“I keep finding myself switching between past and present tense as I am writing, depending on the severity of the story. Is that ok? Do I need to just pick one? I am having the hardest time with it.”

–Devon Fountaine

– Answer: Anika Hanisch, Author Coach

I love this question.  It’s one of the most common and over-looked challenges in early draft-writing.  We usually don’t know we’re switching verb tenses until an editor points it out (“I walk into the bar…” vs. “I walked into the bar…”).  So, kudos to this author for catching the issue in her own writing.

It’s encouraging to know that every writer does this.  Novelists, memoirists, how-to writers, inspirational authors, celebrity biographers.  New writers.  Established authors.  Really, everyone. 

The short answer is: Don’t worry about it for now.  During early drafts, it’s crucial to treat your writing process as an interview with yourself.  If you were interviewing another person for a magazine article, you wouldn’t interrupt them to correct their grammar.  That would be rude and it would shut down the interview!  So don’t do that to yourself, okay?  Set the editor hat aside.  Draft write in whatever tense feels comfortable at the moment, without self-censoring.

But if you’re on the verge of beginning significant revision, preparing to craft your first shareable draft, it’s good to know what’s required to “revise for consistent verb tense”.  First a few observations clarifying the meaning of “switching verb tense” and why it happens…

Why Do We Instinctively Change Verb Tenses? 

Tense shift almost always indicates an emotional shift in the author, either a need to draw incredibly close to the moment (a sudden shift to present tense “I am here”) or an equally obvious distancing from the material (a shift from present to past tense “I was there”).

Every author differs on when they pull in and when they push back from a scene.  Some writers shift to present tense when emotion heightens (Then I run out of my room).  Others shift to past tense as soon as the material gets hot (Then I ran out of my room…).  But each individual writer has their own patterns. 

Now, tense-shift isn’t solely triggered by emotionally challenging material.  Humorists and action writers frequently shift from past to present tense as soon as action heightens.  For example:

We’d been married for three months and I decided to make dinner to celebrate.  I planned to make a broccoli-cheese soup that she loved and serve it with a baguette from our favorite bakery.  I wanted it to be ready as soon as Sal got home from her shift at the hospital.  But things went wrong.  Seconds before she got home, I stepped out of the kitchen to clean the table.  That’s when I heard the soup boiling over, that sizzling sound.  I race to the kitchen just in time to see half the pot bubbling over onto the electric burner, the smell of burnt broccoli filling the air.  So there I am, right as Sal walks in, holding this pot that’s coated with the charred remains of our dinner and the whole apartment reeks.  All I can say to her is, “So I was wondering about going out for burgers tonight…”

This is a conversational little vignette.  It’s so conversational, you might not have noticed the shift from past tense to present tense (I heard the soup… I race to the kitchen…)  As soon as action heightens, this comedic memoirist shifts from past to present tense.  Come to think of it, most of us make this tense-switch when we’re verbally story-telling.  Watch for it the next time you’re story-swapping with friends.  I bet you’ll notice the habit frequently from now on!

This shift is ubiquitous in our verbal story-sharing.  Of course it shows up in our writing.  That’s okay.  It just can’t remain in the final draft.

Which Tense is Best for My Book?

There are some memoirs and novels that play with tense, intentionally switching between past or present to indicate switches between multiple timelines in the work, or multiple character points-of-view.  A new chapter, or section, begins from a different perspective, and the verb tense shifts.  (Read Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife for a novel that volleys between dozens of timelines, but remains almost entirely in present tense.  Almost.  A handful of sections are written, very intentionally, in past tense.  Watch for them!)

Intentional tense-switching is a legitimate option.  But it needs to be implemented with consistency and skill.  If one timeline is in past tense and another in present, always hold to that rule throughout the book or you will lose your reader.  You might break the rule artfully at some key moment in the book.  But again, this needs to be done skillfully, strategically.

For most new authors, once you hit the revision stage, it is best to pick one tense and stick with it for the whole book.  For most memoirists, past tense is best.  It makes logical chronological sense, and it’s usually the easiest verb tense to work with for the full duration of a manuscript.

But again, you’re not worrying about this until you’ve written through your entire first shitty rough draft.  No self-revising in the midst of the draft dump! 

How do You “Revise for Verb Tense”?

For those who really need a preview of what they’re in for, here’s an example of how I clean up raw-draft tense-shifts in my own draft work.  Recently, in the midst of a decent past-tense recollection, a blast of present-tense writing showed up.  On read through, it’s easy to see why I made that sudden shift:

Being there with Dad in the ICU stirred up all those other stressful memories of him.  Those memories glowed and hovered like a fog, just above where he stood at Mom’s bedside.  I could hardly reconcile my remembered-Dad with the man in front of me now.  Another twenty minutes pass, standing there watching him watching her.  Maybe it’s only been five minutes.  Maybe two hours.  You never know in a room this dim.  Whatever the case, it’s been a while, and Mom is supposed to have long periods of ZERO stimulation.  She needs that deep sleep.  But Dad just keeps talking to her quietly.  Keep healing honey.  We’re all here.  We’re all waiting for you to return.  I’ll be here when you open your eyes.  It was so good to see your eyes earlier today.  Slowly I take a step toward my Dad and rest a hand on his shoulder.  He didn’t move. 

It’s a raw moment—one that will always be raw and understandably present-tense in my mind.  But in the final draft, all the sentences will need to be in past tense like the rest of the book.  Let’s look at the challenges that show up in revising this.  Sentence 7, with its conversational second-person voice (“You never know…”), will lose its poetry in a straight revision to past tense.  Writers run into all sorts of challenges like this.  Revising for tense usually takes a much more work than simply adjusting the verbs. 

Here’s what might work, with edited phrases highlighted:

Being there with Dad in the ICU stirred up all those other stressful memories of him.  Those memories glowed and hovered like a fog, just above where he stood at Mom’s bedside.  I could hardly reconcile my remembered-Dad with the man in front of me now.  Another twenty minutes passed, watching Dad stroke Mom’s hand and forehead.  Maybe it was actually five minutes.  Maybe two hours.  Time turned muddy in that dimly lit room.  Whatever the case, it had been a while, and we were supposed to let Mom have long periods of no stimulation.  She needed that deep sleep.  But Dad just kept talking to her quietly.  Keep healing honey.  We’re all here.  We’re all waiting for you to return.  I’ll be here when you open your eyes.  It was so good to see your eyes earlier today.  I took a step toward my Dad and rested a hand on his shoulder.  He didn’t move. 

Notice the italic passage stays in present tense.  That’s okay.  It’s an approximation of Dad’s monologue in that moment.  Quoted dialogue, or quoted inner self-talk, stays in whatever tense it was in when originally spoken.  Notice that the phrase “… the man in front of me now” also remains.  That too is fine.  It’s implied summary of a thought I had in that moment. 

There’s an art to the revision process.  Whole sentences and paragraphs get re-written, re-routed, adapted, and often removed.  Revising for verb tense affects the heart and rhythm of each sentence, so revision often requires complete remodeling. 

It’s not always as simple as changing “So I walk into the bar…” to “So I walked into the bar…” 

For Practice:

Dip your toes into the verb-tense revision process, just to let yourself know you can do it! 

1. Pick a 200-word passage in your draft material that isn’t in the “right” verb tense.
2. Play with changing all present-tense verbs to past-tense (or vice versa). Read the sentences aloud.  Listen for sentences that now feel awkward or clunky because of the verb change.  Mark them as needing extra work. 
3. Review the trouble sentences. Play with alternate ways to convey the same thought with more musical wording. 
4. Read the passage aloud once more. Not so bad, eh?

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