Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime
Sat or sitting?
Is this correct:
Frank Weaver sat in his room sipping a cup of tea laced with a tot brandy, his hands shaking.
Or should I instead write:
Frank Weaver was sitting in his room sipping a cup of tea laced with a tot brandy, his hands shaking.
Frank Weaver sat in his room sipping a cup of tea laced with a tot brandy, his hands shaking.
Or should I instead write:
Frank Weaver was sitting in his room sipping a cup of tea laced with a tot brandy, his hands shaking.
Comments
In common usage, either will do, and strictly speaking, sat is the past tense of to sit. I sat, you sat, he, she, it sat, etc. I was sitting is the imperfect. (I hope I am remembering this correctly - grammar was a long time ago!)
Sat is sort of finished and done with, whereas 'he was sitting' implies that there will be a 'when' afterwards.
If your intention is to imply that he was fixed in the chair in a state of shock or fear, perhaps 'sat' is the more motionless of the two.
This is like trying to decide how to spell a word, and the more you look at it the more wrong it seems!
Just make sure you don't say 'He was sat on the chair...' That's wrong!
But 'He was sitting on the chair' and 'He sat on the chair' are both fine, and can mean very nearly the same thing.
Frank Weaver sat in his room sipping ... or ... Frank Weaver was sitting in his room sipping
Those two are both perfectly fine and correct, grammar-wise, grammar. Go right ahead and choose either one.
Get rid of the gerunds (-ing words) wherever possible and you'll find sentences become much tighter and you keep the tenses in order.
I.e. Frank Weaver sat in his room and sipped a cup of tea laced with a tot brandy, his hands shaking.
Using the 'Frank was sitting' is committing a two fold fictional faux pas - the use of the dreaded 'was' plus a gerund. Always try to reduce your 'was' usage with better structured sentences.
I'd say the Frank Weaver sat in his room one also implies that he has just carried out that action...
Well spotted, I missed the "of" in that sentence!
... when the phone rang. So if something is happening, you could use this tense.
Otherwise stick with the first option.
Island Girl, I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, it's become so common in the UK that we even hear it from BBC presenters these days.
Am I forgiven? ;)
Sat is past tense and should always be used when writing past tense. 'Sitting' is a participle often used with 'was', one of my least favourite and most overused words in the English language. And don't get me started on participles.
I want to sit and get drunk.
Know when they're standing or have stood.
Are you sitting or have you sat?
Grammar can make sense of that.
For an action completed at the time of the narrative, use sat. So:
John sat in his chair when I entered the room.
For an action completed prior to the time of the narrative, use sat. So:
John sat down before I arrived. (possibly by the time I got there he was wandering about again.)
For an action competed in the past and continuing in the present, use was sitting. So:
John was sitting when I arrived.
Be careful about generalising about participles - Sat is also a participle, after all! :)
Sat describes the action of going from a standing position to a seated one (although you could also have 'sat up' - rising from a more horizontal position). So, "Frank Weaver sat..." is fine, as long as your intent is to 'show' him carrying out the action of sitting down.
If the curtain rises on your scene with Frank already in his chair, you'd use, "Frank Weaver was sitting..."
By the way your sentence carries on, with its mention of sipping brandy, etc, I'd suggest you want the latter construction, otherwise you are saying that at the same time as he went from standing to sitting he also sipped his brandy (difficult enough, but then you tell us he has shaking hands...)
"I was sat" is a rather ugly construction, but you could use it in cases where you are using the past tense of 'to be seated' - i.e. in a passive sense, when somebody else 'sits' you somewhere - for instance in a restaurant: "Initially, we were sat right next to the toilets, but I complained to the waiter and he found a much nicer table for us." In fairness, I'd probably avoid that sort of usage, but I don't think it's actually wrong.
Red, you've given me food for thought. My latest short story (and probably all stories I've written) is replete with the word "was". Fiction writing is much harder than I realised, and I knew it isn't easy :-(
Editors, I'm hearing in their blogs, dislike 'was' and other parts of the verb 'to be'. Active verbs are associated more with showing rather than telling, putting the reader more 'in the action' rather than watching from outside. It doesn't take much lateral thinking to shift from "She was beautiful" into the the reaction of the viewpoint character to her beauty, or indeed to change from "was sitting at the table" into Frank's plot-significant actions. This is a mind set that we need to get into to avoid 'telling'.
Was sitting - continuous.
My bearded collie understand this perfectly. I say, "Sit!" and
he sits and then immediately stands up.
I can't get him to understand, "Remain seated!" Don't suppose
I ever will now cos he's sixteen years old. :)