Hi all, I am unsure of how to use ‘today’ when writing in past tense. I have seen it used before, but it always confuses me, given that ‘today’ is referring to the present day. Does that make any sense? Similar to this morning or this afternoon. If I could just share my example: I have included the entire paragraph so you can get the context. Am I using this correctly or is it a violation of tense? I am confused. Many thanks.
I think it sounds weird in your example because it's in a kind of double past tense, where the narrator, already speaking in past tense, is also talking about something he establishes as being in the past. I think there's cases where it's appropriate, e.g "As the sun began to rise, he knew today was going to be a busy day." But I could be wrong I guess.
Why not just say: "...thinking over things that won’t live past that day." Or something along those lines.
needs to be 'wouldn't live past the day' or something similarly past tense-compliant, to make sense...
I think you're actually using it incorrectly. Think of it as "earlier today", just without the "earlier". Earlier today is a time period that has already passed, and when you remove the "earlier", it's just sort of implied that the event was still earlier: What did you do today? Today I went to the store.
But "now" is often used by the best writers when they write in past tense. As far as the use of "today" when writing in the past tense, I think it depends on the author. In Bujold's The Curse of Challion, she uses "today," but I think it is because she is writing as if everything is happening right now. Those are just a few examples from that novel. However, I had a hard time finding many authors that used "today" like this, and the ones that did, did so rarely.
it's hard to do successfully, which is why it should be avoided by all but the most skilled of writers...
