What an editor wishes all fiction writers knew
So you’ve decided to write a novel—or maybe you’ve already written one. Either way, my many hats off to you. This is an endeavor that requires much more work than most realize, but I am continually impressed by the writers I edit—folks who spend countless hours and enormous creative energy on crafting the best possible stories they can.
The Writer Essentials series is meant to make this endeavor easier. The information here is necessary for all fiction authors to know, and the topics are inspired by the most common hiccups I’ve encountered in the books I’ve edited over the years. Reading this series before—and after—you’ve penned your first draft will help you achieve a cleaner, more immersive manuscript.
Topic #1: Tense
Consider the following:
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” says his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she.
Mr. Bennet makes no answer.
What’s wrong with this excerpt—besides the fact that I’m playing fast and loose with Pride and Prejudice?
Let’s look at it with the verbs in bold:
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” says his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she.
Mr. Bennet makes no answer.
Says, replied, returned, makes—present and past and present, oh my! Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are time traveling as they talk. Or at least their verbs are.
An indie writer who publishes a manuscript in this state will get negative reviews from readers—or, more likely, readers will scan this opening paragraph and pass on the story. Indie writers who send manuscripts like this to my inbox make quite a bit more work for me—and are billed accordingly. The good news is that tense is a craft element writers can and should address on their own. A nuanced understanding of tense will:
help you plan your story before you write it
help you revise productively
save your editor a headache!
save you money, if you’re hiring your own copyediter
greatly increase your chances of getting published, if you’re submitting to a literary agent or publisher
keep your readers happy
Sound essential? It is. Let’s dig deeper.
How to Approach Tense
1) Realize consistency is key.
Switching between past and present tense is disorienting for the reader. Ideally, you will choose which tense to use before you start your story. If your draft is already completed and you know that you did not consciously choose a tense to write in, then choose a tense now—see step 2.
2) Choose a tense.
Past or present? How to choose?
First: The general advice is that past tense is used for literary fiction and present tense is ideal for thrillers. The idea is that the present tense feels more immediate to the reader because it’s happening now.
Hooey.
Consider this opening:
It has been a year filled with tribulations, the skyrocketing humidity and my constant arguments with Tessa draining me and leaving my thoughts in constant disarray. For that reason, it can’t be explained how I end up searching for her body at the edge of the haunted ruins.
It’s in present tense, but there’s a distance built into its cadence, verbs, and the repeated use of it as a subject.
Let’s try a different way:
I was too damn hot to feel afraid of ghosts.
“You in there, Tessa?” I flashed the haunted ruins a middle finger. “Babe, I’m coming for you!”
Past tense—but a more immediate feel.
So how to choose, if narrative distance isn’t decided by tense?
Many writers want to choose a tense based on reader preference. But the truth is, most readers don’t have a preference, and I’d be wary of the ones who do. You don’t need to write for the most closed-minded readers. If they’re not abandoning books for being in their least favorite tense, they’re abandoning them for other, equally silly reasons, so I wouldn’t cater to those picky few.
Sometimes a kind of philosophical approach can influence decisions around tense. For example, a lot of historical fiction is written in past tense, but Cat Sebastian’s 1950s romance You Should Be So Lucky is written in present tense. It’s a choice that feels deliberate, like Sebastian is reminding us that people in the fifties were the same as people in any era—the same as us today. The choice of tense in this case supports the idea that love and acceptance are universal human needs.
But choice of tense doesn’t always need to be based on lofty ideas. Sometimes it’s just a matter of what you’re more comfortable with. Try writing a few paragraphs of your story in past tense—and then in present. Does your protagonist’s voice emerge more easily in one over the other? Does one feel more natural? The key is finding what feels right for you and sticking to it—at least for the length of your story.
3) Review your grammar.
PRESENT TENSE
The Hating Game by Sally Thorne is written in present tense, and it starts like this:
“I have a theory. Hating someone feels disturbingly similar to being in love with them.”
Simple enough. No explanation needed. But immediately, Thorne takes us into the past:
“I’ve had a lot of time to compare love and hate, and these are my observations.”
I’ve had. I have had. This is the present perfect tense, and it’s used to indicate events that happened at an unspecified point in the past.
