'Was' or 'Is' - Help please!

Hi Sarah,

There's a lot I could say on the subject of tenses. I mix them around a bit myself, usually to try to create an effect. With the example you've given, though, I'd change it to 'was' to keep it in the past. Don't worry about the readers being confused with the implication that 'was' means 'not any more'. They'll overlook that. It's like if you were writing an historical novel set in the Himalayas, and you said something like 'Everest was huge in the morning light.' Everest is still huge - and asteroids will generally always be uninhabitable.

Hope this helps. Don't worry... it's points like this that we all fret over!

I agree with Stan. Fretting over this issue did bother me for quite a while until I read my story out loud and realized in order to get a proper flow I had to mix tenses. Otherwise you could end up with this---He gets up, leaps across the floor, picks up his comb, flicks it through his hair, and belches loudly. I say it's better this way---He got up, leaped across the floor, picked up his comb, flicks it through his hair, and belches loudly. Good luck and keep writing. Richard LP

I think stan's right with this one it should be 'was' in this context :-)

Hello Sarah. I think the question of tenses in writing is one of the most tricky and confusing to deal with. The particular instance you refer to (and I do see your point) I think should be 'was' and your intended meaning will be understood by the reader. As Richard and Stan have already mentioned, don't get too stressed about it. Read it aloud, see if it sounds right. I find it more of an intuitive issue rather than grammatical. When you read the sentence...

‘The surface of the asteroid is uninhabitable so Angel Ridge exploited the caves and tunnels left behind by mining.’

...you will see that it feels awkward in the context of everything else, and therein lies the clue. 'WAS' fits and feels much better that 'IS'. Don't let technicalities bog you down, keep your flow, and trust your inuition of what sounds and feels right to you when you read it back. I also find it much better if I do not edit right away. Leave the story (or whatever it is you are writing) to 'cool' for a few days. You will come back to it afresh and things will jump aout at you that otherwise you would have missed.

All of us still get it wrong now and again, but hey... it's not the end of the world to make a few mistakes, is it?

sue

Sage advice from Sue, leave it alone a while and things that confound at first seem obvious after the break.

Thanks everyone.

Once again, I knew I could count on ABC’ers to help me out. It’s difficult to get past something when it gets stuck in your head so I appreciate all your comments. I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets in a pickle with tenses!

I think I will take Sue’s advice – leave it for a while and then go back to it with fresh eyes.

Indrani Ananda

Hello MissTee,
This is the sort of thing I am constantly confused by. Writing in the first person seems to produce more of these dilemmas.
I would have written "is", I think, because if the asteroid is in an uninhabitable state at the time of the author's narrative, it's not going to change overnight, is it?
If something has been done to make the asteroid inhabitable since its former state and the present timeline of the writer, then it should read "was". If you get it wrong in a poem - just say "It's Poetic Licence."

Indrani

Hm. I still think, as in 'he said... she said', the reader will accept it and overlook it. The jump of tenses from 'is' to 'left' might confuse too much. I've used a change from past to present as an effect, but not usually in the same sentence.

Here's an interesting example of tense use from an excellent short story I've just read - 'Pretty Ice' by Mary Robison:

"My yard was a frozen pond, and I was careful on the walkway. My mother hit her car horn again... I could see her breath rolling away in clouds from the cranked-down window of her Mazda. I have never owned a car nor learned to drive, but I had a low opinion of my mother's compact. My father and I used to enjoy big cars, with tops that came down. We were both tall and we wanted what he called 'stretch room'. My father had been dead for fourteen years, but I resented my mother's buying a car in which he would not have fitted."

There's scrupulous attention to grammar here - including the technically correct, if fussy-sounding 'I resented my mother's buying a car...'; nowadays, most people would probably say 'I resented my mother buying a car...' because the sense is understood, even if the construction is faulty (the action her mother took, buying the car, is what she resented - so 'buying the car' is the object of the sentence, not her mother. Saying 'mother' in that sentence would be the same as saying 'I resented my mother decision').

The piece is told in the past tense, but from the present standpoint in the first person. She says 'I have never owned...' - because the condition of her not owning a car continues to this day. 'We were both tall' means that they'd both been tall people - but not that she is now short (though she might be!) The sense that she was, and still is tall is understood to be continuous. Similarly, '...but I had a low opinion of my mother's compact' does not mean that she has since changed her opinion (if she had changed her opinion, she might have added the qualifier 'at the time, I had a low opinion' etc). The same sense, to my mind, applies to an asteroid: it was, and will remain, uninhabitable.

Hope that makes sense. It might pay to read a decent grammar guide for better information about verb tenses... and there's some useful info here:
http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/usetense.html
The link to 'sequence of tenses' at the beginning of the article may provide the answer you need.

There's also a very useful book for writers, which addresses all these technical issues:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Characters-Viewpoint-elements-fiction-writing/dp...

Though there's probably no real substitute for lots of fiction reading... and careful reading (not speed reading!), which will enable you to examine and better understand elements of style, uses of grammar, etc.