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Hi, I've only recently started writing so I'm open to all the advice I can get. I'm struggling in particular to stick to a tense, I keep finding myself swapping between past and present, my story is currently in first person so I was wondering if either tense is easier to stick to or if there any tips for that.
Comments
I agree with Phots Moll. Write your first draft and and then see what works best. You might even change your mind about the point of view. Sometimes you can only see how a story works after you've written it and tried it with different tenses and points of view.
Good luck with it.
But I write poetry mostly, and very little fiction.
When I had finished, there was silence, then someone said, " Well, at least he kept the same tense."
I never went back.
Snail - those people clearly needed a sense of humour transplant, and definitely didn't deserve you.
I've been writing in the third-person, reported speech, for a while, and it tends to call for the Perfect and other past tense forms, but I can move into a new tense whenever it's needed. It all depends on what situations or events I'm describing.
I've noticed that sometimes I overuse the Pluperfect (i.e. had + perfect), and have discovered it's all right to alter it.
It is a good idea to begin a new paragraph when a change occurs for whatever reason, and begin another one again when that particular sequence of action/description ends.
Many things happen in a story of course, and I believe it just isn't possible to keep to the same tense all the time.
Tread carefully, and read through your work again later (even weeks later). If any passage doesn't seem to 'read' right (tense-wise) with what's just gone before and what comes after, then it probably needs to be altered.
However, don't be afraid to change tense when you want to.
When everything flows well, you've got it right!