Writing Tense

Writing tense doesn’t refer to how tense a writer may feel when writing, but is instead about the tense the story is written in. There are a few no-no’s about this that writers, especially new writers, should be aware of.  

It doesn’t occur often, but occasionally a client sends me a manuscript written in a moment-by-moment manner, as the story is supposed to be happening. Example: Mary walks into the room and looks around. She sees the vase has been moved and puts it back into its proper place. Mary then walks to the sofa and adjusts one of the pillows.

Sorry, but this is not a novel—it’s stage directions for a play. And this is never ever how a novel should read. An acquaintance shared that an agent told him his manuscript would never be considered as long as it’s written in this manner. His is a compelling story (based on the few chapters he let me read); but until he revises it, it will stay a file on his computer and an unfulfilled dream, unless he self-publishes it as is, which is not a good idea.

A client who wrote her novel this way approached me initially for a critique (developmental evaluation). Among other creative and technical suggestions, I advised her to revise the entire manuscript so it was in the proper tense and so that proper editing could be done. Yes, I could have rewritten it for her as part of developmental editing services instead of a critique, but that would have taken a good deal of time and expense; plus, she learned a great deal from the revision experience. Her book has an agent’s interest, which would not have happened otherwise.    

I ask you to consider why people read novels (and non-fiction) of any genre—it’s so they are taken into a mental/emotional space different from the one they're in. They want to sit back and let the story be a movie in their minds. A novel written in present tense (action as it happens) does something specific: it requires the reader to work. It's akin to asking a viewer to watch a movie on the screen and act out the parts of the characters at the same time, rather than sit back, watch, think, and feel. 

This writing style (and a few others) does something specific: It takes readers out of the reading experience they expect to have. This is not something readers appreciate. Readers prefer not to be reminded they're reading. They want the story to engage them, yes, but not in this way. A balance has to happen with writing—what's good for the writer and what's good for the reader. If only the writer is satisfied, this does not bode well for the book or the writer.

Anything that takes readers out of the reading experience is best avoided (writing style, typos, seriously misused punctuation, junk words, extraneous scenes and dialogue, etc.). You do have to trust your head-and-heart alignment about your writing, but you also benefit from paying attention to readers' responses to it, which includes responses from a developmental editor, whose primary concern is or should be to help you make your book the best it can be.

One client wrote a short story as part of a collective and did use as-it’s-happening narrative in that one instance. But we handled this in a specific way: We made it a news-type story delivered by a narrator, which was integral to the story, and is akin to listening to an announcer on the radio. Had it not been crafted this way, it wouldn’t have worked and would have contrasted with the other stories in the book that were written in the proper tense. It’s one thing to do this in a way that works for a short story and another for a lengthier novel. You don’t want to wear readers out while reading, if they’ll stick with it, that is.

I say this because I'm not just a developmental editor. I'm also an avid reader of many fiction and non-fiction genres. If the way a fiction or non-fiction book is written (which includes memoirs) annoys me, I won’t read it (it’s different, of course, if I’m wearing my editor cap). I’ve been trying to slog through a book someone gifted me with that annoys me no end to read. Nearly every sentence—and this is not an exaggeration—starts with a gerund or a participle. There are other annoying factors, but this one really stymies my ability to get through the book to learn what the author meant to convey. (Example: Understanding a choice had to be made Mary walked to the window and looked out. Realizing the choice wouldn’t be easy she stared out the window, yet saw nothing. Walking to the door she put her hand on the knob and paused. Turning the knob she walked out; her decision made. Knowing what she had to do, she dialed Mike’s phone number. Hearing him answer after the first ring, she hesitated.) Perhaps you can see how tedious it becomes to read something written in this way. And, sadly, it seems it could be a good book (based on the relatively few pages I’ve managed to read), if only an editor had advised the writer properly.

Let’s get back to writing tense. It’s also important that you don’t change tense in narrative, something I have seen a few writers do. (Example: Mary walked into the room and looked around. She sees the vase has been moved and puts it back into its proper place.) You can shift tense in dialogue because people do speak in past, present, and future tense; but you have to stick to one tense—the right tense—in narrative. Now, relax and write tense well.

I wish you the best with your writing and progress.

Need a Book Doctor or an incentive to write or complete your manuscript? Let Joyce L. Shafer be your writing coach, developmental editor, or provide a critique. Details about her services at http://editmybookandmore.weebly.com/

The Importance of Setting in a Fiction or Nonfiction Book

Setting is integral to story, just as the characters and plot/theme are. Setting is about balance: you don’t want to give too little description and you don’t want to overdo it.

Setting is where the story and each scene take place, which you know. But do you grasp that setting can set the tone and mood readers experience, and can reveal and or trigger characters’ moods? You want to give enough (not too much) description for each scene to set the appearance, atmosphere, and mood for readers so they are clear enough in their own minds about the general or specific image you intend for them to have. It may help to create a list or essay description for your scenes (like a character sketch) and keep these handy so you stay consistent throughout the scenes and story.

Give places texture through description. Here’s an example from a James Lee Burke novel:  

“They drove back onto the four-lane and crossed the bridge over the wide sweep of the Atchafalaya River. From the bridge’s apex, Morgan City looked like a Caribbean port, with its palm-dotted streets, red-tiled roofs, biscuit-colored stucco buildings, and shotgun houses fronted by ceiling-high windows and ventilated green shutters.”

As I said, it doesn’t have to be overdone, just give readers something that helps them form an adequate image in their minds and sets mood and atmosphere—and gives them a sense of place.

