I understand that is how most fiction is written but, its kind of a problem with this I am writing.
{Susan owned a large industry and ran it almost herself and Kerry defended them legally. Kerry was a brilliant powerful attorney. Kerry had ambitions beyond that and they have been lobbying for the democratic presidential selection. She has Susan's full support. }
See that little tidbit of a paragraph. Susan owned a large industry and Kerry Defended them. Its in past tense but I said she owned and Karry did this, so what are they doing now. Are they dead sense its all in the past. Well know in my fiction world they are still ok. So how do I write in past tense but still make it seem like im writing about characters that are still here. Or is that even important
You are on the right track
with what you have, though you've also mixed present tense in as well. Since this looks like an example paragraph, I'll edit it as I would if it were mine. There are a few word changes (deletions asterisked and additions in square brackets), as well as the tense changes, and a couple of commas added:
Susan owned a large *industry* [company (an industry is all of the companies of a certain type)] and ran it almost [by] herself, and Kerry defended them legally. Kerry was a brilliant, powerful attorney. Kerry had ambitions beyond that and *they* [she] *have* [had] been lobbying for the democratic presidential selection. She *has* [had] Susan's full support.
How you show that this is not the distant past is what you do with surrounding text. Say that the next sentence was: Susan picked up the phone and called her Washington lobbyist, asking for advise on who to contact for Kerry's presidential run. It would be clear that we are not talking past events. It's important to stay in past tense, unless you are very good and have a particular character that always is written in present tense. I've seen it done, but didn't like it even when it was done well. The alternative is to consistently stay in present tense, but I find that quite exhausting to write, and generally do not enjoy reading it, either. The absolute toughest is first person, present tense, which usually sends me up a wall when an author foists it on me, so I try never to write that way myself.
Also, to show that something is truly in the past when writing past tense, there are simple tricks to employ. The sentence John had to wash dishes in college to pay for tuition, would be understood to be in the past if John is now a 30-something businessman. If a sentence is unclear, it can be clarified in a number of ways. Here is an example: John ate a tuna fish sandwich. If this simply popped up among your narrative, your reader would likely think that the event had just happened. If you want to show it was in the past you could write John ate a tuna fish sandwich yesterday. Or you could say John once, and only once, ate a tuna fish sandwich, when explaining that he hated tuna fish.
Something that I should do more of myself is take this bit of advice: note what your favorite authors do in the way of style and see if you can adapt their techniques to your own writing.
Happy writing!
SuZie
SuZie
Tension
I agree that first person present tense is irritating. I call them "bar joke" stories: "I know this man, see, and he goes into a bar and says to the bartender, 'Have you seen my duck?' and the bartender says, 'What? Do I look like a bathtub?'...." and so on. It's all a little breathless for my taste, although it supposedly "builds excitement" and "is more immediate," but I find it difficult to become excited when the inevitable mistakes annoy me.
I'd guess, just offhand, that 90% of fiction is written in the past tense, and most of the ten percent that isn't ought to have been. Think about it, if you're telling a story, it's because it happened, and now you're talking about it. Do you expect people to honestly believe that something printed on a page in 1978 is going to fool anyone?
When you write in the present tense, everyone knows that it's a lie on at least one level, because the events aren't happening before our eyes, someone is telling us about them.
It also precludes multiple viewpoints, because you can't ever have second thoughts, or regrets, or alternate descriptions of the same events, because the second present tense description of the same scene is totally weird.
None-the-less, it can be an effective tool if one doesn't overindulge.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Bar Jokes/ Bad Joke Tense
The group I worked with calls present tense verbs for past tense narration, 'Bad Joke Tense', sort of like the 'bar jokes' tag you gave, Puddintane.
Here is the way I would write that, and yes, there are a lot of mixed tenses, for good reason.
Susan owns a large industry and runs it almost by herself, and Kerry has defended them legally.
It is okay to use present tense in a sentence to show that what was the case is still the case.
Kerry is a brilliant powerful attorney with ambitions beyond that and has been lobbying for the democratic presidential selection with Susan's full support.
