Veronica8 How do I know I'm mixing my tenses around?

It's a common question that pops up a lot for writers. And most recently here

Sometimes, it's not easy to see. The common flags to look for are:

  • Does your verb/adverb end in '-ed'? Then it's past.
  • Does it end in '-ing' or '-s'? Then the tense is present.

An example of a mixed/shifted tense scene:

John is walking to the pub. He walked into the bar and is fighting with people. Bruce is yelling to stop the fight. He approached John and stopped him.

Can you spot what verbs are present and past? Yep. The verbs in red are present. Those in blue are past.

Of course, the English language is quirky where rules can be flexed to suit the context. But, seeing the most common flags will help improve on avoiding mix-tenses within a story. The rule for tense usage is absolute.

My advice to newbies. Learn to write your story in third person limited - past tense. This is the easiest to grasp for avoiding the pitfalls of mixing tenses.

Oxymoron Anyone?

:grin: Apart from being my favorite term to drop, it's actually a cool form of expression.

Some link explanations of this term:
https://literarydevices.net/oxymoron/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron

In short. An oxymoron is when two contradicting word types are joined to form a locution (form of expression).

Examples:

  • Bittersweet = a kind of taste
  • Civil war = war amongst civilians
  • Living dead = ugly zombies
  • Random order = not aligned to a set order
  • Unbiased opinion = an objective opinion

These kinds of locutions generally emphasize a characteristic, attribute or event.

    Veronica8 Literary words sound so cool. Oxymoron is one of them, and I love others like alliteration, anaphora, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, etc. They’re so fun to say~

      Chryiss Hyperbole is another one of my fav's. I almost want to make this my middle name :laughing:

      Evernote has a page of cool templates to check out. Link below.
      https://evernote.com/blog/12-creative-writing-templates/

      I especially like their premise template. I use something similar when I want to pitch a logline. Sometimes you need to describe your book in 100 words or fewer. So having a premise overview helps with this.

      I recommend practising on writing a premise. It'll help with book summary writing. You can even use premise templates to help with reviewing a book.

      Writer's Edit list of writing tools recommendations.
      https://writersedit.com/fiction-writing/5-must-have-tools-to-get-you-through-the-editing-process/

      To be honest, I have none of the ones listed in the article :laughing: I rely on an outdated Celtx to organize my manuscripts.

      Another free tool, that wasn't mentioned, which might be useful for story design organization is yWriter5 by Spacejock Software It's a homebrew type of freeware that's not too shabby.

      Screenshots of this app
      http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
      http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

      How Do I Write Less Abled Characters Into My Stories?

      Example: You have a cool character like Sekiro where they have an awesome prosthetic as their skill-card. Or the MC is wheelchair bound like X-Men's Xavier.

      These posts provide some tips:
      https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Disabled-Character
      https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/writing-for-young-readers/disabled-protagonists-childrens-ya-literature/
      https://smanewstoday.com/2019/05/28/disabled-characters-fiction/

      There are lots of books being written for the less abled.
      https://bookriot.com/2019/10/29/ya-books-with-disabled-characters/
      https://diversebooks.org/7-mg-and-ya-novelists-with-disabled-characters-share-what-inspired-their-stories/

      My Tip
      My experience, I felt it was best to write on the awesomeness and purpose to the storyline. Not the discrimination unless the story I was writing was tackling this in a healthy way.

      I wrote a main character (cough, Famine) who becomes permanently deaf due to an accident. In the same story series, one of the Knight-captains is mute and only speaks in sign language. So their story has a lot of sign language written into it (described as actions).

      My Sunflower story has two veterans with ailments. One is blind and the other has lost a foot. I focused on their facts and purpose more than their lack.

      There are many ways to tackle bodily lacks in stories. But whatever method is applied, it needs to be story centric. Is my view.

      Another Writer's Edit tip on Fantasy protags.

        11 days later
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        There are a lot of resources and I like the most of resources I saw in this thread.

        here is the list of my best writing resources.

        https://www.goodreads.com/ - is a place where you can find a huge amount of books about writing and of course you can read other books to get new ideas.

        https://www.bryndonovan.com/ - here you can find great tips

        https://www.essayedge.com/ - everything about academic and application papers writing and proofreading together with sources and samples.

        https://www.dailywritingtips.com/ - here you can find great tips and articles about writing to read

        You have provided really good resources especially Bryn Donovan. I would like to add Edusson where you can get more info about how to write such papers as a scholarship essay and other application papers. In general, there are a lot of sources and you choose the best one for your needs. Everything depends on type of a paper you are going to complete.

          There's been a lot of posts about what is copyright violation. One phrase to keep in mind:

          ["Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. "]

          quote source Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

            This is focused on Self Publishing, for those who are intending to make their books are business.

              2 months later

              I have seen a lot of shared services and bloggers who help with writing. I know some of them and they are really professional in their field. I can also recommend taking a look here to choose more services that can show you how to write specific papers such as a case study. But in any case, you must train a lot of you to want to learn how to write on your own. Find different exercises an do them daily and of course, you must read as many books, articles, blogs, news, and other sources as possible.

                2 months later

                Good day friends, at this period of my life I am a student, my name is Adam, I am in the 2nd year of university. I never thought that writing texts, essays, term papers is a very difficult and time-consuming process. Especially for those who already have no time, because I work to pay for my studies. Thank you for this service https://customwritinghelp.org/college-essay-help/ I couldn't have done it without it. I advise you to try it too!

                  4 months later

                  This is really a selection of great tips that will be useful to everyone and especially to me. thanks

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