It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010

You will have been conjugating: Other matters of tense

As we saw in the last chapter, a lot of the sentences people think are passive really aren't. But, with surprising frequency, these deceptively active sentences are nonetheless very bad:

Albert had been wanting to start saving and investing but, being caring, he was considering giving his savings to the woman he was seeing.

To avoid horrible sentences like this, we need to go beyond the simple concept of passive voice. We must get a better understanding of verbs and verb tenses. The following chart contains the basic tenses. You don't need to memorize their names. But you should read them at least once and note how they show when something happened and whether the action has been completed.

The progressive, which some call continuous, shows ongoing action. The progressive uses a form of to be, such as is, was, or are as an auxiliary—a helper.

The perfect shows that something is fully completed either by the time you're talking about it or by the time indicated. The perfect uses a form of have as an auxiliary.

A lot of writers get confused about which verb tense to use. Remember, all this jargon and analysis is rooted in simple common sense. For example, which do you think makes the best first sentence for a story?

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida.

The grandmother hadn't been wanting to go to Florida.

The grandmother hasn't been wanting to go to Florida.

The grandmother isn't wanting to go to Florida.

The grandmother will not have been wanting to go to Florida.

The first example is the opening sentence of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The others are examples of how bad verb tenses might have destroyed O'Connor's career. These sentences are busy, they're abstract, they're a little confusing, and they take longer to get to the point. Of course, there are times when these convoluted tenses capture your meaning and mood exactly. But it's obvious that often the simplest verb tense is the best verb tense.

Most straight news stories are written in the simple past tense. The reason: They tell of things that happened. For example, looking at the front page of the April 24, 2009, Los Angeles Times, I see stories that begin with

The Obama administration agreed . . . [agreed = simple past tense]

Emboldened Taliban fighters imposed control . . . [imposed = simple past tense]

The nation's consumer-in-chief made himself pointedly clear. . . [made = simple past tense]

All these sentences tell of things that happened. Simple past. But, looking at the same Los Angeles Times page, I also see these openers:

The Obama administration is preparing to admit into the United States . . . [is preparing = present progressive]

Sets Tomita pauses at Manzanar's southwest boundary and scans the high desert. . . [pauses = simple present; scans = simple present]

The reason behind the first example is simple: The news article wasn't reporting something that had happened. It was reporting something that was happening—the preparations were continuing— even as the reader was learning about them.

The second example is not as simple. For this long feature article, the writer chose to start off in the present tense, even though Sets Tomita had already finished his pausing and scanning long before reporter Pete Thomas sat at his keyboard to write about it. Why, then, is this past event written about in the present tense? Because the writer chose it as a creative device. No doubt, he felt that bringing the Reader into the moment would enrich the Reader's experience. There was no need to tell the Reader, "Even though it sounds like this is going on right now, it actually happened days ago." The Reader knows that. He knows he's been invited along on a journey. Would he enjoy it more if it were written in the past tense? Who's to say? Thomas gambled that the present tense would work best, and if his editors and copy editors disagreed, it never would have made it into the newspaper that way.

Fiction, too, is often written in the past tense. Novelists and short story writers sometimes choose the present tense, usually for the same reason we saw in the last example: the present tense carries an in-the-moment urgency not found in past tenses, so it's a valid creative device.

Yet, despite this obvious benefit, the present tense is surprisingly unpopular in professional writing. In You've Got to Read This, an anthology of thirty-five short stories by some of fiction's most acclaimed writers, only five of the stories are in the present tense. Of the remaining thirty, a few start out with some overview information in the present tense, like John Updike's "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car," which begins, "Different things move us." But after two paragraphs Updike shifts to the past tense with a simple adverbial device: "Last night." That's where the real story begins.

The five stories not in the past tense tend to be short and some have an experimental feel, like Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," which is just one and a half pages long, comprises just a single sentence, and is written primarily in the imperative—that is, in commands: "Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry . . ."

We can only guess why thirty of the writers told their stories in the past tense. Maybe it's just too hard to keep up the level of intensity created by the present tense. Maybe they felt that present tense is too demanding on the Reader, perhaps even tiring. Maybe they felt it would have distracted from their stories. Maybe they wanted a plain-vanilla traditional vehicle for telling their stories because they were more interested in the story itself than in playing with conventions of form.

Present-tense storytelling is even rarer in longer forms—for example, in the novel. If present-tense intensity is hard to maintain for ten pages, it's probably about thirty times harder to maintain for three hundred pages.

