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Verb Tenses and You

In reading a lot of amateur writing, I somewhat frequently see stories slipping tenses. Part of this, I imagine, is sheer forgetfulness or editing incongruities that, but some of it I think probably stems from a bit of confusion about how tenses work.

Allow me to illustrate with an example that I just made up:

Lizzy was a beautiful maiden with long blonde hair and a wonderful sense of irony about her role in this fairytale example. She knows that “Lizzy” is an anachronistic name, but she wouldn’t care about things like that. On the day of her birthday, she’s sitting in her similarly ironic ivory tower, imagining what might happen later today, when a giant bird swooped through the open window quite unexpectedly.

Do you see the problem?

The verb tense changes from one sentence to the next -- sometimes even within the same sentence -- making it unclear what’s actually happening and when. It’s quite jarring.

Fortunately, it can be easily fixed. And by the end of this post, not only will you know how to fix it, you’ll also know why this happens and how to choose the right verb tense for your story.

What is a Verb?

A verb is an action word. It designates that something is happening, that someone is doing something, even if the “something” is simply existing (”to be”).

This is important because in English at least, verbs don’t just tell you what happened -- they also tell you when something happened. They’re the only words that do this. Nouns, adjectives, articles, adverbs -- none of those words change when talking about something that happens last week vs something that’s happening right now vs something that will happen in the future.

But verbs do.

And when a verb changes to designate when an activity happened, that’s called a verb tense.

How Many Tenses Are There?

As it turns out, there are a whole lot of tenses in the English language - about 19 of them. And to make matters worse, the rules for how to conjugate verbs (that is, how to change verbs depending on their tense) aren’t consistent. There are a lot of irregular verbs in English for a variety of reasons. Consider:

I blamed him. I blame him. I am blaming him. I will blame him. (regular verb)

She blamed him. She blames him. She is blaming him. She will blame him.

I ran. I run. I am running. I will run. (irregular verb)

I brought. I bring. I am bringing. I will bring. (irregular verb)

I know. I’m sorry. English is a ridiculous language.

The good news is, if you already speak English, you probably already know most of these words and how to conjugate them, even if you don’t realize that you know them. (Although even native speakers sometimes struggle with the irregular verbs -- I had a friend who would say “brang” instead of “brought,” which you’d think would be right since the past tense of “ring” is “rang,” but sadly no.)

Also, even though there are a bunch of different tenses, most of them are really just sub-types of the three major tenses: past, present, and future (which, unsurprisingly, describe when something is happening).

Referencing a handy verb conjugation list can help: https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/verbs/

So What Tense Should I Write My Story In?

The vast, overwhelming majority of literature written in English is written in past tense. It is the default for storytelling. Why? Probably because literature’s roots are in historical tradition, mythology, journalism, etc. - in other words, chronicling events that have already happened. Even if your story is fictional, ie, talking about things that did not actually happen, telling it in past tense lends an air of authenticity.

Stories written in past tense:

Feel more traditional

Create narrative distance between the narrator and the events of the story

Invite editorializing (the narrator may feel differently now than he did at the time of the events, and be able to explain that)

Lend an air of authenticity or historic-ness to a narrative

Present tense feels much more modern. It predates the internet -- Bleak House by Charles Dickens is written in present tense! -- but I feel like it’s become more prevalent in a post-internet, post-cellphone world where we are accustomed to communicating with people while they are doing other things rather than waiting for them to tell us about what they’ve been up to the next time we see them. The fact that a lot of the books written in present tense are YA novels I think speaks to this as well.

Tend to feel more fast-paced and immediate

Feel more modern

Have less narrative distance - the narrator hasn’t had time to process the emotions of the story before telling it to you

You can tell a story in past or present tense from any POV, but the majority of present-tense narratives are told in first person as opposed to third, probably to bank on the immediacy.

Because present-tense narratives leave very little room for introspection or editorializing, they’re best for stories that are more action-oriented and “raw,” where experiencing the story as it unfolds is a primary goal for your reader experience.

I personally have found that every story just works better in one tense or another, and I might experiment with both before I settle into one.

But whatever tense you’re writing in, the most important thing is to stick with it.

If you start off writing in the present tense, and then write in the past tense, it had better be because you’re talking about something that happened before the current events of the story:

Lizzy sits in her ivory tower, brushing her long hair. It wasn’t always this long. She’d kept a very fashionable fauxhawk for many years, carefully shaving the underside, until growing bored with it. She longed to find new ways to style it. Her hair became a distraction from the long hours of solitude. Now, she can barely remember ever having the free time to tend to anything else.

This slips tenses from present, to past, then back to present, but it’s not confusing because there’s some indications that the past-tense stuff is like a miniature flashback. There are transitions on either side of it that orient the reader in time and space.

Similarly, if you’re writing in past tense but suddenly start writing in present tense, it had better be because your narrator is breaking the fourth wall and providing commentary:

Visitors often assumed that Lizzy was a princess. After all, it’s not common to find just any young woman locked up in an ivory tower. But the truth was less romantic than that: She simply lived in a tower because it was where she was born, like her mother and her mother’s mother. She came from a long lineage of tower-dwelling women, and if they had ever been royal in the past, they certainly weren’t anymore.

That second sentence is in present tense (”it’s” is a contraction of “it is,” and “is” is a present tense of “to be”). But it’s editorializing on behalf of the narrator, who’s popping in to provide a bit of commentary rather than just reporting on what’s happening.

Make sense?

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