Feeling Tense; Not Feeling The Tenses

[taste_is_sweet]

I've been reading fanfiction for over fifteen years now, and this is something I have never been able to understand. Why do so many stories flit between verb tenses from paragraph to paragraph or even sentence to sentence?

I can completely understand how easy it would be to make these kind of mistakes if you change a story from present to past tense or past to present, but all stories can't have been edited like that, right? So what gives?

I know my grammar has been far from perfect and I occasionally have a thing for repetitive sentences and histrionics (among other problems), but I can say with complete confidence that this is a mistake I've never made unless I was changing the tense of a story while editing it. I'm not trying to single anyone out and I'm definitely not thinking of anyone in particular. It's just that I've been wondering about this for years.

So, can anyone out there enlighten me? How is it possible to get your tenses wrong when you're just straight-up writing a story? Have any of you guys done it?

Comments

[sholio]

The place where I tend to run into trouble is when I'm trying to write more than one tense in the same story - for example, a story that's largely in present tense, but also references things that happened to the characters in the past. It's not so much a problem of forgetting what tense I'm supposed to be in; I get confused about what tense is grammatically correct in the border areas.

But I think I've seen what you're talking about - stories that randomly shift between past and present from sentence to sentence. And yeah, I have no idea about that one. I'm pretty sure I don't do that. Actually, it's hard for me to imagine doing that; the tense is part of the flow of the story for me ... it would be like randomly changing a character's name.

[iadorespike]

Sorry, sweetie...I really don't think that there's any enlightenment to be had. :( I can tell you that it makes me nuts when I'm reading and run into it. It's jarring - know what I mean? Eh.

*pets you*

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this too, but not just with fanfic. Also, p.o.v. changes. I think it's just lack of attention, and possibly also lack of editing/beta reading. A good beta should be able to spot this sort of thing, but I think a lot of people get excited about they've written and just want to get it out there, so skip that step. I am guilty of this myself :$

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

I usually mess up my tenses if I take a break writing in favour of reading. If it's a long-ish story and uses a different tense, I sometimes get used to that one and muck it up.

Then again, I tend to notice after a paragraph or two and go back to fix it.

[caras-galadhon.livejournal.com]

Why do so many stories flit between verb tenses from paragraph to paragraph or even sentence to sentence?
I wish I knew. It throws me right out of the story, and I have not, as of yet, come up with a gentle way to mention it might be an issue when I encounter it.

[hibernate.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have such trouble keeping tenses straight. It's not even a foreign language thing, because I do it in Swedish too. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me it's just something that doesn't come naturally. I have to think about it all the time not to mess up.

[mific.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it drives me crazy too and I self-beta like mad to avoid it. I don't think a some people were taught much grammar there for a while in schools. There were a few years when they didn't seem to teach apostrophes or tenses, etc. I have to edit stuff my students write and I'm constantly slashing at wonky tenses with the red pen!

[kimboosan.livejournal.com]

Oh lawd, this is something I do all the time so I understand how it happens; but it is also something I'm very careful about fixing before I let the story out into the wilds. But no, I don't know what faulty switch in my brain puts the tense change there, because I know it's wrong as soon as I read it. I've never really discovered a pattern to it.

I think for a lot of fanfic this goes in the same bucket as random POV changes (which drives me nuts): inexperience/ignorance. Everybody has to learn sometime, I guess, but I do get the feeling that a lot of writers aren't interested in learning at all. *sigh*

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

I'd have to say my biggest problem is commas. I used to know what to do with them, got confused, now toss them in a story like great lashings of salt, and hope I'm not overdoing it. ;-)

Oh! I'm with kimboo_york on the random POV changes too. I don't mind POV changing within a story, or even within a scene (if done judiciously) but from sentence to sentence? Gah!

[busaikko]

I do this! Fortunately, my betas usually catch it.

There are two reasons:
1. I'm writing more than one story at once, and bouncing from one to another gets me mixed up.
2. I'm writing in more than once place, usually getting brilliant(ish) ideas on the bus or in the store or at work and scribbling them down,a dn then adding them into the main file. And then realizing, damn.

[rinkafic.livejournal.com]

I hope I'm not guilty of this. It would just be one more weakness I didn't realize I possessed. I'm having to go back and do punctuation 101 at the ripe old age of 44, I have been too long away from the classroom.

I find I make errors with tense when I'm writing quickly, trying to pour out the scene that is in my head. I usually catch them on the 2nd and 3rd read through.

"He'd had enough, reaching back to the table, he picked up the cup." I just wrote that as an example, that sentence bothers me, but I've forgotten why it should, or if it should.

[gottalovev.livejournal.com]

ahhh verb tenses. I always have to be careful with those, but I know it and I therefore usually do a read through just to find the errors.

Most times I starts writing in past tense. Then, as I get in it, I suddenly switch to present tense because it comes more natural to me for some reason. When I groan and realize I did it AGAIN, I try to decide which fits better and stick with it. so I have to go through everything and fiddle. I always warn my betas to keep an eye open.

I don't seem to have that problem in French, weirdly. But then again, I've been writing in French my whole life and only for a little while in English.

[kisahawklin]

Oh, I totally do this. Normally it's because I'm coming out of a past tense patch back into a present tense story (a flashback or thought about the past, not a section - I don't mix tenses in my stories by sections, normally), or sometimes I just switch while I'm writing, and a paragraph or two later I'll put something in present tense and realize that it doesn't work with the rest of the sentence, and then I have to backtrack and see how long I've tense flipped and fix it. I have no idea what causes it, and I don't think I used to do this (or maybe I just didn't notice?). I do it now, though, and I still catch it sometimes after my betas miss it and I've had something posted for months.

I do know that when I take back up a story after having set it down (even just a day - when I start writing the next day) that I have to reread to make sure I start out in the same tense. In general, while I agree with busaikko that sometimes the variety of places and times and ways of writing means that the tense can get disjointed, I seem to just generally switch tenses randomly with no rhyme or reason, too. *shrug*

And yeah, I beta for people and this is one of those things that I catch a lot (I usually catch my own while I'm writing, or sometimes in my first self-edit after writing). It used to drive me crazy (which makes me think that I didn't used to tense flip before) because I didn't understand how people could *do* that. Now it drives me crazy because it's something that I think most people should fix themselves before sending to beta. There are a lot of things like that for me, but I'm getting crankier in my old age, I think. :)