I’ve been revising my first draft for several months, and things are moving at a snails pace. My biggest problem is verb tense. I know the grammar rules concerning verb tense, but sometimes this does not help.

I wrote the first draft in first-person past-tense. During my revision I found that I had slipped into present tense often while writing my first draft. Sometimes when I change these present tense sentences into past tense they sound right, and sometimes they sound wrong. (to my ear)

I am beginning to believe I have a deaf spot when it comes to hearing the difference between present tense and past tense. (I do understand the difference between Simple tense, Perfect tense, Progressive tense and Perfect Progressive.) All too often a sentence sounds better to my ear in present tense, when consistency of verb tense demands past tense.

I have heard some of you suggest that a writer read aloud as if he/she were telling the story to another person, but this does not always work for me. A written sentence is not always the way one would tell a story aloud.

Does anyone else have this problem? Are there any circumstances where a story written in past tense would use present tense? For example, what if the character stops telling the past tense story and addresses the reader directly?

I can not understand why I am having so much trouble with verb tense.

Thanks
Azel

Are there any circumstances where a story written in past tense would use present tense? For example, what if the character stops telling the past tense story and addresses the reader directly?

Yes, I believe this is one instance where tense can switch.

- NaomiM

Yes, I think you can certainly have a narrator implicitly addressing the reader using present tense, but telling the story in the past tense. But as the writer, I think you need to be very clear about which is going on at anyone time, if the reader isn't going to get confused.

Emma

The time when I find it hard not to slip into the present tense is where, in a character's internal monologue, they are thinking something which is generally true.

e.g.:

Jack grabbed his coat and went to the door. He was a journalist and journalists liked to be where the action was.

To me that sounds a bit odd, so I might instead put:

Jack grabbed his coat and went to the door. He was a journalist and journalists like to be where the action is.

I do know that a lot of authors are more experimental, and slip between tenses for effect. But I think you've got to be very conscious of what you are doing, if you begin to play around this way, and be aware of the effect you are trying to achieve. Or else, as Emma says, it is just confusing, distracting and 'messy' for the reader.

Rosy

What tense (normally used in most novels) do most authors use when he/she breaks with the story (written in past tense), and addresses the reader directly? Present tense or past tense?

Do most authors who write a past tense novel, stay in past tense the entire novel?

I don’t feel like experimenting with tenses. I just want to know what is considered standard writing form, and stay with that.

Thanks
Azel

I don't think there is a standard way of doing it. Partly, it depends if the narrator is a character in the story, or if you want, as the author, to talk to the reader. Writers have been doing that ever since the novel was invented.

You can imagine it like a play on stage: the characters only talk to each other, and act as if all they see is each other. That's the simplest way: everything stays within the 'frame' of the stage. In the equivalent, you'd never go into present tense, because all the action is part of the story that's being told, and all the characters stay inside that.

Of course, you can have characters who break out of the frame and say something to the audience. Or you can even have a narrator standing at the side, permanently outside the frame of the story, not a character in the story but having opinions of their own. Either of those, when they're talking to the audience/reader, might talk in present tense about some general opinion or idea.

Rosy's example is an interesting one, because it's a general opinion - about journalists - which you can either read as the character's thoughts, or as a separate narrator saying something direct to the reader. It probably depends on the rest of the passage, which most readers would read it as.

Emma

<Added>

My best advice is to pick a handful of your favourite novels off the shelf - the kind which are roughly the sort of thing you're trying to write yourself - and see what their authors do.

Azel, why don't you post a couple of examples here, a couple of paragraphs maybe, and we can see what we think?

Casey

Thank you Emma and Casey

Emma
I sounds to me (if I understand you correctly) as if I should stay in past tense story mode all the time. This is my first novel, and I don’t want to make my work any harder than it already is. My novel has a female main character, and she is telling her story to the reader. Sometimes when she stops telling her story, and addresses the reader directly with some information or insight, I have to urge to switch to present tense. This is where I get confused. I will try to stay in past tense from now on to make things simple.

Casey
I’m at work right now. I have a six hour time difference from those of you in England. I will look over my work tonight and see if I can find any examples.

Thanks everyone
Azel

I think if you're feeling unconfident about deciding when your instinctive move into present tense works and when it doesn't, you're probably right to stick to past tense throughout.

But it's hard to be prescriptive, and I'm all for listening to your instincts to some extent. If you look at some examples of other writers, you may find your sense of how it could work develops until you do feel confident, in later writing if not this piece.

Emma