Here’s another example from a James Lee Burke novel that puts “place” to where his main character lives: 

“I drove home at 5 p.m. and parked my pickup truck under the porte cochere attached to the shotgun house where Molly and I live in what is called the historical district of New Iberia. Our home is a modest one compared to the Victorian and antebellum structures that define most of East Main, but nonetheless it is a beautiful old place, built of cypress and oak, long and square in shape, like a boxcar, with high ceilings and windows, a small gallery and peaked tin roof, and ventilated green shutters that you can latch over the glass during hurricane season.

The flower beds are planted with azaleas, lilies, hibiscus, philodendron, and rosebushes in the sun and caladiums and hydrangeas in the shade. The yard is over an acre in size and covered with pecan trees, slash pine, and live oaks. The back of the property slopes down to the Teche, and late at night barges and tugboats with green and red running lights drone heavily through the drawbridge at Burke Street on their way to Morgan City. At early dawn there is often ground fog in the trees and on the bayou, and inside it you can sometimes hear a gator flopping or ducks wimpling the shallows.”

You want to make the inner and outer landscapes in your story as real as possible for readers. You want readers to feel as if they’ve been there, to feel connection to the story through location. They want to feel this, too. If you intend to or are writing a series with the same character or characters, you will have to describe some settings (and character descriptions) in each book, when appropriate, but with only enough information to give adequate description to new readers and refresh memories for those who follow the series.

A character’s scene setting can influence or reveal something about his or her internal landscape, as well. How you do this is more important than what you use to do it with. Here’s an example from an Elizabeth George novel (British—so spellings of some words are different):

            She parked the Mini with one of its front tyres on the kerb and went to see what the Breakwater had to offer. Not much, she discovered, a fact that other diners must have been aware of, because although it was the dinner hour, she found herself alone in the restaurant. She chose a table near the door in the hope of catching an errant sea breeze should one fortuitously decide to blow. She plucked the laminated menu from its upright position next to a vase of plastic carnations. After using it to fan herself for a minute, she gave it a look-over and decided that the Mega-Meal was not for her despite its bargain price (£5.50 for port sausage, bacon, tomato, eggs, mushrooms, steak, frankfurter, kidney, hamburger, lamb chops, and chips). She settled on the restaurant’s declared specialty: buck rarebit. She placed her order with a teenaged waitress sporting an impressive blemish precisely in the middle of her chin, and a moment later she saw that the Breakwater Restaurant was going to provide her with its own form of one-stop shopping.  [My note: She found a current newspaper with an article she needed to read on the front page.]

Look at the extraordinary amount of information revealed in that paragraph. You get a sense of so many things: what a traditional or culture-based meal might include; approximate time of day; either she’s a poor car parker or didn’t bother about parking better on this occasion (has a lot on her mind, perhaps; but if she does this often, you have a sense of what kind of ride her Mini is and its condition); she picked a place to eat that obviously is not a local favorite (is her choice because of location, unfamiliarity with the area, that’s she’s on a tight budget, is a spendthrift?); it’s hot as heck—she sat by the window, hoping for a breeze; the description of the menu (laminated) and the plastic carnations give visual images and an indication about what kind of place this is (service and food quality); she finds something there she needs other than just something to eat: a current newspaper. Of course, if you read this particular novel or the series it’s part of, you know the answers to the questions in parentheses; but you can see how much information is provided by setting the scene, even in one paragraph.

Always give readers a physical location to “land” in (including an address with a made-up numeral; though, a numeral isn’t always needed, as in the Burke example). You can boost sense of place if you use street names and highway names and their numbers—to make the story more realistic for readers. For example, Rex Stout placed the house of his orchid-growing detective, Nero Wolfe, at an address on West 35^th Street in Manhattan. The number part of the address, if real, would be in the Hudson River, but even though some readers may be aware of this (or not), they can identify with the surroundings or look up the street on a map so they get a sense of the neighborhood and where it fits in the layout of Manhattan. You may also have to make up brick-and-mortar businesses, etc., but keep these as realistically located as possible, if you’re using a real location.

How you handle setting matters because clarity is imperative. Everything you write creates a sequence of scenes in the minds of readers—they are experiencing a number of things simultaneously, so you must present them with information in a proper, reliable order. It’s mind-boggling as a reader (and as a developmental editor) to approach a scene and have the terrain alter from the original image the writer created in your mind as you move through the scene. One client didn’t have a particular scene setting clear in his mind, so just kept adding what he thought would be interesting or challenging for the characters in the scene (I was utterly confused about what the setting was supposed to look like, which I explained to the client). This kind of disorganized, willy-nilly scene creation makes readers (and editors) feel as though they were plucked from a stable environment and dropped into an altered reality. Unless your novel is about altered realities, don’t do this to readers; and if it is, make sure you do this with skill and clarity. Also don’t have what characters need appear out of thin air. Say a character needs a hammer. Unless you’ve set up where the character gets the hammer from, don’t have one appear in his or her hand from nowhere (unless your character is a magician or wizard). Everything has to be logical, even in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

One thing you might do is take photos of exact locations or locations that resemble ones you wish to create or use in your story, including exterior and interior photos (get permission, if needed—but notes can always be made without permission). This way, you have references you can pull from for descriptions and how scenes unfold when the terrain is important to the scene. (Most businesses won’t mind if you give them good promotion in your novel, but they will mind if you don’t—so make one up, if it plays a negative role in the story.)

You want settings to be as clear and real as possible for readers so you maintain the integrity of the story and readers’ ability to follow and connect with the story, scene by scene.

I wish you the best with your writing, process, and progress.

Joyce Shafer

“Editor, Joyce Shafer. What can I say? Simply put, no Joyce, no book. Part editor, part coach, part teacher, Joyce was absolutely phenomenal throughout the entire editing process. Working with Joyce was like taking a graduate course in writing with your all-time favorite teacher and you were the only student. I just can't say enough good things. Allow me a shameless plug for her services. ~ Eric Berbig, Author of The People’s Will

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