Most Common Writing Errors (ONGOING)

The Curious Case of Tense Issues

Read the disclaimer before you comment; any comments being argumentative or referring to things I already covered in the disclaimer will be deleted.

Tense Issues

While hosting the Eclipse Awards, I noticed almost every single story I read had tense issues. The tenses would flip flop between past and present incorrectly, sometimes in the same sentence.

Most notably, an author would write in one tense, then the dialogue tags would be in another tense. It was super strange.

For example, the author would write in present tense, then they would do this:

"Hey," he said.

Said is not a present tense word. Said is past tense.

Other notable past tense words:

- asked

- was

- were

- went

- ran

Notable present tense words:

- says

- asks

- is

- are

- am

- run

- go

Of course there are cases you can use past tense in present tense and present tense in past tense. The easiest example is using past tense in present tense, like when the description is describing a past event, or there's a flashback.

You can also use present tense in past tense, like to describe a fact that is outside the story's timeline.

And there are times stories can be written in the two tenses.

However, not many do this because it's extremely difficult to pull off.

As stated in the disclaimer, there are hundreds of exceptions, hundreds of cases where authors have pulled off present and past tense in the same novel.

I'm giving a general guide: don't switch tenses unless you have an actual reason for it.

If you're just switching tenses for aesthetics, trust me, it's not going to work. It's going to be hard to read and it'll be confusing to the audience.

An example of tense flip flopping is as follows:

"Are you okay?" Raven asked. She picks up her glasses as she stares at her friend.

Asked is past tense while the second sentence is present tense.

I'll often see sentences formatted like this:

Raven doesn't know what to think; she was frozen.

See why it's a bit distracting? The "doesn't" is present tense while "was" is past tense. It's a bit confusing to do in the same sentence.

This sentence on its own is weird. Maybe with context, the tense switch is good and interesting, but without context, it comes off as confusing.

Most of the works I read for the Eclipse Awards had tense issues where the tenses were switching incorrectly, sometimes in the same sentence.

And again, there are cases where switching tenses "incorrectly" can work, but you have to have a good reason to do it. Just like with POV. You have to have a good reason to switch between first and third. Otherwise, it comes off as confusing and jarring.

Tense issues are pretty self-explanatory, so I don't have too much to say. I hope this short chapter was helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions.

~End~

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