GRAMMAR: not Gramper
May. 24th, 2008 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaOkay, maybe it isn't grammar. Maybe it's usage. Anyhow, for those of you who copyedit or just read widely, here's a question. Well, it's more of an example.
When you're writing fiction in the past tense, all the action in the "now" of the book is in past tense. But when you mention something that is true and will remain true, you're supposed to acknowledge the "eternal is" condition by using what looks like present tense, but which I'm sure is actually some other "mode" or "mood" that I ought to be able to name (but I can't.)
That doesn't make sense. How about an example?
(I know--it would be nice to be able to assume that all readers know where Stanford is, but they probably won't, these days. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to clarify that in a novel. But that's just a made-up example. And, by the way, it IS called "Leland Stanford Junior University"; it's named after Leland Stanford, junior.)
I COULD write "was in Palo Alto," but the rule of thumb that I learned way back when says that if you have a condition that is unchanging, such as "Washington, D. C., is not a state, but a district," you say it that way. It still IS a district and not a state when the reader is reading the book.
But anyhow, here's the passage I'm brooding over:
I suppose I could just go put all of the stuff between the asterisks* into past tense. But I think there might still be a few editors and copyeditors who are aware of this rule and who will know why I am "suddenly changing tenses." But do they own a copy of Curme's Grammar? Do they care about this shade of difference? Or will they just fall apart with the expectation that I'm going to "switch tenses whenever I feel like it" (as one agent has already said on a blog about a passage by someone else that didn't have a tense-switch at all)?
Oh, and I also found another weirdness in the first three chapters that I sent to agent H. R. *facepalm* In the passage above, instead of just having the word "thirty," my text read, "*HOW OLD--THIRTY?*" That had been in hidden text in an old draft, and never printed out or showed on the screen before. I think it popped back up after I went through and did a "compare documents" with a copy that had some suggested edits; Word sometimes un-hides hidden text. At any rate, *headdesk*. No wonder she hasn't responded. She'll probably never write back. It'll be more merciful that way.
I always read things over before I send them, so maybe that wasn't in the copy I sent . . . but it probably was, because I e-mailed my stuff. Oh, well. Que sera, sera.
* I con't go out on a limb about this, because I have only one asterisk. (Punster alert!)
When you're writing fiction in the past tense, all the action in the "now" of the book is in past tense. But when you mention something that is true and will remain true, you're supposed to acknowledge the "eternal is" condition by using what looks like present tense, but which I'm sure is actually some other "mode" or "mood" that I ought to be able to name (but I can't.)
That doesn't make sense. How about an example?
I turned to face him. Was he serious? He thought Stanford was in Iowa? Leland Stanford Junior University is just outside Palo Alto, California.
(I know--it would be nice to be able to assume that all readers know where Stanford is, but they probably won't, these days. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to clarify that in a novel. But that's just a made-up example. And, by the way, it IS called "Leland Stanford Junior University"; it's named after Leland Stanford, junior.)
I COULD write "was in Palo Alto," but the rule of thumb that I learned way back when says that if you have a condition that is unchanging, such as "Washington, D. C., is not a state, but a district," you say it that way. It still IS a district and not a state when the reader is reading the book.
But anyhow, here's the passage I'm brooding over:
"Have you eaten today?"
My stomach growled in response. I had missed lunch. But I wasn't very hungry. I scavenged in her pantry and found low-salt tortilla chips. I dumped some in her cobalt blue serving bowl and dug her homemade salsa out of the fridge. *Zoe makes the most brilliant tomatillo-roasted red pepper salsa, along with all sorts of other gourmet delicacies, which keeps her a little stocky, not that she cared. Whereas I haven't gotten fat yet, though I dread the onset of scale-creep; it happened to my sister last year when she turned thirty, and even to our super-disciplined mother soon after forty. Thank goodness I still have a couple of good years left. I hope.*
I suppose I could just go put all of the stuff between the asterisks* into past tense. But I think there might still be a few editors and copyeditors who are aware of this rule and who will know why I am "suddenly changing tenses." But do they own a copy of Curme's Grammar? Do they care about this shade of difference? Or will they just fall apart with the expectation that I'm going to "switch tenses whenever I feel like it" (as one agent has already said on a blog about a passage by someone else that didn't have a tense-switch at all)?
Oh, and I also found another weirdness in the first three chapters that I sent to agent H. R. *facepalm* In the passage above, instead of just having the word "thirty," my text read, "*HOW OLD--THIRTY?*" That had been in hidden text in an old draft, and never printed out or showed on the screen before. I think it popped back up after I went through and did a "compare documents" with a copy that had some suggested edits; Word sometimes un-hides hidden text. At any rate, *headdesk*. No wonder she hasn't responded. She'll probably never write back. It'll be more merciful that way.
I always read things over before I send them, so maybe that wasn't in the copy I sent . . . but it probably was, because I e-mailed my stuff. Oh, well. Que sera, sera.
* I con't go out on a limb about this, because I have only one asterisk. (Punster alert!)
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 10:44 am (UTC)The passage reads perfectly OK to me. As you say, the story "now" is some time in the past, though with first person, you kind of have two story "now"s. There's the point in time where the narrator is at the moment she is telling the story and the point in time that she's talking about. These can be either more or less simultaneous -- Dick Francis uses a first person past tense that assumes we're somehow riding along in the narrator's head and things are being relayed more or less as they happen -- or they can be many years apart, as in the case of a very old person recounting the story of their youth.
So... present tense is absolutely correct if we assume that your narrator is telling or writing this story either as it happens or very shortly after.
If, however, she was now an old woman in her eighties and is recounting the story many years after the event, then it would all be in the past, eg:
I dumped some in her cobalt blue serving bowl and dug her homemade salsa out of the fridge. Zoe used to make the most brilliant tomatillo-roasted red pepper salsa, along with all sorts of other gourmet delicacies, which kept her a little stocky, not that she cared. Whereas I hadn't yet gotten fat, though I dreaded the onset of scale-creep; it happened to my sister when she turned thirty, and even to our super-disciplined mother soon after forty. At that time I still had a couple of good years left. At least that was what I hoped.
(Or if she never does get fat and is now a skinny little old lady, then something like...)
I dumped some in her cobalt blue serving bowl and dug her homemade salsa out of the fridge. Zoe used to make the most brilliant tomatillo-roasted red pepper salsa, along with all sorts of other gourmet delicacies, which kept her a little stocky, not that she cared. I still worried then about getting fat. I dreaded the onset of scale-creep; it happened to my sister when she turned thirty, and even to our super-disciplined mother soon after forty. I didn't know then that I'd inherited Aunt Mable's gene for skinniness, so I only took a meagre helping.
Or whatever...
I hope that makes some sense! It's awfully difficult to explain clearly and if I was doing it face to face, it would involve a lot of gesticulating -- which probably wouldn't really help, but would make me feel I was conveying things better. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 01:34 pm (UTC)If rules were followed without wavering all of the time, everyone's writing would look exactly the same (and be quite bland)
My personal favorite is breaking the "passive voice" rule. I'm sorry, I do not care to revise that last sentence, I used passive voice for a reason, because the subject was passively experiencing something.
And the rules I break in photography? Don't get me started...
[sigh]