Emma - speaking of grammar - Toad also said: 'We don't want to teach 'em. We want to learn 'em!'

Azel - remember this is YOUR novel. If you're going to ask an English teacher to look over it you must make very certain s/he understands what you expect from them and don't just give them carte blanche to walk all over your prose with their sixe ten feet. Might be a better idea - given your bad experience with English teachers - that you stay away from them altogether and ask someone else to have a look at the aspects you're concerned about - an intelligent person with good grammar, for instance, who reads a lot of modern novels.
Love, Jem - (ex-English teacher!)

I'd agree with that. How many english teachers read contemporary children's novels? How many stick to old-school rules. Saying that, the teacher I work alongside is excellent. I was amazed to see year 6 pupils using colons and semi-colons in their work and openly discussing the use of parenthetical commas. No shit! I was convinced that they put together a class full of super-students, just to see if I'd panic and run.

I think it's very true: English teachers know a lot, but it may not be the kind of knowledge you want. Whereas a copy-editor knows 'correct' grammar and punctuation, but also knows that what you actually want to use depends on voice and language. They'll simply query anything that's not correct but possibly right for the character, and you can then accept or reject as you like. Copyeditors always work in pencil.

Emma

I’m still pecking away at my first drift. My POV is first person and I am writing in the past tense as suggested by some of you, but. . . I keep slipping into the present tense when there is action (fighting and such). An action scene reads (seems) so much better in present tense. I sometimes wonder if it would bother the reader if I slipped into present tense for action scene paragraph and then slipped back into past tense with the next paragraph.

Is that done by any writers, or is this something that will stick out like a sore thumb to the reader (copy editor; publisher)?

Thanks
Azel

It sounds muddled, but it might be quite cool. Who knows, you could be trailblazing a whole new style.

I would say continue as you are until the first draft is finished, when you start editing and rewriting then you'll know if it feels wrong or right. If it works, great. If not then that's the time to fix it. You can't leave it up to a copy editor - to expect them to repair such a huge amount of work would probably result in a knock back. So, depending on which is more important, you'll either have to change the action to past tense or everything else to present.

I'd agree with Colin that if that's what seems to be happening, you should go with it for the first draft, and see if it works.

Long-term, though I have to say that it's a very unconventional approach, so you'll have to be very, very sure it works and doesn't confuse the reader, who may well read it as being two different times. And when you eventually get to the stage of professionals reading it, It'll have to work really well, or it will just read as if you don't know the basic rules.

But you may well find in revising that there are other, more conventional, ways of getting the same effect which work just as well.

Emma

Others have answered this question far better than I could, Azel, but just to chip in a thought. My first novel is entirely in letters and (especially) e-mails, so nearly all in the first person first person and nearly all informal (apart from a few pages of Hansard!). I began by making the characters write far more formally than was realistic, but in the end threw out quite a lot of grammar, along the lines of 'me and Fred' and not using the subjunctive, and not fussily unsplitting my infinitives. And, most especially, writing partial sentences - beginning sentences with 'and' and 'but' and 'well'. Yeah right. You see. That sort of thing. (It was a struggle for me, I can tell you, as all I had written before were very formal academic articles.) My guideline in my head was that it should be more or less the same as when you are writing dialogue.

Don't know if this is at all relevant to what you are trying to do...?

Rosy.

Thank you for your response. It’s probably safer to stay in one tense for my first go-around. I don’t want to experiment with my first book while I am still learning the basics. I’ll save mixing tenses for another book.

Thanks
Azel

I have not been posting many questions in this “Technique” forum, but sometimes I wonder if I should be posting my questions in one of the “Group Forums”. (or some other forum)

WriteWords has so many forums, I am not sure which one I should be posting in. Should I keep posting my questions here, or do I need to join one of the other forums?

Thanks
Azel

I am currently writing a novel which features 2 main characters, one of which is in first person past tense, the other is in third person present tense. It gives them a very different 'feel' to one another (apart from differences of character and narrative voice) but the 1st person past tense seems to engage readers more. I differentiated the sections by using different type styles - italics vs. non-italics - so, as you can see, there are options.