Tense?

[geronimo_appleby]

Past tense is much easier than present. Sometimes I use both, with descriptions in the present tense and actions described in the past. "Susan is a beautiful blonde with big tits. Last night we fucked."

Except that if a character is not ongoing or the story is set long ago, everything is past tense.

mmmm, susan sounds perfect!

send pics.

 

[Serafina1210]

oh, btw, a snerk is nothing to do with snork, snark, or ... or ... anything else.

Shouldn't "snerk" be pronounced like "snark" in the U.K., as "clerk" is pronounced like "clark" (whereas in the U.S. "snerk" and "clerk" rhyme with the first syllable of "turkey" or "burka"--which is what Ted Cruz will make us all wear when he's elected president)?

As for the snark, it is well known to be a game animal hunted by Lewis Carroll in the forests around Oxford, and as such has no tense.

"Snork" is nothing more or less than the sound I make at night when I forget to use my CPAP machine.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Shouldn't "snerk" be pronounced like "snark" in the U.K., as "clerk" is pronounced like "clark" (whereas in the U.S. "snerk" and "clerk" rhyme with the first syllable of "turkey" or "burka"--which is what Ted Cruz will make us all wear when he's elected president)?

As for the snark, it is well known to be a game animal hunted by Lewis Carroll in the forests around Oxford, and as such has no tense.

"Snork" is nothing more or less than the sound I make at night when I forget to use my CPAP machine.

don't be a berk.

snork is one of the banana splits!

 

[Serafina1210]

don't be a berk.

snork is one of the banana splits!

Geronimo, you are so broadening my cultural horizons! I'd never heard of the Banana Splits until this very minute.

But the character's name is Snorky, and I have no doubt that he is so called because he suffers from sleep apnea and goes "snork" in the night. He suffers from narcolepsy because of his apnea, and that's why he falls down a lot.

 

[Hypoxia]

Past tense is much easier than present. Sometimes I use both, with descriptions in the present tense and actions described in the past. "Susan is a beautiful blonde with big tits. Last night we fucked."

Present tense covers what we do or witness right now, or stuff that is ongoing and and relational: "I am urinating." "You suck... nicely." "Lake Tahoe sits atop the California-Nevada state line." "Greed is good." "Sex sells." "I have no mouth and I must scream."

Past tense is for stuff the narrator has survived long enough to tell us about. "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." We may wish the narrator had died, but he didn't, alas.

Future tense is for songs, poems, and conversation. "I am SO gonna fuck your eyes out!" "Tiptoe through the garden; in the garden, that is where I'll be." "If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it all over you." Promises, promises...

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Geronimo, you are so broadening my cultural horizons! I'd never heard of the Banana Splits until this very minute.

But the character's name is Snorky, and I have no doubt that he is so called because he suffers from sleep apnea and goes "snork" in the night. He suffers from narcolepsy because of his apnea, and that's why he falls down a lot.

listen to the theme song. it's snork in the lyrics.

 

[barefootgirl69]

listen to the theme song. it's snork in the lyrics.

*sneaks in to leave the video*

*whispers* ...it's SNORK

 

[LIVINRFANTASIES]

Denny

We camped for many years and passed tents a lot. Sometimes we saw tents present but still passed them.
Now most campers have large RV's and motorhomes so we no longer pass tents but I get tense wondering how they can afford fuel for them.
I wrote this in past tense about passing tents although this present tent would make a nice present for a Boy Scout to help him pass his tests presently.

Threads like this always make me tense.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

We camped for many years and passed tents a lot. Sometimes we saw tents present but still passed them.
Now most campers have large RV's and motorhomes so we no longer pass tents but I get tense wondering how they can afford fuel for them.
I wrote this in past tense about passing tents although this present tent would make a nice present for a Boy Scout to help him pass his tests presently.

Threads like this always make me tense.

JBJ already did the tent joke.

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=76953780&postcount=5

 

[Hypoxia]

We camped for many years and passed tents a lot. Sometimes we saw tents present but still passed them.
Now most campers have large RV's and motorhomes so we no longer pass tents but I get tense wondering how they can afford fuel for them.

We tent-camped for decades till we got old and crinky and tired of sleeping on the ground and hauling ourselves up and out. So we acquired our first old small (24-foot) housecar a quarter-century ago. It and the next RV were gasoline-powered class-C's with lousy footroom and mileage. We fucking hate those engine doghouses.

We recently bought a slim 24-C on a 2016 Mercedes 3.0L turbodiesel Sprinter platform. (It's the 24ST with king mattress and YUGE bathroom.) Fucker has great legroom and gets around 18 mpg, twice that of the old gas guzzlers, about as economical as our 1996 Ford Exploder SUV and 2009 Nissan Murano crossover because diesel is cheap now -- it'll cost about eleven cents per mile. No hay pedo, no big fart, eh? Drive to L.A. for thirty bucks, to N.Y.C. for three hundred, hauling along the bedroom and kitchen. And wine cellar. And zithers. And more audio-video systems than we need.

