tense struggles

[emothy]

Tenses are evil!

And it's so ironic that I'm having trouble with this fic I've been wanting to write, and the tenses where I've been writing different parts at different times and in a different order (I usually go from the beginning because I'm anal, but this time I decided where I had started was too far in and had to go backwards to come forwards), are all fucked up and I think I've even confused Cyn in trying to work out how it should go. Maybe I should rewrite the beginning in the original tense instead of trying to adjust the first stuff I wrote to THAT tense. But it's hard no matter what :x

But yeah it's ironic because recently a lot of the fic I give a chance and read is full of really awful middle-of-sentence tense changes. And I don't do THAT, but I'm talking multiple times in a sentence, and the next one, and the next. It might stay still for a paragraph or so, but it's obvious certain turns of phrase are tricky for some people. Maybe English isn't their first language, I don't know.

Unfortunately, it IS mine!

Stupid fic I've been wanting to write for ages.

Comments

[vacivity.livejournal.com]

I hate tenses and everything -_-

[thelittleone]

This is just me, but I tend to do that too. Tenses are tricky, tricky things. I find that a beta-reader usually helps, but you'd need someone you trust because that way all they need to do is change the tenses. I usually ask that they change the color of what they've changed and simply strike out what they have so that I can keep track of what's different post-beta.

Kam slpwlkngdreamer is usually mine, so no problem there.

[fsop.livejournal.com]

I don't usually, or if I do it's intentional, but I definitely think this time it's from writing different parts and different times; I ended up with different feels and styles I'm trying to mesh together!

I've never really had a beta reader; sometimes friends will read stuff over for me to check there's no glaringly obvious mistakes, but I trust myself in my writing, and I'm of the belief that if I haven't caught it the first time, I never will ;)

I have beta-ed somewhat for others before, and I always marked what I'd changed in red so they could see; mostly spelling corrections and stuff. Or if I had a query as to what a character was saying or doing I'd put it in an aside :)