How to avoid slipping into the wrong tense?

Question

In one of the stories I'm writing at the moment, when the narrator is in the scene, the story is in present tense (which is painful, but so far I like the result). The rest is in the much easier to deal with, and generally superior, narrative past tense.

At one point I had given up on present tense and started writing in past tense, however I have since realized that I actually had a good reason to write those scenes in present tense. So I go back and rewrite them paragraph by paragraph. In some spots I just wipe the whole scene and start over, but for the most part I found that wasn't necessary.

I'm now going through and editing those scenes and finding that I keep slipping into narrative past. The entire purpose of rewriting was to get rid of past tense, yet somehow I am rewriting parts of paragraphs in past tense anyway! This is very frustrating. I don't mind it when it occurs at the very beginning of a scene. To me that's just catching up to the present, however when I'm going back and forth within a scene, that's inexcusable unless a character is explicitly reflecting on past events, and even then that, I feel, should be done with care.

So the question is, how do I avoid this slippage? Other than practice, which is in the works.

P.S. A "problem," if you want to call it that, is that consistent is required. For most of the scenes, either both tenses can work out just as well, or present tense is giving me better results. There are some "down time" scenes, I suppose you could call them. For example what I'm trying to fix right now": sitting around a camp fire. These would, as Mark Baker suggested, work out better in past tense. However I can't have it both ways, or so I believe (I may be wrong).

P.P.S. This is not a question of grammar. I can go back and fix incorrectly conjugated verbs as I have done in this very question (as Cloud pointed out). The issue is structural. The narrative, mid paragraph, takes on the structure of narrative past tense. I have a similar problem when I'm writing in past tense if get excited. In such cases I slip into present tense, but these are easy to fix since, as Baker is quick to point out, past tense is like a Swiss Army Knife. Its usually the tool for the job, and when it's not, it's pretty close.

P.P.P.S. Okay, so lets see if I can make a simple example. If it's too simple it won't work. John walks his dog and John walked his dog are both perfectly reasonable sentences, but they are also quite simple. Compare while walking his dog, John stops to smell the roses against As John was walking his dog, he stopped to smell the roses. There is more to these sentences, and not only do the verbs need to be conjugated differently, but also the conjunctions "while" and "as".

Now, the past tense The following day, while walking his dog, John stopped to smell the roses is fine, however if we want to convert that directly to present tense we're going to have do some tinkering with the structure. The inclusion of "the following day", as far as I can tell, doesn't really have an present tense analog since there is only "now". A character can reflect on past events, but the story itself is always in the present.

This isn't a great example, and that last sentence does have some issues, but I think this illustrates my point.

PPPP.S. As Cloudchaser pointed out, that is not the greatest example. Or even an accurate one. In a lot of ways this is an extension of a previous question of mine. Without copying and pasting collections of paragraphs I don't think I can illustrate exactly how this is going wrong. My question is the same as before -- how to avoid switching from one tense/structure to another aside from the age old solution of practice.

Answer 1

Before you can avoid slipping into the wrong tense, ask yourself what the right tense is. Because it's not consistent for every story that is told.

• Jokes use present tense. A man walks into a bar...
• A factual (terse) recollection of events uses past tense. John killed my cat and then made it seem like it ran away.
• A narrated recollection of events uses present tense. So John pulls out his gun, looks the cat straight in the eye, and pulls the trigger. The wall is covered in cat brains, and I'm standing there wondering if I'm going to be the next victim.

There is no consistent tense. It very much depends on the context of the story. This is one of those things where it's very hard to define what is right and what is wrong, but we often intuitively understand which tense we should use.

If you keep slipping into past tense; it's more than likely that past tense makes the most sense intuitively. I'd suggest you go with your gut on this one. Any inconsistencies can be fixed at a later stage when you are proofreading.

Focus on writing the story first. Focus on fixing the grammatical mistakes at a later stage.

Answer 2

I don't get what you are even struggling with. I'm giving up on attempting an answer to this question. I'm sorry I couldn't help you.

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Second attempt at an answer, after an example was given

When you write in present tense, that is not the same as living in the present. In reality, there is never a present moment of which it would be appropriate to say that "the following day, I smell the roses".

But when you write in present tense, the story is told from a moment after it has all already happened. The present tense in writing does not signify that what you read happens now (because the reader knows that while he reads the whole story already exists as a finished whole), but rather the present tense in writing evokes immediacy.

For the characters, every moment in a narrative is their present, no matter if it is narrated in the past or present tense. When you write "John smelled the roses", John smells the roses now. But for the reader every "present moment" in a narrative is always one in a sequence of moments that all lie in the past, no matter if they are narrated in the present or past tense. When you write "John smells the roses", for the reader that has already happened.

For that reason, you can use the exact same constructions in present as in past tense.

It is perfectly fine to write:

The following day, while walking his dog, John stopps to smell the roses.

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First attempt at an answer, before the edits

'm not really sure I completely understand the problem you are having.

When I want to write in a certain tense, I write in that tense, I don't slip into another. It's like writing about birds. I don't find myself writing about dogs when I want to write about birds. So how come you slip into another tense?

One reason I can think of, because I see that in many aspiring writers, is that maybe you aren't really in command of your language yet. Simple present and simple past are easy, but when it comes to anteriority and posteriority, past and present continuous, and so on, even many native speakers get confused, because in oral language we often don't use these forms correctly, or even not at all, instead signifying "tense", for example, through adverbs of time.

In spoken English, it is perfectly fine to say something like: Yesterday, I went to the doctor. I tell him my back hurts, and he looks at me and says.... But in written English, unless you want to emulate spoken language, this tense switching is wrong.

I'm not a native speaker of English, so the following might not be completely correct, but it seems to me that in your question you are using the wrong tense in some places. For example, in your second paragraph you write:

At one point I had given up on present tense and started writing in past tense, however I had since realized that I actually had a good reason to write those scenes in present tense. So I go back and rewrite them paragraph by paragraph. In some spots I just wipe the whole scene and start over, but for the most part I found that wasn't necessary.

As far as I understand, all of this has already happened in the past. I therefore believe that you should have written (my corrections are given in bold and my comment in italic):

At one point I had given up on present tense and started writing in past tense, however I have [you have still given up; "had" signifies that you have later changed your mind again] since realized that I actually had a good reason to write those scenes in present tense. So I went back and rewrote [you are not doing that now, it is something you have already done] them paragraph by paragraph. In some spots I just wiped the whole scene and started over, but for the most part I found [here you have past tense, which shows that you meant the whole scene to have taken place in the past] that wasn't necessary.

Now this answer isn't about correcting the grammar of your question. Questions here can be grammatically or orthographically wrong, and no one will think less of you for it, especially since many of us aren't even native speakers and unable to write good English ourselves anyway. But what the mistakes in your question show me in the context of your question, is that you do not use grammatical tense correctly in it, and that maybe this is a problem you are having when you write or revise.

So what you are struggling with might not be a problem related to writing or revising at all, but simply due to the fact that you must first correctly learn some of the more difficult aspects of your language first.

Answer 3

Lucky for you I just wrote a book in present tense and know exactly what you mean.

Your have to understand preset perfect and present imperfect. Take the two sentences. "John walks his dog" imperfect. and "John is walking his dog" perfect.

You have to pick one of the tenses and write in it. I would say it has to be imperfect. Reading present perfect would be a nightmare. Present perfect sounds childish in most cases like "while walking his dog, John stops to smell the roses" Instead you should write "John walks his dog he stops to smell the roses"

I will also say that I had a very hard time staying in present tense while writing. Half the time of my first editing pass was dedicated to tense