“It Is Madness To Hate All Roses Because You Got Scratched With One Thorn.”

We wait all of our life for temporary things, like it is a normal thing. We wait for the weekend, for holidays, vacations, but this is not what life is about. We should not wait (never) because our life is too short and people don't observe this.

“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”

— Anthony Doerr (via quotemadness)

hi! this is hard to explain but i’m trying to write my first proper story and i’m suddenly overthinking whether i’m writing in past or present tense. do you have any advice for that?

Hi and thanks for the ask!

As someone who tends to overthink things on a daily basis, I can imagine how troubled you might be about this. So I’ll try to make your decision at least a little bit easier.

In my opinion, choosing the tense you use is very much dependent on your personal preference. Although present tense seems to be more popular with today’s writers, personally, I prefer past tense. Apart from the question about popularity, though, there are different advantages and disadvantages for both choices. I’ll highlight the advantages and disadvantages for present tense only, since the opposite is obvious for the past tense.

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Advantages: Present tense has a more immediate feeling to it. Writing in present tense gives the reader the ability to experience the story in time with your characters. The moment a character changes, we experience that change in them as well. It also immerses the reader in the character’s emotions for longer than the past tense does. Moreover, handling tenses in general is a lot easier if you write in present tense rather than past tense.

Disadvantages: It’s a lot harder to manipulate the time inside a story. With present tense you usually only use past tense for the few things that actually happened in the past. That also makes it harder to create complex characters because phrases like “has always been” and the like can’t be used, since they would greatly disrupt the present tense’s main use. What’s more, the present tense author is experiencing the story at the same pace the characters do, so it is almost impossible to create a feeling of suspense. Even though you as the author, of course, know what will happen, phrases like “hadn’t known yet” and similar lines don’t fit well into a present tense story. Another possible trap the present tense sets, is misleading authors to write about mundane and trivial events that serve no plot function but would, of course, happen in a naturalistic sequence of actions.

***

I hope this somehow answers your question and makes it easier for you to decide whether to write in present tense or past tense.

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”

— Susan Sontag

Writing Tip #190

Your characters should always have an agenda in every scene. Their agenda can range from something simple like wanting to get to work on time to something larger like wanting to save their mother from the underworld. Make sure you know what each character’s agenda is in every scene. Set two characters agenda’s in opposition to prompt action, move the plot forward, and set up some great opportunities for dialogue.

The best advice really is to just write. Write badly - purple prose, stilted conversations, rambling descriptions. Don’t delete it, pass go, take your $200, save all your garbage in a big folder. Look at how much you’ve made - it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect, isn’t polished, it was practice. Every time you write you learn a little more, and find another piece of your voice.

how to determine whether your characters are developed enough or not

There’s a fool proof way to determine whether your characters has been developed enough or not. Ask yourself:

‘’Would my story still work if I removed this character from it?’‘

If your answer is:

“No, my story wouldn’t work, because this character is intertwined into the story to such an extent that if I were to remove them, the story is feels incomplete, and certain storylines won’t work.”

You’ve got yourself a well developed character.

If you can’t remove a character without causing inconsistencies to the plot, you’ve got a character that is dimensional enough to work on their own.

Hence, by removing said character, you’re removing a fundamental piece of the puzzle, which in turn forces certain storylines to be incomplete.

But let’s say the answer to the question above is yes. 

Let’s say, that you could easily remove a certain character from your story, without the risk of screwing with any current storylines. Let’s even go as far as saying that you could replace said character with another character, and it still wouldn’t make a difference to the story. 

In a scenario like this, your character has not been developed enough to stand their own ground. If you can give your character’s storyline to another character, or simply replace them with another, without noticing a difference in your story, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Your character is not fleshed out enough. They don’t bring personality to your story, because their departure from it is not noticeable. 

For a character to be dimensional, or developed properly, their loss needs to recognized, and if they’re not part of the narrative, the story should feel incomplete, because a fundamental piece of the puzzle is missing. 

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“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”

— Madeleine L’Engle

J. Augustus Knapp, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages, 1928