Look, writing is hard. I get it. There’s a lot to juggle. You want consistent characterization simultaneously with personal growth. You want adventure and adrenaline inducing action while keeping some resemblance to reality. You want… some other contradiction that I can’t think of at the moment because a lot of writing is making sure you’re grammatically correct while still coming up with creative ideas.

It’s a lot. 

For anyone. 

Sometimes mistakes happen. They’re pretty inevitable, really. Like death and taxes but without the pithy idiom. Not to mention English is a tricky language to write. I assume you all are writing in English. I mean, I don’t know how you’d be reading this blog otherwise. And while I’m certain there are cultural considerations to take into account when writing in other languages, I don’t know them so I’m not going to discuss them. 

Today is a grammar tip though. Please, for the love that is all good and enjoyable, please watch your tenses. I know, sometimes we think we want to write in present and then halfway through we switch to past and oops I didn’t notice but it’s already so far along who is really going to care?

I will.

I also wouldn’t recommend swapping tenses for artistic effect unless it is abundantly clear why you’re doing it. Doubly so if it’s meant to be interspersed within the same chapter/sections/paragraphs/sentences. It really just reads as a mistake and little else. Can you do it? Well, if you follow a prior tip of “break every rule but intentionally” then sure. But it’s going to be difficult. You could, say, have different tenses between prose and dialogue. Quotation marks are an easy delineation between two different states that are easy for the reader to follow. You could have it in prose between thoughts and descriptions. Toss them in italics and I’m sure no one would blink an eye. 

But do be aware that it is jarring. Which might be what you’re going for but it’s important to weigh how jarring it is to flop between tenses. 

It’s especially hard to do nonchalantly too since more often than not if you come across a tense change in the wild it’s just a straight up mistake. So most readers are already primed to see that shift in an unfavourable light. 

So, please practice responsible grammar mistakes.

When writing and considering incorporating different tenses into the same passage, ask yourself:

Is the reason for the tense change clear? Can the reader immediately see a separation between when it’s used and when it’s not and why it is happening?

Did I actually mean to shift my tenses in the first place?