Then and Now

Keep your tense/time consistent in your writing. The simplest tenses are present, past and future, however there are multiple variables for each tense – simple, progressive, perfect and perfect-progressive. For the purposes of this week’s lesson, we will concentrate on the simple versions.

We use the basic form of a verb for the present tense and uses add “s” to the end when we use it for a third person (singular): I talk, you talk, he/she talks. The progressive-present form is often preceded with the verbs am/is/are and adding “ing” to the verb: I am walking, You are coming, He is breathing.

When we write about something that has already happened, we use the past tense of the verb. In several cases his usually involves adding “ed” to the end of the verb; sometimes though there are slight variations on the word to make it past such as speak/spoke, eat/ate, think/thought, take/took.

Future tense is made by adding an auxiliary verb, such as will, to the basic present tense – I will walk, I will see you, I will buy it. You can also make a future conditional statement with words like “would”, “I would talk if…” Use would if the statement is conditional based on other conditions or if you are posing a question such as “Would you sit with me?”

When you are writing, you should keep your time period consistent. While the time period may change over the course of your story, each scene, paragraph or sentence should contain only one tense. An exception to this rule is if you are writing a sentence that includes reference to another time period such as “I told (past) him we would come (future) here someday”, “I love to hear (present) about how my parents traveled (past) to this country”.

You can punch up your writing and make it stronger depending on whether you use active or passive verbs. In active sentences, the thing doing the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing receiving the action is the object; for example – The boy hit the ball. In passive sentences, the thing receiving the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing doing the action is optionally included near the end of the sentence; for example – The ball was hit by the boy. You can make active or passive sentences with any of the tenses.

Writing exercise: In each of the sentences below, pick out the verb and list whether it is past, present or future. Then rewrite each sentence in another tense (if it is present, rewrite it as future; future, rewrite as past; past, rewrite as present)
We sit in church.
He talked to the class.
The bells chimed loudly.
The pilot flies the plane.
The dog is barking.
We will listen to the concert.
I saw my ex-boyfriend at the party.
We went apple picking.
I am driving the car.
I thought I saw a pussycat.

Writing prompt: What did you do yesterday you would like to do today? What would you do if you could do it every day? Write a paragraph about that.