Later, Thorne writes about a specific past memory:
“My name is Lucy Hutton. I’m the executive assistant to Helene Pascal. …
Once upon a time, our little Gamin Publishing was on the brink of collapse. The reality of the economy meant people had no money for their mortgage repayments and literature was a luxury.”
Here, Thorne transitions seamlessly from the present moment to a past memory, using simple past tense to write about a specific point in the past.
Notice that every single verb form hinges on the fact that the book is in present tense. Let’s look at what tenses would be used if The Hating Game were in past tense.
PAST TENSE
It would start like this:
“I had a theory. Hating someone felt disturbingly similar to being in love with them.”
Describing an unspecific moment that happened before the past would look like this:
“I’d had a lot of time to compare love and hate, and these were my observations.”
I had had. This is past perfect tense, and it’s used to reference events that happened at an even earlier time in the past.
And this is where things might get a little tricky, because you have a choice. Here’s how to transition from the past tense to events that occurred before the current narrative:
“My name was Lucy Hutton. I was the executive assistant to Helene Pascal. …
Once upon a time, our little Gamin Publishing had been on the brink of collapse. The reality of the economy had meant people had had no money for their mortgage repayments and literature had been a luxury.”
Using past perfect is, grammatically, fine. But it sounds a little wordy, yes? The repeated use of the auxiliary verb had can interrupt flow and feel redundant. That’s why most editors recommend this instead:
“My name was Lucy Hutton. I was the executive assistant to Helene Pascal. …
Once upon a time, our little Gamin Publishing had been on the brink of collapse. The reality of the economy meant people had no money for their mortgage repayments and literature was a luxury.”
Note the single use of had been. Had been establishes for the reader that we’re jumping further back in time. (The timeline is also clarified by the phrase “once upon a time,” which signals a general trip down memory lane. By contrast, a phrase like “Last Tuesday, …” would prepare the reader for the start of a specific flashback.)
Once that’s established, the writer can go back to using the simple past.
Amy Schneider, in The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction, has this to say about the past tense:
“[A] common error occurs in past-tense narration when action occurs in the past of the story, but the past perfect tense (what I like to think of as ‘super past’) isn’t used to indicate it. Most often the problem is a missing had (with an appropriate change in the main verb form):
I tiptoed into the room, which was obviously ransacked before I arrived. (past tense only)
I tiptoed into the room, which had obviously been ransacked before I arrived. (past tense followed by past perfect, to indicate prior action)
Carol Saller discusses this in even more detail in CMOS Shop Talk.
ANOTHER THOUGHT ON CHOOSING TENSE
Earlier, I advised you to choose a tense based on what feels most intuitive for you. There are some other considerations, however.
Does your story have many flashbacks? If so, writing it in the present might be easier simply because fewer tenses are needed. You can go back and forth between the present and simple past tenses without ever needing to type horrible, wretched verb clusters like had had.
Do you know that switching between tenses is a problem for you? Past tense might be the way to go in this case. That’s because you’re more likely to catch tense changes when you revise. Amy Schneider points out that most stories are written in the past tense, and it feels like the natural way to tell a story—“Yesterday I was walking down the street and I thought I saw you drive past me.” You are therefore more likely to notice an errant he says dialogue tag than a he said. The latter might feel “invisible” to you because you’re so used to it.
4) Revise
Before sending your manuscript to your copyeditor, go through it line by line and revise any sentence that’s in the wrong tense. I highly recommend doing this because it will make you a stronger writer. And the truth is, when your editor isn’t focusing on fixing these foundational issues, they can address more individualized elements in your writing to help you take your story to the next level. (Also, if you start building these skills now, you’ll be much more likely to consciously think about tense before you dive into your next project. That will result in a cleaner first draft the next time around.)
In Summary
Choosing a tense and sticking to it is essential. Consciously deciding past or present before you write will make your revisions easier (and your editor happier). When your manuscript is complete, read through it and consciously think about what tense each sentence is in. While it may not be fun to change a load of he says dialogue tags to he said ones, it’s one of those tedious exercises that makes you a smarter, stronger writer.
Until next time,
Hannah Varacalli
Copy & Developmental Editor
www.hveditorial.com