How hard is it... no, really?

[elsol]

To maintain fucking tense!

Past or present... NOT FUCKING BOTH!!!!!

*sigh*

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[arienette]

To maintain fucking tense!

Past or present... NOT FUCKING BOTH!!!!!

*sigh*

Sincerely,
ElSol

Hmm...why don't you ask them?

 

[English Lady]

Bloody difficult when I'm writing. Ask poor old rumply, who reads it when I'm finished *L*

I don't know why I do it, switch and changeall the time, but it does my head in when i have to edit it all in the end!

 

[gauchecritic]

Must be an English disease. I do it too and can never tell where until some kind soul points it out.

 

[3113]

Depends on what you're doing. If it all takes place in the present, then it shouldn't be hard. But if you start flashing back, it can get sticky. Especially with a long flashback.

And then there are the folk who want to use present tense for the present (which, by the way, I hate about as much as most folk hate the use of 2nd person). I mean, look at how tricky things can get:

Weird Present tense story telling: I go to the store. I get milk and bread.
Past tense story telling: I went to the store. I got milk and bread.
Recent Flashback: I recall going to the store and getting milk and bread.
Not so recent Flashback: Years ago, I'd gone to the store. I had gotten milk and bread.

Mix them up and you can start to sink:

I go (present) to the party. I look (present) around. There she is. I remember kissing (past) her, loving (past) her. Years ago she'd been a red head (past-past). At one point I....

Okay. Is it "At one point I HAD taken a pair of scissors to her hair while she slept" OR is it "At one point I took a pair of scissors to her hair while she was slept."?

And if it's "Had"--how long do you go on with "Had"? Should several pages use "Had" or should you eventually switch back to just past tense?

 

[oggbashan]

I sometimes switch on purpose from past to present to speed up the action at a critical point.

But I know that I am doing it and why.

Og

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Weird Present tense story telling: I go to the store. I get milk and bread.
Past tense story telling: I went to the store. I got milk and bread.
Recent Flashback: I recall going to the store and getting milk and bread.
Not so recent Flashback: Years ago, I'd gone to the store. I had gotten milk and bread.

Mix them up and you can start to sink:

I go (present) to the party. I look (present) around. There she is. I remember kissing (past) her, loving (past) her. Years ago she'd been a red head (past-past). At one point I....

Okay. Is it "At one point I HAD taken a pair of scissors to her hair while she slept" OR is it "At one point I took a pair of scissors to her hair while she was slept."?

And if it's "Had"--how long do you go on with "Had"? Should several pages use "Had" or should you eventually switch back to just past tense?

Gets a lot more confusing. With the present and the past, English has a 'continuous' tense that few other languages have. ' I am (was) going to the party. I am (was) looking around'. What about, 'I remember being in love with her.'? That's just a state.

The 'past-past' cannot be used for pages. It works on a timeline. When writing in the past you want to refer to an event that happened earlier, 'He had dabbed on cologne before he/then spoke to the girl'.

In your example you take two separate cases;
'Had taken scissors while she slept' is Past-past with Past' (Before she stopped sleeping)
'Took scissors while she was sleeping' is Past DURING continuous Past

You can have a few 'hads' together but they need an explicit or implicit 'before'. 'Before posting my story, I had slaved for weeks, I had researched diligently and I had edited carefully. Still it got bombed.'

Straight sequential past; 'I slaved for weeks, I researched diligently and edited carefully. Then I posted my story'.

I've probably confused things more now. Try this.

'I went to a bar, I drank beer, I fell down, I was sick, I went home, I was drunk.'

The first 5 are simple sequential events in the past. The last 'being drunk' is a state without start or end. Perhaps I was drunk before I went to the bar!

So, to end, 'I knew I had behaved badly'.

Any help?

 

[fifty5]

Okay. Is it "At one point I HAD taken a pair of scissors to her hair while she slept" OR is it "At one point I took a pair of scissors to her hair while she was slept."?

And if it's "Had"--how long do you go on with "Had"? Should several pages use "Had" or should you eventually switch back to just past tense?

I find it helps to refer to them by name: imperfect, perfect and pluperfect.

