Hey guys! I'm new, my name is Taylor and I am attempting to write my first novel. So I'm writing in 3rd person and I'm realizing that I am having trouble with staying in past tense. Here is my opening paragraph: Jens Bentley stared into his reflection. His pale blue eyes seeing double. Not looking at himself, but into himself. It was something he found himself doing a lot more frequently these days. He believed this was the best way to stay truthful with yourself when contemplating serious questions. "If you can look yourself in the mirror, and still tell a lie, you are no more a man, than an apple is an orange", he always says. Is the fact that I have "not looking at himself, but into himself" make it present tense, and conflicting with rest? Should there be no -ing on anything? I'm so confused. Thanks
You need to understand the difference between narrative tense and grammatical tense. There is some discussion of it in What's Your Point (of View)?. The sentences you are concerned about (actually sentence fragments), can work in a past tense narrative. You can have a mix of verb tenses in your narrative, as long as your principle action verbs are in the tense category of the narrative (past or present tense). By the way, the comma at the end of a dialogue fragment belongs inside the quotes.
"His pale blue eyes seeing double. Not looking at himself, but into himself." What you're dealing with here is called verb elision. Well, at least partial elision. You maintain the the present/continuous participle whilst omitting the main verb, which is self-evident.
For additional help: This is a list of how both grammatical tense and aspect work. The aspect is in italics, and the defining properties are underlined in each phrase. If you need help understanding this, just reply to this comment. Past tense - He walked Present tense - he walks Past progressive - He was walking Past perfective - He had walked Present progressive - He is walking Present perfective - I have walked
This all helps so much...I now understand it, and feel 100x better about the progress of my novel. I thought I was going to have to start over. Thank you so much everyone! P.s. Declan, Fight Club is my 2nd favorite movie all time next to Into the Wild. Love the avatar! "We've all been raised on television to believe one day we'd be millionares and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." Tyler Durden forever!
Hey Taylor, I'm new in writing too and past and present tense is my struggle too . My first beta reader had not explained to me properly and was yelled at for not getting it. I think I'm slowly understanding it. Good luck with your story.
I think the fact that you are writing in fragments makes it harder for you to work out what is happening with the tense, because the words that indicate tense are missing. Putting them back in we get: Jens Bentley stared into his reflection. His pale blue eyes were seeing double. He was New Member Quick StartNew Member Quick StartNew Member Quick Start
I think if you just change "seeing" to "saw" and "says" to "said", then it is fixed. ^ P.S. and the "He was". |
I agree about the "says" to "said," but does he really need to change "seeing" to saw? I don't know the proper term for it, but I thought that sentence conveyed a present view of a past action, thereby justifying "seeing."
You forgot past perfect continuous (or past perfective progressive as I suppose you'd call it?) "He had been walking."
Care to give a few examples? I think I might be too harsh on myself concerning tense, sometimes bending myself over backwards in order to maintain them, while keeping the sentence from turning into a tongue-twister.
Tense is a problem for me too. Apparently I switch from non-narrative to narrative in my third person work, but I have no idea what denotes narrative/ non-narrative tense and so can't fix my problem. Can someone please help me? I see Cogito that you cover it in your blog and will read it when I get time, hopefully it will help.
"Narrative" and "non-narrative" are not tenses. I'd guess that what is happening is that you are switching POV between the narrator and a character, and their different time frames are reflected in a change of tense. Could you give a short example? Probably worth making it a new thread.
