Category Esteemed Editing Blog

Do you struggle to keep to the correct tense when you’re writing? Read more to find out why it’s important and how to identify each. When you’re writing fiction, you have a variety of options available to you when deciding on the tense, namely present, past, past perfect and habitual past. It doesn’t matter which you pick but it does matter that you’re consistent within each sentence. If you jump between tenses, you’ll leave your readers feeling confused, and you’ll disrupt the natural flow of your narrative. Here’s a look at the different tenses and how to keep to the same one. Choose what’s right for you When you begin writing, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is the tense for that particular piece of work. The best thing to do is to choose the tense that feels the most natural to you. It’s possible to alter the content to a target audience by changing the vocabulary and the tone, but if you’re in the wrong tense it will just sound stiff and awkward. If you pick a tense that you think you “should” be writing in rather than the one that’s intuitive, you’ll inevitably end up drifting out of it. It’s far better to just stick to the tense that works the best for your style from the start. For most people, the best tense will be the past tense; very few writers find the present tense natural for writing fiction. The other option is the future tense, but that’s almost impossible for fiction. The choice has to be yours and if you pick a tense that you’re comfortable with, your final work will shine. Three different forms of past tense The present tense is fairly easy to recognise and usually it’s quite straightforward to identify. There […]