Usually, it is easy to point out that the narration must be past tense. For first person narration it is usually easy, but third person, as this is, is more difficult and may result in a mixed tense when giving background information, as per your example.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
A Problem I Found...
...with some present-tense stories -- it shook me a bit with T D Aldoennetti's otherwise very enjoyable Sorcerer-Sorceress tale -- is that when one reads paragraphs of background information or passages that tell what happened between the incidents that get described in full, it comes out reading like a synopsis rather than part of a story. Despite the immediacy that present-tense ought to deliver, it takes me further out of the story, as if I were getting a second-hand recap rather than reading about the events myself.
Inserting background information and filling time between scenes can be potential problems even in past-tense stories. But using present tense can make things worse, I think. I'd guess it's because it's harder to recognize such passages as part of a sequence of events.
And, to answer your basic question, that's the reason most stories use past tense. Things in your story must have happened in some sort of sequence, or they wouldn't be part of a narrative. The starting point for those events -- in this case, Susan's ownership of the company, Kerry's work for Susan, and Kerry's run for office with Susan's support -- comes, naturally, at the beginning, furthest in the past. Presumably something will change later, even if those statements remain true throughout, or you don't have a story. (My guess is that Kerry will either win or lose the nomination, if not the election, before the story ends.)
Maybe they ARE dead at the end -- we won't know unless we read the story, or unless you give us more information at the start of the narrative:
"These days, you'll find Kerry in the Oval Office. But she'd be the first to tell you that she'd never gotten there without some breaks and a lot of support, especially from Susan Smith.
"Susan owned and ran a large industrial firm, and Kerry was very valuable to her as the lead attorney representing her company as it grew to dominate its industry. It was Susan who suggested that Kerry set her eye on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and Susan who put up the seed money that got her campaign started..."
Eric
Paster past tense
Inserting background information is easy. We call it the "perfect tense" in English, although it has some overlap with the subjunctive mood.
I had a pastrami on rye for lunch today, although I'd had chicken soup the day before. I wish I'd had the salad. If I were to have plain yoghurt tomorrow, I'd still be right on track.
English grammar can be every bit as exciting as hang-gliding, and is quite dizzying when one concentrates too much on fine detail. It's important to remember that the very best English grammar these days was once considered a collection of ignorant mistakes by the educated classes of centuries gone by, and "proper grammar" is changing even as we speak, something like climbing up a sand dune, where the ground one walks upon can move more quickly than one's steps, so it's difficult to say whether one is actually ascending at any given moment, or on the downward slide.
Which is correct?
Where do you live?
Liorah
Read!
I do hate to sound a bit simplistic in my approach to this problem, but the best way to learn how to write in the past tense is to read stories you enjoy written in this manner. When you sit down, attempt to do as your favorite authors do. It will not be easy at first, but after awhile, you'll not only get the hang of it, you will develop your own style.
A good editor who is more than a spell checker will also be invaluable, pointing out errors and explaining how best to correct them,
That's how I learned to write fiction.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
I'll second that!
Great advice, Nancy!
I've always believed that reading well-written works of fiction (and non-fiction, too) is the best way to improve your own command of a language, and your own writing. You might try reading something first for enjoyment, then go back over it with an analytical mind. Ask yourself questions about the point of view, the tense, and why it works the way it is written. Then, as Nancy said, try to write something similar of your own.
A good editor will probably not enjoy having to serve as a proofreader, so try to get the spelling, punctuation and grammar corrected before sending it on to her. Reading will help you improve in those areas, too. Computerized spelling and grammar checkers are only so good, and can lead you astray.
Kris
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Past tense.
I've played around in a few of my stories with narrators, mixing up who's telling the story, and to whom, and when. But you generally don't need to think about that.
The easiest way to think about writing in past tense is to imagine your story as a diary, something like "This is what I did today." It's being written as the story is unfolding, so the narrator doesn't have to be aware of what will happen in later chapters or even paragraphs if you don't want it to.