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

[kisahawklin]

<3

It's not the only thing. I find myself messing up homonyms these days a surprising amount. I never used to do that, and it used to actively piss me off. I don't read stories that contain errors like this (except in beta, and honestly, I don't do that much beta work for beginners), so I can't even say it's exposure or anything. I have no idea, but I find it immensely frustrating. It's why I self-edit two or three times before I send anything to beta.

I think we all have our issues, and it's a matter of what you can fix and what your beta can catch and a willingness to learn. I'm easier on people these days. I still don't read fic with those sorts of issues, but I'm not so mean about those stories anymore. I figure I'll give the author another shot in a year or so, when they have a little more writing under their belt.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I think it's just getting older. :) I noticed a few homonym mistakes in what I was writing yesterday myself. It's like my fingers automatically type a word without any real input from my brain.

I'm also nicer than I used to be when I find these issues, though I still can't get through stories that have a lot of them because I keep getting bounced out of the narrative. Mellowing with age, i guess. :)