wondered what had had happened at the meeting this morning with Dr. Nambu. 'wondered' is past tense (the tense in whch the story is taking place) while 'had happened' is pluperfect (the past tense from the story's perspective). It's so easy to get caught up in past tense and forget to switch to pluperfect when necessary. This is something I always notice when I do my first readthrough of my fic drafts. I have written a couple of stories in present tense (including a ficlet I hope to post shortly) but it's definitely more difficult, because it has a different flow. I always use first person if I'm doing a present tense fic... but perhaps that's just me. Episode reviews come naturally in present tense, however.

Originally posted by Transmute Jun This is something I always notice when I do my first readthrough of my fic drafts.

Or when you beta someone like me!!!!

Originally posted by gatchamarie Or when you beta someone like me!!!!

Marie, I'm being totally honest when I say that I am amazed by your writing! I could never do it in another language, much less my third-best one! I was actually tempted to try and write a really short piece in another language, to fully appreciate what you do, but I don't know if anyone would want to beta my limited and mangled French...

Thanks TJ! And I think you would do great at writing something in a foreign language you know ... you're a born writer and you write from the heart! I know some French but cannot dare say that I'm proficient! I would so much like to read what you can come up with though ... certainly keeping a good dictionary at hand!

Marie, I work at a HOSPITAL, and some of the work requests and e-mails that come to Building Maintenance make me cringe. English may be your third language, but you write it better than these supposed native speakers. We once had a good laugh at an e-mail that came from one of the offices. It was that bad. Remember, I work in Building Maintenance. The stereotype is that people who do that sort of work are ill-educated. In this case, they had a better grasp of basic English composition than the lady who worked in an office.

I work in a multinational retail company and some of the official memos and posters that I'm supposed to display are so incredibly ill-written it's not funny! These things go to over 200 hundred stores throughout mainly English speaking countries and I just have to cringe... Trust me - they need to hire you, Marie, to teach them how to write in their own language! I've actually rung my area manager to ask him to translate a fax he sent through because the grammar was so mangled I couldn't understand what it meant. I then spent 30 minutes on the phone with him, helping him re-write it so he could resend it... I asked him where he went to school and it turns out that he's a graduate of a highly respected private school in Sydney - and got 'A's in English... *sigh*

And this is why B2B and other copywriting is such a darned lucrative field (or so I keep hearing). Five million companies in the US, and maybe 50 A-list copywriters. Now to get up the ovaries to make this work.... This guy graduated a private school? What was their mission statement? 'Stroke their little egos, no matter what'? In the Navy, I kept running into things that looked as if someone had simply typed or written the first thing that came to mind. That's okay when taking notes or in a first draft, but NOT for finished copy. Where do people get the idea that they shouldn't write drafts? From misguided teachers who think creativity is all, or were they told not to correct anything, lest they bruise an ego? If I find I have to write an incident report on my security job, I write a couple of drafts. After all, that's a document that could be used in a legal action. If they have to make a phone call to ask about something I wrote, then I didn't do it properly. There can't be any mistakes. If it takes two drafts to explain that the banned person used a fake name to get past us, it definitely takes at least two for any other type of writing.

I've got not much else to add. The two main tenses for narrative are past and present (future, progressives, and perfects get really clunky for an entire narritve). The best bit of advice I can give (this coming from the perspective of an archive admin), is that present is good for shorter stories. It is harder to maintain than narrative past and easier to get lost. I think this might be also why some people have a hard time learning to write in the first person because present tense naturally wants to come out. IMHO both (first person and present tense) are challenging to write, but take practice and one should be mastered before trying to combine them. I've read some really good stories in present tense, but if not done well, they can be awkward and hard to follow.

Thanks again, UW and Green! Such comments encourage me a lot! The most important thing for me is that I can communicate with all of you, and all those I meet, well! ... even though sometimes I make some flops, wanting to mean something but write another erroneously! Writing being another love of mine, I try to do the best that I can in order to emiliorate in what I like, especially when a fandom like this has to be joined using the English language ... I've never found another site better than this and other known ones where fanfics can be submitted! I believe you when I hear you comment on natives writing badly their own language! ... I've met a lot of similar persons when working at the Central Bank, even if the majority of the time, communication had to be made in foreign languages! They're also high in rank but it has to be a subordinate to teach them how to write! And Maltese is a very difficult language in itself ... unfortunately most of the older language is also being forgotten.

