This is number eighty-one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, RIGHT? For the most part, that would be the answer given by nearly every native English speaker if asked what the verb tenses are. I say “native speaker” because almost all English as Second Language (ESL) students are taught all the proper uses of the different tenses, while Americans generally skip all that. It went out with diagramming sentences in fourth grade.
The truth is that we use the twelve basic tenses all the time, but often use them incorrectly. If you know no better, then it’s all okay, right?
When writing for public consumption (rather than your private journal or a text message) it can be helpful to understand the different tenses and what they imply. It helps in clearly communicating to the reader. It might even be one thing that differentiates between humans and artificial intelligence. I’ll talk about the latter in a future post, but not today.
My writing of the Team Manager series was interrupted a few years ago by a new character introducing himself unexpectedly as I was driving along US 95 south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
“Hi. My name is Bob. I’ll be your demon this evening.”
Suddenly I had a 4,000-year-old happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon on my hands who demanded that I tell his version of the past four millennia of human history.
Whatever you say, Bob.
But writing Bob’s story, also involved determining the point of view. (I wrote about POV in my post on 9/15: “Put Your Butt Behind You.”) It was simple to declare it would be Bob’s Memoir, and thus be written in first person. Beyond that, though, I needed to decide if I would record it as if it was happening in the present, or would I write it as being in the past. The first sentence implies a first person simple present tense: “I’m Bob.” But the second sentence implies a simple future tense: “I’ll (I will) be your demon this evening.” In the same paragraph, Bob switches to a present perfect tense: “We’ve (We have) prepared a delectable array of vices…”
They are all typical usages in speech, but we lump them all together as just past, present, and future.
In the end, I let Bob decide when to use which tense, as it was his story. All three volumes of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon are available individually or as a collection at Bookapy.
I’m an expert at all this English language stuff because I have a bachelor’s degree in English, right? Ha! I don’t even come close. So, I turned to English professor Sarah Avery, writing as Dr. Pretentious, for the definitions of the twelve tenses. If you like contemporary and epic fantasy, check out her breakthrough novels in that category that got her out of academia and into noveling full time.
Dr. Pretentious broke the tenses down with a simple chart. Yes, there are past, present, and future. Let those be the labels for the rows. In the columns, we have simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive.
Simple past, present, and future are the tenses we all think of immediately: I did. I do. I will do. We can substitute nearly any verb in these three places and have a sensible statement.
But what if the statement involves an action that is continuing? The progressive tenses are all about duration and began before the moment being discussed, continue in the moment being discussed, and may or may not continue beyond the moment being discussed. Past, present, and future progressive: I was doing. I am doing. I will be doing. Note that these all require a verb ending in “-ing” (a participle).
The perfect tense is used to talk about the relationship or sequence of two moments in time. The action occurred and was completed before the moment being discussed. Past, present, and future perfect: I had done. I have done. I will have done. Isn’t that easy?
And finally, the perfect progressive tense describes both duration of the action and the relationship of the sequence. Past, present, and future perfect progressive: I had been doing. I have been doing. I will have been doing. Notice that these also require a verb ending in -ing.
And there we have the simple description of the twelve tenses in the English language. Why do we make it so complex?
The biggest problem for the author is in switching tenses in a story in a way that doesn’t make sense. This is often the case in colloquial speech. For example, “He shouted an insult at me and then he just leaves.” Both events described in the sentence happened in the past, but the second action was written as though in the present. While you might use this construction in a conversation at the dog park, it just doesn’t work in writing.
On the other hand, don’t change construction that distinguishes past action from present state of being. For example: “I walked to Jitters this morning and ordered my usual decaf quad grande Americano. I like my coffee hot, strong, and black.” In this instance, the past tense verbs of the first sentence indicate an action that happened earlier. The present tense verb in the second sentence indicates a present state of being. As long as I have not stopped liking black coffee, it should be present tense.
In attempting to be right in tense usage (or in trying to increase word count, or to sound more sophisticated and educated, i.e. pretentious) authors frequently resort to complicated sentence structures that require a certified grammarian to understand. We could invent all kinds of tenses to explain these.
“If he would have been elected…”
I think this might be called a past perfect conditional, but what would separate that from the more easily parsed past perfect? (Also called 'pluperfect' by some.)
“If he had been elected…”
When in doubt, use the simplest form that is clear.
Sometimes, people learn a rule in the English language and write all kinds of convoluted sentences to make it work. It’s not necessary to work so hard at it. Next week it’s something “Up With Which I Will Not Put.”
Enjoy!