It might seem like a bread and butter question to most, but it's giving me a bit of trouble. My short story is written in the present tense, but I included the line: "Somehow reason had died, and I had lived" Then, I changed it to: "Somehow reason was dead, and I alive." I originally started this topic because I didn't think the second version sounded as good as the first...but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, I hope this is just a 2:00am confusion, but would I just be able to get confirmation on if I was right to change it, or can I keep the first version? Thanks.
There is nothing wrong with the first version. Even if you are using present tense narration, you can have sentences in past perfect. Don't confuse narrative tense with grammatical tense. Grammatical tense applies to each verb in each sentence, which only needs to match the narrative tense if the verb describes an action in "story now." The second version probabhly feels weaker because you have deviated from parallel structure. If you had said: you again have parallel structure in the two clauses.
