This series of articles discusses hurdles that cause reader confusion.
Confusion = gripes = lost readers.
Here’s article #5. Do you see the problem? How would you fix it?
Introduction to Excerpt
These paragraphs were taken from the middle of a story where the protagonists have already been introduced to readers.
Excerpt
The two women pass an old homeless man slumped against the wall of Benny’s Bar & Grill. They kept their heads averted and bustled by.
Gerri gestures toward the traffic lights. “Isn’t that your ex?”
Trudy frowned. “No, my ex is taller. Even though he’s weird, he would never wear a white T-shirt with tie-dyed cargo pants.”
“Well, he sure looks like your —” Her face twisted into a lopsided moue. “You’re right. The closer he gets, the more he looks like a fashion faux-pas.”
The man in question plodded by, poking Trudy with a bony elbow as he mumbles into his phone — something about card cheats and stacked decks.
She whips around and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, jerk. Where are your manners?”
Here’s the Problem
The narrative switches between present and past tense multiple times.
Read the paragraphs below, where present tense is indicated by strikeout and past tense is underlined.
The Writer’s Lexicon series
and additional resources on my Facebook page.
Edited Excerpt
The two women pass an old homeless man slumped against the wall of Benny’s Bar & Grill. They kept their heads averted and bustled by.
Gerri gestures toward the traffic lights. “Isn’t that your ex?”
Trudy frowned. “No, my ex is taller. Even though he’s weird, he would never wear a white T-shirt with tie-dyed cargo pants.”
“Well, he sure looks like your —” Her face twisted into a lopsided moue. “You’re right. The closer he gets, the more he looks like a fashion faux-pas.”
The man in question plodded by, poking Trudy with a bony elbow as he mumbles into his phone — something about card cheats and stacked decks.
She whips around and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, jerk. Where are your manners?”
Solution #1 (past tense)
The two women passed an old homeless man slumped against the wall of Benny’s Bar & Grill. They kept their heads averted and bustled by.
Gerri gestured toward the traffic lights. “Isn’t that your ex?”
Trudy frowned. “No, my ex is taller. Even though he’s weird, he would never wear a white T-shirt with tie-dyed cargo pants.”
“Well, he sure looks like your —” Her face twisted into a lopsided moue. “You’re right. The closer he gets, the more he looks like a fashion faux-pas.”
The man in question plodded by, poking Trudy with a bony elbow as he mumbled into his phone — something about card cheats and stacked decks.
She whipped around and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, jerk. Where are your manners?”
Solution #2 (present tense)
The two women pass an old homeless man slumped against the wall of Benny’s Bar & Grill. They keep their heads averted and bustle by.
Gerri gestures toward the traffic lights. “Isn’t that your ex?”
Trudy frowns. “No, my ex is taller. Even though he’s weird, he would never wear a white T-shirt with tie-dyed cargo pants.”
“Well, he sure looks like your —” Her face twists into a lopsided moue. “You’re right. The closer he gets, the more he looks like a fashion faux-pas.”
The man in question plods by, poking Trudy with a bony elbow as he mumbles into his phone — something about card cheats and stacked decks.
She whips around and grabs his shoulder. “Hey, jerk. Where are your manners?”
Takeaway
Before you begin your story, pick a tense and stick with it. If you change your mind partway through, you might miss some tense shifts during the editing process.
Although present tense works for some writers, past is more widely accepted.
People sometimes mix present and past tense when talking or texting. Be careful if you introduce characters who communicate this way, though. Imperfect grammar won’t suit someone like a college professor or a newspaper editor.
Food for Thought
What tense do you prefer to read? Is that the tense you write in?
The Writer’s Lexicon series
and additional resources on my Facebook page.
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I know tense changes can be used well but mostly they’re mistakes–which is the point you’re making. Excellent post.
Thanks, Jackqui.
Agreed. It’s the tense changes within a sentence or paragraph that aggravate readers. So easy to miss, though, if a piece is written in one tense and then changed afterward.
What bothered me more was use of phrases like bustled by, lopsided moue, and fashion faux-pas.
Thanks for stopping by, Dena.
The phrases you mentioned are part of the writer’s voice, but they don’t hinder understanding the way the tense shifts do.
Very good points. I’ve come across this problem a number of times.
Annoying, right? Too often, a rush to publish is the culprit.
One of our writing group tried writing in present tense but had real problems sticking to it. Last month, we each penned a short story and then went away to change it into present tense. Results were mixed. (To be fair, we hadn’t warned anyone beforehand they would be changing tense and many stories had substantial backstory which complicated matters).
My blog post about the sudden death of one of our dogs was written (more for my own comfort than for others) originally in past tense. After it had gone out, I realised it would be more… immediate in present tense and rewrote it. Sometimes prose becomes more powerful in present tense.
I still prefer narrative tense for stories, but now I consider other options.
It does require focus when editing though.
Yes, changing tense after something has already been written requires extra focus. The longer the piece, the more likely errors will slip through. It sounds like you’ve found a good writing group, Cathy.