I can't tell you which tense to choose for your writing. No one can. But there's much to be learned by professional writers' choices. Simple past tense is the standard form. It's a safe choice. You can deviate from it, but unless you have a good reason to, maybe you shouldn't.

So far, we've been looking at straightforward tenses: simple past, present progressive, and simple present. But what about more complex tenses?

Tommy Q. Public was applying to law school, [past progressive]

Jane Doe had been making breakfast when she heard the crash, [past perfect progressive]

Obviously, these tenses can be indispensable and have a place in both fiction and nonfiction. In fiction, especially, if a writer can pull it off, she's free to load up her stories with stuff like

Pilly Bilgrim will have been becoming unstuck in time, [future perfect progressive]

But even writers who want to avoid these tenses should understand how they function.

As explained in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style, the past perfect is used for an "action completed before another." The past perfect progressive is used for a "continuing action interrupted by another." The future perfect progressive is for a "continuing future action done before another."

Notice how these all mention "another"? These complex verb tenses tell when one action took place relative to when another took place:

After having been rejected by NASA and Caltech, Lucky got a job at McDonald's.

The verb tenses tell us that Lucky got the McDonald's job after the other two places shot him down. But they tell us something more. We know that Lucky got a job is the big event in this sentence.

After having been rejected is something that happened relative to that big moment. So verb tenses, like subordination, tell the Reader what information is most important. Amy had been going to the same beauty parlor for twenty years begs to be followed by when, as in when her hair fell out.

This is why past-tense stories are told primarily in the simple past tense and why present-tense stories stick mainly to the simple present tense: because every alternative flies in the face of the Reader's expectations. Readers expect the simple-tense stuff to be the main story. The stuff in more complicated tenses is presumed to relate other events to that main story's timeline.

Can you defy these expectations, play with verb tenses, look for other approaches, and use experimental methods in your writing? Sure. If you can pull it off. Just remember that in those thirty-five short stories, none of the writers from Welty to Kafka even bothered to try. And there's a good reason why no Dickens novel begins, "It had been being the best of times, it had been being the worst of times."

Usually, you can shift from a more complex tense to a simple one after just one sentence:

Valerie had slept for hours. She dreamed about wild horses and smoke signals.

The first sentence is past perfect. But for the second sentence the writer shifted to simple past tense. That's okay because the Reader gets it. The first sentence is all you need to anchor this story at a point in time. Sure, the writer could have continued with the past perfect tense:

Valerie had slept for hours. She had dreamed about wild horses and smoke signals. She had woken several times when she had heard noises. But the noises had been nothing more than the wind. She had realized this quickly and had fallen back asleep right away. Only after she had had a full night's sleep had she finally gotten out of bed.

That's grammatically fine yet borderline unreadable. You can tell that a shift to the past is coming. It has to. No story can go on like this. So there's no reason to delay the switch from past perfect to simple past. Might as well get it out of the way sooner rather than later:

Valerie had slept for hours. She dreamed about wild horses and smoke signals. She woke up several times when she heard noises. But the noises were nothing more than the wind. She realized this quickly and fell back asleep right away. Only after she had a full night's sleep did she finally get out of bed.

Let's look at another passage that shifts to a simple tense:

The rain had been falling for days. It pummeled Chuck's bedroom window.

We could have stuck with the past perfect for our second sentence. But there was no reason to. The Reader had received his time cue. So it was okay to shift into "and from there our story gets under way" mode.

Not all tense shifts are as smooth:

Umberto was an excellent wrestler who is kind and always eager to be helpful.

This is what people mean by a bad tense shift. It's clearly a mistake. The writer lost track of the time period she was writing about. It's a common problem, but it's pretty easy to avoid. Just remember the when of your story and remember to be consistent and logical.

Sometimes tense combinations can be tricky. For example, compare

Copernicus was thrilled when he discovered that the earth revolves around the sun.

to

Copernicus was thrilled when he discovered that the earth revolved around the sun.

Which is right? They both are. But the first one is better.

It is true that the earth revolved around the sun. It is also true that the earth revolves around the sun. But which is more notable to the Reader? Well, Copernicus's discovery wasn't true only back then, nor has it lost its significance. It informs our science to this day. That's why most would agree that the continuing revolving is even more notable than the revolving that was going on in Copernicus's day.

All the verb tenses and even the passive voice are tools you can use anytime that they work. But simple past tense and active voice are safe choices that can save you anytime you get into trouble.