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- Thread starter TripleCappuccino
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This is only my opinion, and I am not a scholar or grammer guru. That said, here's how I would write them:
Our worlds differed. One was delusional; the other, reality.
Minimize the tense issue where you can. Also, delusion can be a transient state of mind, so I would match tenses there
We looked up to a blue sky.Change to active and condense to one sentence
I looked at him and shook my head in shame. PI is 3.14, not 3.13.
Written as internal dialogue, I think this works
Our worlds differed. One was delusional; the other, reality.
Minimize the tense issue where you can. Also, delusion can be a transient state of mind, so I would match tenses there
We looked up to a blue sky.
I looked at him and shook my head in shame. PI is 3.14, not 3.13.
Written as internal dialogue, I think this works
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No, though some people believe this.
Tense is decided from what POV you're telling the story from, not that you're referencing something on a time scale.
Unless there's a very good reason for you to change the tense, I'd suggest you don't just drop it but build around it.
"Bob walking down the road, carrying that damn walking stick like he always had. Actually, he's still carrying that stupid thing to this day. I hated it then, and I still hate it. He tapped me on the shoulder with the stick, and I gripped my trousers to keep myself back from snapping that stick over his head."
Tense is decided from what POV you're telling the story from, not that you're referencing something on a time scale.
Unless there's a very good reason for you to change the tense, I'd suggest you don't just drop it but build around it.
"Bob walking down the road, carrying that damn walking stick like he always had. Actually, he's still carrying that stupid thing to this day. I hated it then, and I still hate it. He tapped me on the shoulder with the stick, and I gripped my trousers to keep myself back from snapping that stick over his head."
Actually, as a reader, I find changes of tense for facts jarring. It is possibly to get away with them - as in WillSauger's example - but even with those I find it takes me out of the fiction.
Certainly, Pi is always Pi, but in the context of the fiction, Pi WAS always Pi, as everything was in the past. When you say 'Pi didn't change yesterday,' you're referring to the historic yesterday of the past tense story.
In fact, if one were to suggest a change of Pi, I'd go for the pluperfect tense.
Certainly, Pi is always Pi, but in the context of the fiction, Pi WAS always Pi, as everything was in the past. When you say 'Pi didn't change yesterday,' you're referring to the historic yesterday of the past tense story.
In fact, if one were to suggest a change of Pi, I'd go for the pluperfect tense.
Pay attention to the difference between a finished event, and a continuing condition, or situation. A simple example:
I hated seeing the woman cry. We men are like that.
The first sentence relates a concluded event, and is related in narrative past tense. The second expresses a continuing condition, and for that, present is appropriate; it would sound stupid in past tense.
caw
I hated seeing the woman cry. We men are like that.
The first sentence relates a concluded event, and is related in narrative past tense. The second expresses a continuing condition, and for that, present is appropriate; it would sound stupid in past tense.
caw
TheNighSwan
Banned
I'm wondering if you're referring to something that's been edited out of the OP here because the sentence 'we looked up to a blue sky' is already active.
If you wanted to express it in passive voice, it would be 'a blue sky was looked up at by us'.
TheNighSwan
Banned
No, their contention was that "the sky was blue" is a passive voice. Except, as I've pointed out, it isn't.
In a now-discarded WIP, the characters visit Egypt. The beta readers to a one flagged my present tense when describing how things look or where they are located. "The Bent Pyramid is some miles south of Cairo . . ." They said it should be in past tense, and I like WillSauger's explanation that the narrator is relating events in the past, even if the facts are still true. This is a novel, not a travel guide.
So true. And (as Cel_Fleur mentioned) changing tenses can be quite jarring.
Another pitfall of changing tenses: potential spoilers. I've edited some books that were written in past tense, but the author switched to present tense when describing characters. While you could make the point that Character A is still the freckle-faced head of a crime organization who takes pleasure in making his underlings squirm, saying this in present tense signals to the reader that Character A is still alive and therefore does not die in the book. If you're reading a crime thriller, you probably don't want to know that until you've finished the book.
I've been told I'm "pushing the limits of passive-linking verb sentences (there was/were; it/was were; etc.)" with sentences like "The scent of lavender was overpowering as Kieran walked into their bedroom." This is something I've struggled with over the course of my writing career and I'm trying to understand the best way of revising something like this. How do I know when I'm "pushing the limits" and when I actually need to use it? And for that sentence specifically, would something like "The scent of lavender overpowered Kieran’s senses as he walked into their bedroom." be a good revision?
Both sentences are active. The scent of lavender is the subject of the sentence. The scent of lavender is also perpetrating the activity of overwhelming Kieran's senses or being in an overwhelming state to his senses.
Overwhelming and being-in-a-state are both active.
If you want an example of passive voice, here it is.
'Kieran's senses were overwhelmed by the scent of lavender.'
Why is it passive-voice? Because his senses are the subject of the sentence yet they don't perpetrate the action, they receive the action. They are the passive recipient of the verb rather than the doer.
Overwhelming and being-in-a-state are both active.
If you want an example of passive voice, here it is.
'Kieran's senses were overwhelmed by the scent of lavender.'
Why is it passive-voice? Because his senses are the subject of the sentence yet they don't perpetrate the action, they receive the action. They are the passive recipient of the verb rather than the doer.
Only one sense can be overpowered by a scent, so "senses" is not the correct word there.
The word doesn't add much useful anyway: "The scent of lavender overpowered Kieran as he walked into their bedroom" communicates the idea just as well.
Better still might be to say exactly how he was overpowered by the scent. Did it make his eyes water? Did it bring back a pleasant memory? If it was just something strong that he noticed but had no reaction to beyond that, saying it "overpowered" him is probably not the best term.
Depending on context, you might consider making Kieran the focus of the sentence, rather than the scent. For example, "Kieran walked into their bedroom, the powerful scent of lavender reminding him of his grandmother's garden."
The story tense (e.g., present, past) is determined by the POV (e.g, 1st, 3rd)?
This doesn't seem right. What did I miss?
Uh . . . no. Narrative tense and POV are completely unrelated issues. It's not hard to find 1st-person POV/present tense, 1st-person POV/past tense, and any combination of 3rd/present or 3rd/past stories.
caw