We'll keep the tents. The grandkids can sleep-over in them in our mountain meadow. We'll see how tense it gets when the deer come grazing.

Oh yeah, tense. The startup bugs made us tense. But we'll relax soon.

 

[Serafina1210]

listen to the theme song. it's snork in the lyrics.

I'm going to concede the point rather than listen to the whole song.

 

[Ewobbit]

Gah! I'd forgotten all about the Banana Splits. All those years of therapy once the kids moved on from inflicting the show on me wasted.

Ah well. Beats that purple dinosaur the grandkids liked.

As far as the primary purpose of the thread before it detrained, I had to admit long ago that my meager talents were not enough to hold up to anything other than first person past tense for everything but dialogue.

 

[ForeverLaughing]

Anyway, past tense assumes the survival of the narrator.

You can actually use that assumption to screw with the reader. If the story is written as the narrator's journal, you can have it end in such a way that the narrator's death is inevitable and have an outside agent deliver it to the reader. The Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings are a good example of this. You could also write the story as the narrator's recollection of his life in his final moments before death. You could even ignore the problem of a dead man narrating his life altogether. Most readers aren't going to care that much.

This assumes, of course, first person or third person limited past tense. Third person omniscient past tense circumvents the issue entirely.

 

[sr71plt]

You can actually use that assumption to screw with the reader. If the story is written as the narrator's journal, you can have it end in such a way that the narrator's death is inevitable and have an outside agent deliver it to the reader. The Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings are a good example of this. You could also write the story as the narrator's recollection of his life in his final moments before death. You could even ignore the problem of a dead man narrating his life altogether. Most readers aren't going to care that much.

This assumes, of course, first person or third person limited past tense. Third person omniscient past tense circumvents the issue entirely.

If the death is inevitable you shouldn't really have to have anyone else come in to announce it. There will, of course, be a few readers who won't get it, but the others will be so much more connected with the story that they did. I've had stories stop in midsentence with the narrator's death.

 

[ForeverLaughing]

If the death is inevitable you shouldn't really have to have anyone else come in to announce it.

I don't mean that it be announced, but that the story be told as the publication of the narrator's journal. This is something that Lovecraft has done, and it works quite well.

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, I've used my narrator as someone writing a journal as an observer of the storyline and the journal just stopping (but with evidence given that it and the narrator were cut off abruptly at that point--by forces that would use his journal against other characters).

 

[lovecraft68]

I don't mean that it be announced, but that the story be told as the publication of the narrator's journal. This is something that Lovecraft has done, and it works quite well.

Why thank you!

Oh, wait you meant HP Lovecraft....always in the shadow, sigh.

I had an ending where it cut off, but you knew the MC was going to die and had a bunch of people say it ended too abruptly.

Some readers, like fans of gore fest movies, need to see every little thing and detail and want nothing left to imagination, others do get it.

 

[lovecraft68]

JBJ already did the tent joke.

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=76953780&postcount=5

But have you heard this one?

Went to the shrink and after talking to him, I asked if he knew what was wrong with me.

He said yes, you're a teepee, you're wigwam.

I said what the hell does that mean?

he said, you're too tense.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

But have you heard this one?

Went to the shrink and after talking to him, I asked if he knew what was wrong with me.

He said yes, you're a teepee, you're wigwam.

I said what the hell does that mean?

he said, you're too tense.

i'm going to hunt you down and shoot you like a daaawg.

 

[lovecraft68]

i'm going to hunt you down and shoot you like a daaawg.

"snerk"

 

[geronimo_appleby]

"snerk"

okay, i snorted at that.

 

[LIVINRFANTASIES]

Denny

I'm sure a few of us have made the OP a little tense even though he never camps in tents, past or present.

I was gonna write about going to the war reinactment and passing many new old looking tents presently placed for the actors to sleep in while they go back to an earlier time in tents, still tense from the action of the simulated war.
It reminded me of during WWII when I was but a lad, sleeping in smelly wet canvas Army tents, making all of us young Privates tense, as we went back in time to those dreadful places.
Whether past or present, it can be tense sleeping in tents at our age.

Yes this tents analogy has been over used but there is little else to be tense about when talking past, present, or future tense.

 

[Serafina1210]

Stop!

I can't take any more tent jokes. Can't you do something with presents or pasta instead?

 

[Ewobbit]

Stop!

I can't take any more tent jokes. Can't you do something with presents or pasta instead?

Oooh. A hottie bringing me a present of pasta would make me tent my pants.

Say... I've been toying for a while with a story written from the first person perspective of a dog that turned human. Sort of the reverse of a werewolf, I suppose. I've put in a lot of stuff gleaned from Stanley Coren to show how differently this person looks at the world. What I'm wondering now... am I writing in pup tense?

 

[Hypoxia]

Maybe we should be working on our tans instead.