Imperfect was continuing: I was walking down the road...
(a sort of present-in-the-past - leads into "when I saw her..." or whatever)

Perfect is closed: I walked down the road
(can continue closed: "and my thoughts were about the sex we'd just had", or lead into a continuing past: "thinking about the sex we'd just had"

NB "the sex we'd just had" is a case of...

Pluperfect: past when looked at from the past
(walking in the past, with thoughts of something (the sex) that was even further in the past.)

Actually, I think that the present is the difficult one: if it happens (or is still happenning) when did you get the opportunity to write this down, or is the reader supposed to be there right now, listening to you speak? Like Og said (and has written elsewhere), unless you're clever enough to make your own rules, the present is most useful purely as a change of emphasis and immediacy: "We ate, then went back to hers. She danced before me, shedding her clothes then leading me into her bedroom. Then she stripped me and pulled me onto the bed. So I'm lying there with a naked 19-year old, stroking her breasts, then her thighs. I'm moving up to her cunt. I bend down and kiss her nether lips," or whatever.

Aside from that writing technique, most stories feel more natural in the past, which leads me to the fourth past tense: the future perfect. That's when you talk about the past, but mention something that then hadn't yet happened. "I left, looking forward to when we would meet again, an experience I never want to forget."

The length of the passage isn't (I think) important. The comfort zone seems to me to be talking about a particular time (sequence of times) in the past. Looked at from there, other events were either still further back (pluperfect: "we had often fucked before"), continuing at that moment (imperfect: "We were fucking, and fucking, and fucking"), or yet to come (so to speak - as in the future perfect: "We'd fuck again later, and come harder, but...").

Look on this as a tool-box with the tools you need for the story: recounting a previous event which can have things that happened before, at that time, or, though now in the past, then still to come.

Whenever you want the event to happen, there's a tense available to express it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I can stay in past when I write with no trouble. The trouble comes when I write in present and have to slip into past or past perfect for a moment and then go get some coffee or something.

I'll do stuff like:

"I love you," I say to her.

I think back to how I'd just told her the same thing the other night, how happy she'd been and how she'd said she'd always felt the same.

"I mean it," I said...

And then I'm lost, continuing on in past tense, not realizing the slip. Then I discover it on proofing and have to go can and change all the damned verbs. Word should have an automatic verb-tense shifting button

Funny, but one of the few stories I've ever recieved a W on has a blatant shift of tense from past to present right in the middle that I never even caught. I guess some people don't mind.

I did the same thing in a novel too, but intentionally. The story took place in past tense, then the last chapter was written in present tense to show how things are now, a kind of day-in-the-life thing. It can be an effective device. One reviewer complained.

 

[SeaCat]

I have fun with tenses. Sometimes I'll start a story in the present tense and shift back to past tense.

Sometimes I'll flip all over the place and drive my readers nuts. If I do so I do it on purpose.

Now if you really want to have fun bounce between tenses while bouncing between characters.

Cat

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I have fun with tenses. Sometimes I'll start a story in the present tense and shift back to past tense.

Sometimes I'll flip all over the place and drive my readers nuts. If I do so I do it on purpose.

Now if you really want to have fun bounce between tenses while bouncing between characters.

Cat

Cat, you are evil, evil, evil.

It's been my experience that most tense slips are due to a break in the writing process such as Zoot mentioned or while entering/leaving flashbacks as 3113 pointed out. It seems to catch many writers during internal dialogue where the narrator stays in the present while thinking about the past. Folks who don't have a quiet writing spot seem particularly vulnerable.

As for English Lady, she gets better with each story.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[SeaCat]

Cat, you are evil, evil, evil.

It's been my experience that most tense slips are due to a break in the writing process such as Zoot mentioned or while entering/leaving flashbacks as 3113 pointed out. It seems to catch many writers during internal dialogue where the narrator stays in the present while thinking about the past. Folks who don't have a quiet writing spot seem particularly vulnerable.

As for English Lady, she gets better with each story.

Rumple Foreskin

Rumple,

If I ever get to the point where EL or the others are then I'll worry about it.

I just have fun with my writing and try to keep it consistant.

Now if I ever get compared to those like you, Cloudy, or some of the others here, that will truly make me happy.

Cat

 

[English Lady]

Seacat and Rumply -you've made me blush and smile big -thank you