Tenses · 6:53am Apr 10th, 2014
So up until now I've been writing Destination: Thataway in the past tense with little asides where the narrator talks to the audience in the present tense. I know that this is wrong by pretty much every grammatical standard unless I explicitly separate the two tenses apart - which I haven't. So far I have received no complaints in regards to the tense of the story, but then again not everyone would complain. Some would just stop reading without letting me know why. I may be slightly paranoid, but I might be driving people away with the inconsistent tenses.
What I'm asking is, should I change the tenses? I feel like changing the entire thing to be in either the past or the present would throw off the effect of the narrator's asides; turning them into thoughts instead of after-the-fact comments like they are now. If I get a couple people who say I should change the tense to be consistent, either all in the past or all in the future, I will. If I don't get any replies to this it will stay the same.
That said, if I change the tenses then going through the story again would give me an excuse to proofread for any errors or minor fixes I could make. Such as misspellings that nobody's pointed out or grammatical missteps I've made. The chapters that are in the story are by and large the first drafts, with very little to no editing done prior to posting. Changing the tenses might provide the motivation to actually re-read my already posted chapters for typos and such, improving the story even further.
Also, if I go back and edit my old chapters it might inspire me to write new ones faster. It only took me four months to get my latest chapter out... You never know.
I feel like I'm rambling so I'll stop here. If you let me know either way, that'd be awesome.
I like the added commentary. Yes, it can be considered gramatically wrong, but if you know the rule, you can figure out how to break it. there is a way to write commentary so it stays within your tense flow. Since it's stuff on the past, it should use past tense, anyway - "When I went to the store and bought one per cent milk, it was blue and chunky. When I turned on the news later, I learned that the batch of milk I had bought was destined for the garbage. I didn't realize that they had issued a recall. In retrospect, since I really needed the extra cash that month, I should have checked the news first. I could have waited the next couple of days until my pay cheque, but I had already bought the milk, and the store I bought it from never accepted returns on food. Live and learn, I guess." It's a matter of making it sound like a shoulda coulda woulda, or a that was interesting, rather than an at the time of narration thought or using present tense.