I'll toss in two cents just because hey, i'm here! There was earlier comment about tense switching, in that if you change the tense of one part of a sentence, you need to make sure you change the rest to match. that's totally correct, but do not, for the love of little green apples, switch tenses every sentence! pick a tense (the same as pick a point of view) and STICK WITH IT. it's like nails on a chalkboard, to be reading in one direction, switch to another and then switch back again. my mom pointed out that professional writers screw up POV all the time, they screw up tenses and we've all just gotten used to it. i'll point out this sentence in a previous example: Ken walked into the Snack J. He wondered what had happened at the meeting this morning with Dr. Nambu. correctly, it would be: Ken walked into the Snack J. He wondered what had happened at the meeting that morning with Dr. Nambu. It's not "this" because Ken is wondering about something that happened in HIS past, so "that" is appropriate. See? Do it every second sentence and while your reader might happily skip right along, knowing what you meant to write, it makes your fic appear disjointed. And I have to admit that I really quite like writing present tense, first person stories so I think I have to disagree with Amethyst that it's only easy for short stories. Switched is something like 18,000 words and only the last few paragraphs jump to a different POV to give another perspective. First person is incredibly easy - for one thing, there's not a lot of tense problems to trip over. It's all happening like a movie Right Now with "you" in the starring role. ------------------------- notice how often i've edited this post? one, i really, REALLY like to drop entire words out of my sentences, thinking i've typed them because my brain said to, but my fingers never got the message. and two, i also change my mind a LOT about what I want to say. hi! i'm lyon and i'm enthusiastically spastic. and ONE FIC UPLOADED! hah. take that, zero fic count post.

At least you know how to use that function. I've been on boards where people seem unaware that it's possible to go back and edit. They just type the first thing that comes into their heads, and then they probably wonder why others ask what they were trying to say.

Originally posted by lyon And I have to admit that I really quite like writing present tense, first person stories so I think I have to disagree with Amethyst that it's only easy for short stories. Switched is something like 18,000 words and only the last few paragraphs jump to a different POV to give another perspective. First person is incredibly easy - for one thing, there's not a lot of tense problems to trip over. It's all happening like a movie Right Now with "you" in the starring role.

Lyon, for experienced writers or at least writers experienced at using those, I would definitely agree with you. My opinion was based on several years of beta reading and admining at an archive in the HP fandom, one of the things that I and others I talked saw was newer writers (not those new to the fandom, but new to writing) having problems with tense or PoV and almost always they'd start in present and switch to past mid-story or first person and switch to third. I have seen longer stories that have worked well in present tense, but I do believe that for many writers they have to teach themselves to do it, and that in general it is best on shorter ones, but there are always exceptions.

:biggrin: It's not just new writers that get tense mixed up!! When I first started to write Bruise, I did it badly in the first part (I personally blame the smoking hot tub sex...) and had both Sam and Lyon drop on me for it (in the nicest possible way). It's why you aboslutely need good beta readers - often when we write we get so caught up in the story that the technical things get forgotten. Funny - just about everything comes down to having a wonderful Beta!!

