Writing Tips and Clichés to Avoid

Tenses

When writing you are always using tenses whether you notice them or not and when you begin your story with a certain tense you should always keep it in the same verb tense as what you started with. You may be asking me, 'Why?' Well, this is because by switching verb tenses away from the one you originally started with is grammatically incorrect and it is also very unprofessional looking and can be an automatic red flag for your readers who are there to enjoy a piece of literature with amazing grammar. Don't worry if you've made the mistake of switching verb tenses because I do it all the time whether it be in school essays (my teachers have a field day with my verb tenses) or even with works I post to this app or even on Archive of Our Own.

Now that I have gotten the introduction over with you're probably dying to know what type of tenses there are in the English language and how each one works. Well, there are six verb tenses in total that I will be covering and giving examples of right and wrong paragraphs; present, past, future, past perfect, future perfect, and present perfect.

Present: when writing with the present verb tense you are writing about something that is happening now right before your eyes.

example: Matt throws the ball to score the winning goal.

Matt is throwing the ball in the present so therefore the verb is in present form.

Past: when writing with past verb tenses the most common ones you may see in literature are 'jumped', 'loved', 'hated', 'passed', etc. This tense describes an action that took place in the past.

example: Matt threw the ball to score the winning goal.

Matt had thrown the ball in the past so therefore instead of it being 'throws', it became 'threw' because it was something that occurred before the present time.

Future: when writing in the future verb tense, you are writing about events that will take place in the future.

example: Matt will throw the ball to score the winning goal.

Matt has yet to throw the ball just yet, however, we know he will so, therefore, we write this sentence in the future tense using 'will' to emphasize the fact that it has yet to happen just yet.

Present perfect: it has happened before now but the exact time was not exactly important and/or essential information that the audience needed to know. This tense will always have the words 'has' or 'have' with a past participle tagging along behind it.

example: Matt has thrown the ball to score the winning goal.

Me explaining the perfect tenses will be a bit trickier but here we go; as stated before, the information of Matt throwing the ball was no longer relevant to the audience because he had already done this to get to the winning goal which is the present time you are at (when he scored)

Past perfect: one act was completely finished before another thing in the past. This will always have 'had' followed by a past participle.

example: Matt had thrown the ball to score the winning goal.

Matt had already thrown the ball before he scored the winning goal for his team in the past.

Future perfect: one act will be completely finished before another time in the future. This will always have 'will have' accompanied by a past participle.

example: By this time tomorrow, Matt will have thrown the ball to score the winning goal.

when using future perfect, you should always think of it like this, 'what will happen the next day around this time or even in a few hours?'

Your tenses should always be consistent based on the previous clause and/or sentence. This next sentence will establish that it happened in the past; the second sentence must maintain the same exact tense as well or it will be grammatically incorrect.

Matt threw the ball to score the winning goal. He knew his receiver would catch ut the second he spotted the receiver open in the end zone.

Now that I have shown you all six examples I am going to show two separate paragraphs where one is incorrect and the other is correct. These are the paragraphs we used in my sophomore year to learn about tenses and I am a senior now so let us pray the ole noggin can remember this without looking it up (I looked it up)

INCORRECT:

An election is a decision-making process in which a population chooses an individual to hold formal office. This was the usual mechanism by which modern democracy filled offices in the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, and for the regional and local government. This process had been also used in many other private and business organizations. In most democracies, all adult citizens vote.

WHY IS THIS INCORRECT?

This is incorrect because in this first sentence 'is' is being used as present tense, however, the rest of the paragraph jumps between different tenses only going back to present in the final sentence.

CORRECT:

An election is a decision-making process in which a population chooses an individual to hold formal office. This was the usual mechanism by which modern democracy fills offices in the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, and for the regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organizations. In most democracies, all adult citizens vote.

WHY IS THIS CORRECT?

This is correct because throughout the entire paragraph the verb tenses remain in the same tense all the way through like it should always be like. 

If you have any more requests/concerns/questions, please leave them in the comments as always and also tell me how this book is so far. Is it helping you in any way or not? I'd like feedback since this is a tip giving book so I don' want it to completely suck y'know.

Have a great night,

-Anri