Grammar Rant No. 3 - Past Tenses

We've not had a grammar rant in a while. That's a good thing, because it means I've not been pissed off enough with someone's terrible grammar for a while. Today though, I got an email. I should probably explain this. Y'see, I'm on a mailing list of an author who writes little pieces of advice to people writing novels, it's called 'Daily Kick in the Pants' and is usually filled with useful advice, but usually quite useless to me as it all seems rather common sense-ical*. But today, he tried to explain that we shouldn't overuse the word 'was'. One of his reasons for this was as follows:

'The second problem with “was” is that it is often used unnecessarily. As far as the image that is conjured in the reader’s mind, there isn’t much difference between saying “Sheila was singing under the starlight,” and “Sheila sang under the starlight.” However, the second sentence uses one syllable “sang” instead of three, “was singing.” So in the interest of brevity, usually we try to get rid of the “to be” verb.'

NO. No no no no no no no. They are two different tenses, you do not fuck with your tenses for the simple reason of 'brevity'. You know what else is used for the interest of brevity? Chatspeak. 'i r kl lol', etc.

'Sheila sang' is perfect tense. This is your basic tense for storytelling** as we tell stories in the past. It denotes a completed action. If you say 'Sheila sang' then you're saying that she's now stopped singing in your story and can do other things.

'Sheila was singing' is imperfect tense. This is still past tense, but an ongoing action. Saying this means that Sheila is still singing in your story and if she does anything else she will either be singing whilst doing them or be interrupted.

It may not sound like a huge difference in this particular case but can make a world of difference at times. Don't ever mess with your tenses just because one tense has less syllables. Jesus.

Other past tenses for storytelling, just in case you get confused:

'Sheila had sung [before]' is pluperfect. It denotes something that happened in the past of your story (which is already being told in the past).

'Sheila would sing [again]' is future perfect. It denotes something that will happen in the future of your story.

There are other mixes between them ('Sheila would have sung', 'Sheila had been singing') but these are your basic ones and you should be able to tell what's going on from the mix. ie - 'Sheila had been singing' has the 'had' from pluperfect and the 'ing' from imperfect, therefore an ongoing action that happened in the past of your story. If you know these basic ones you can work out any others you may need.

Unless you're telling stories in the present tense all the way through, you do not ever use present tenses ('Sheila sings', 'Sheila is singing') or future tenses ('Sheila will sing', 'Sheila will be singing', 'Sheila will have sung' etc etc).

Just in case you haven't got it by now - I really, really, really hate when people mess up their tenses in writing. Don't fucking do it.






*SO a word. Shut up.

**I have been known to write in the present tense, when it fits the piece, but generally past tenses are the way forward.