Truly? I'll bow the collective wisdom, having never admin'd a writing archive and beta-reading only those who clot fast and are willing to bandage afterwards, but i would think that first person would be the easiest perspective of all to write since it keeps the author to one headspace and it forces the single tense of "Right Now". Je suis une auteur! Or something. Is it simply unfamiliarity with writing in general, you think? ----------------------------------- More to the topic: Present tense, first person: It's happening right now and it's happening from behind the eyes of ONE person. The author writes only what that person knows, or feels or sees. That person can guess at what the other characters are doing or what the motivations are but they actually don't know - there's no peeking. I'm going to kill him, I swear. If he looks at me sideways just one more time I'm going to pick him up by that snappy blue shirt and shove him through the wall. I can feel the anger prickling across my shoulders. Just who does he think he is anyways, my own personal Jesus? I don't need his advice! Turning to the window is the only thing that keeps me from doing something I just know I'm going to regret. Present tense, third person, limited: It's happening right now and it's happening from the camera perched on the shoulder of ONE person. The camera knows what that person know or feels or sees, but that's it. It can visually record what's going on around it, but it doesn't have magic insight into any other characters. Joe's angry enough to kill. The little glances are slowly driving him up the wall and his hands are starting to clench. The fury is tightening his shoulders and he starts to hunch with the contained emotion. Just who does he think he is? he fumes. I don't need his advice! Across the room Ken's spinning a Rubik's cube in his hands. Present tense, third person, omniscent: It's happening right now and it's being recorded by the camera that has a bird's eye view of everything and everyone. There is nothing hidden from the camera, it sees all, it knows all. Joe's angry, it's obvious with the tightening of his fists and the white lines around his mouth. Across the room, Ken looks over, more than a little concerned. I wonder what his problem is, he thinks. He's wired up enough to put a fist through the wall. Maybe I should take him for a burger and ask what's going on. Joe hunches his shoulders then and turns away to stare out the window. I'm going to kill him, Joe thinks.He's not my personal Jesus and he can shove his advice. Past tense, first person: It's already happened, and grandpa is telling it to the children, reliving it just how it was then - keeping in mind that "grandpa" might be only a few seconds advanced in the future. I was going to kill him. If he'd looked at me sideways just one more time, I was going to pick him up by that snappy blue shirt and shove him through the wall. I'd felt the anger prickling across my shoulders. Just who did he think he was anyways, my own personal Jesus? I didn't need his advice! Really past tense, first person: I had really wanted to kill him. I think if he'd looked at me sideways just one more time, I would have picked him up by that snappy blue shirt and shoved him right through that wall. I remember the anger had prickled like spiders across my shoulders. I hadn't needed his advice. And just for fun! present tense, second person You have no idea how much I want to kill you right now. If you look at me one more time, just one more sideways little check-me-out, I'm going be across this room in three seconds and in four, you're going to be halfway into the next room without benefit of the door. You think you're my own personal Jesus, don't you? Always telling me what I have to do to save myself. Well, this time - this time I don't need your advice. ** see Amethyst's description below about second person - you can tell its been forever since I tried to work with it. ------------------- .... When I said if you write one idea with three different perspectives you'll end up with three different stories, I meant it. Mix in what tense suits the mood you're trying to create, and this is something that needs to be decided first thing of all, before digital pen hits digital paper!

Lyon, nice summary of the PoV/Tense. One slight correction. In second person they "you" is the one who is thinking so for this sentence: You have no idea how much I want to kill you right now. It should read: You have no idea how much he wants to kill you right now. By adding the I and the me, it makes it first person. BTW -- Second Person PoV is fun for exercises and challenges, but I've seen very few stand out pieces use this.

Here's what's weird: in some old (as in: just this side of original) Arthurian stories, I come across a shift in tenses. That apparently was in the original language, so these translators were simply passing it along. Other translators keep to past tense. Now, if you wanted to show the warping of reality, mixing tenses would be one way to do it. But then you have to be VERY anal retentive about your use of tense in the rest of the story.

Of course back then the rules of Grammar and Spelling were not the rigid, "standardized" ones that we have now. English was growing at an astonishing rate back then based on the latest invasions.

So basically if it was art you'd be saying...its not a good place to use mixed media. Lyon! Thats great advice in there, I'll have to read it again.

Poetry is another style in which one can freely shift from one tense to another ... obviously trying to make sense and keep a job clean. This shifting in tenses does make the outcome more interesting ... it's similar to what you've said, UW, especially when writing a romantic or descriptive poem that has a hint of old times in it and that has to seem out of the reality or the ordinary!

that must be that new-fangled poetry y'all talking about.

Poetry conventions are less stringent than essay or fiction writing, but a knowledge of them is required. Simply put, you need to know the rules before you can break the rules.

I have a few friends who write poetry, and I find also they tend to get very descriptive and paint pictures with few words. I have noticed the mixed tenses at times but in their work it fits. I find in stories however its different when I mix tenses. Then it just stands out like dogs b@11s and read wrong.

An interesting exercise for playing with Tenses or PoV: Write a short story (500 to 2000 words) in narrative past tense, third person. Then write the story in present tense, and either first person or second person. Finally rewrite once more in a future tense and the PoV that you did not do in the second writing. If your not comfortable playing with both tense and PoV at the same time, pick one either tense or PoV to play with.

Thats a good way to learn Amethyst. I might try that soon with just something short. I've been doing realism art tutorials over the pssed two months so my time has been taken up with that of late over writing...so I think its time to get back to the pen and paper on the desk, jot things down as I'm shading. Just thought of that as I was writing, then I can do both, and not lose anything I've gained from writing.

Originally posted by amethyst An interesting exercise for playing with Tenses or PoV: Write a short story (500 to 2000 words) in narrative past tense, third person. Then write the story in present tense, and either first person or second person. Finally rewrite once more in a future tense and the PoV that you did not do in the second writing. If your not comfortable playing with both tense and PoV at the same time, pick one either tense or PoV to play with.

A Challenge perhaps, Amethyst?

It could be taken as such. Or someone could take something they've already written that fits the first part and then do the other two. It would definitely be interesting to see what people come up with.