A reasonably new series by Michael Carroll
Introduction Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
In part one of this brilliant series, if you read it, you learned all there is to know about the importance of choosing the correct words. If you haven't read it, go and read it now. I'll wait.
Lesson 2 - Tenses
There are three main tenses in the English language: Past, present and future. These tenses are well-named, as you will see. There are also other tenses. I don't know their correct names, so I'll be working around them.
"This sentence was written in the past tense." Note that I used "was" - meaning that by the time you read it, the example sentence has already been composed.
That's the past tense and it's a doddle. See how it differs from this sentence: "This sentence is what you are now reading." Now, as you were reading that sentence, it was true. It was in the present tense. Note that I used the word "was" just now, because when you passed the full-stop, the example sentence was in the past. It had moved from the "now" into the "then."
The future tense is a little more tricky: "You will read the next sentence, which is not part of this example." The words you are reading now - assuming that you didn't try and cheat and just skip to the end of the paragraph - are currently in the present tense, obviously, but - and this is the important bit - when you read the example sentence, these words were in the future. And now, they're in the past. This is what I mean - or meant - about it being tricky.
In fiction, we almost always use the past tense: "Nathan walked into the room and found his best friend in bed with his wife." Because it's the past tense, we know that when the writer was writing the words and when the reader is or was reading them, Nathan's discovery of the situation has already happened.
However, when writing fiction we usually first write an outline of the story or novel: "Nathan finds his best friend and his best friend's wife in bed." This is in the present tense. To elucidate: the example sentence is (or was) in the present tense, not the sentence that followed it, or this one. It is happening as the reader is reading it. Well, okay, it's only fiction so it isn't really happening, but you know what I mean.
Articles, such as this one, are almost always written in the present tense. To give you an example, the following is what this paragraph would read like in the past tense (you'll see how little sense it makes):
Articles, such as that one, were almost always written in the present tense. To have given you an example, the following was what that paragraph would have read like in the past tense (you'll have seen how little sense it made):
Note: please ignore the statement in the above paragraph. It wasn't really going to give another example, that paragraph is simply the example referred to in the paragraph that went before it. Also note that in the parenthetical bit above (two paragraphs ago), the future tense was used... Got it? Okay, let's move on to the more complex stuff!
The future tense is rarely used, except in such cases as "I will write a letter to the editor." The speaker in this case is making a prediction (or, if you prefer, stating a future course of action).
A variation on the future tense is when the speaker (or writer) predicts a future time when he or she will be looking back at an action that has been completed in the future time but has not in the present time yet been completed: "by this time tomorrow, I will have written a letter to the editor."
Needless to say, this does not mean that the speaker or writer is in any way psychic: most future tense sentences are not so much predictions as they are intentions or extrapolations.
To take the example further, say I intend that by this time tomorrow (which of course is in the past as you read this, but that's beside the point) I will have written my letter to the editor, but not yet posted it. I could say, "By this time tomorrow I will have written a letter to the editor, but not yet posted it."
In that case, "yet" refers to the future time. Note the difference if I were to say, "I have written to the editor but not yet posted it": "yet" in this case refers to the present.
Another example: Present tense - "I should have gone shopping" means that there was a past action that I did not take. Then, in the past, I perhaps should have said "I should go shopping", which of course refers to a future intention but is presented in the present tense. This is complex enough, but gets even complexer when you look at a present tense immediate sentence: "I should be shopping." This is not a prediction, rather an observation. It gets complexest when you add in the future tense: "By this time tomorrow I should be shopping." That one is a prediction: It does not mean that I'm predicting that by this time tomorrow I won't be shopping but will instead be doing something else, it means that I expect to be shopping.
As by now you will have seen, tenses are, were and always will be important to the writer. They can also be tough, but don't be scared: tenses are there to make things easier for you in the future by which time you will have come to be writing or have written or be about to write your novel or short story.
One final note: avoid time-travel novels. If a character who is to travel into his or her past makes a prediction that in their past they will refer to something in that past's future which is also in the character's current present's past, it can be difficult, even though the character will already know that the thing they are predicting will be true. So it won't be so much prediction as it will be remembering. It doesn't help that - as I write this - time travel has not yet been invented, which means that time travel novels are always going to be primarily based in the future. It helps even less further still when you remember that novels are almost always written in the past tense, regardless of whether they're set in the future.
If time-travel ever does get to have become a reality, perhaps the time-travellers will one day have been reading this and perhaps they can come back to when I'm now writing it and will be letting me know the correct way to have been writing about tenses! So, if you're reading this and they haven't - or won't yet be haven't - changed the text, we'll know that time-travel never will really be possible. In this way, I am now predicting the future and I'm using the present tense!
And that's one of the most important things about writing.
Exercises:
- "When I go shopping, I will post my letter to the editor." Specify the tense of this sentence. Explain the writer's intention.
- "After I went shopping, I realised I should have posted my letter to the editor." What does the writer mean by "should" in this example?
- "After I come back from having gone shopping, I hope that I don't find I will have forgotten to have posted my letter to the editor." In your own words, rewrite this sentence from the point of view of a fifteenth-century time-traveller who is visiting the thirtieth century, so that it is in the past tense but told from a past past tense, not a future past tense. Then go and have a lie down.
- Write a letter to the editor complaining about this article. Then go shopping. Don't forget to post your letter.
Next issue: Lesson 3 - Grammar: What it's for and that sort of thing.