Following on last week’s column (or was it this week? I was late getting it out.), the word “was” and its close relatives bring to mind the core reason I wrote about it last week. It robs the prose of immediacy. Let’s face it. If you’re a writer in today’s world, especially a fiction writer, you can’t afford to lose immediacy. People have short attention spans. If someone has been sitting down to read your work, you’d better keep their attention before Netflix drops the final season of Stranger Things or the Kardashians do something they think is noteworthy.

First, let’s look at the three main verb tenses in English. And thanks to eslgrammar.org for the assist. They have a handy page to look this up.

Writers in rough drafts, including those two hacks TS Hottle and Jim Winter, tend to use what’s termed past continuous when writing action. Most prose is written in past tense. They often write past continuous to convey action. Only, to the reader, it just looks like passive voice. 

“He was walking into Clarksdale.”

Robert Plant gets a free pass on that line because he needed to keep time with Jimmy Page’s chords in that song. You, gentle reader, who hope to have gentle readers of your own, don’t get a pass. Unless our intrepid Clarksdale-bound hiker is interrupted as he’s coming into town, the line should be “He walked into Clarksdale.” Simple. Short. Declarative. Hemingway would be proud. And he would know. Even Hemingway’s passive voice reads like action. (That’s another post.)

So what are the tenses?

There are three main ones: Past, present, future. If you’re writing time travel, you’re on your own. Even Douglas Adams and the writers of Doctor Who make fun of those who try to invent tenses. 

Then we have the continuous tenses, indicating ongoing action by the subject. I was walking into Clarksdale. I am walking into Clarksdale. I will be walking into Clarksdale. In everyday speech, this is fine as long as you can be understood. In prose, I read it aloud and look at the sentences around the offending phrase. As I said in my last post, it’s fine if our intrepid walker does one thing and is either interrupted or does something else as well. If not, well then, he walked into Clarksdale. This assumes, of course, the main action will be happening in Clarksdale (and without that clunky future continuous phrase, which has damned few use cases.)

Then we have the perfect tenses. The first two almost always indicate past events. Past perfect (“I had walked into Clarksdale.”) and present perfect (“I have walked into Clarksdale.”), indicating the speaker or point-of-view character has walked into Clarksdale at least once. Future perfect means the speaker or POV character will walk into Clarksdale at least once before a future point in time in question.

But wait! There’s more!

Past/present/future perfect continuous!  “I had been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this was at some point in the past a frequent occurrence. “I have been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this is something ongoing. “I will have been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this is something likely to occur regularly or repeatedly in the future.

Again, you need a good reason to go with this. A lot of writers use the continuous tenses (both basic and perfect) thinking it conveys action. Unfortunately, there’s that word “was” (or “is” or “are” or “will be.”) Any time the reader sees that, the brain fires up “Passive voice!” and passive voice is to be avoided. (Not always, but a future post will be written about that.) The best use case for continuous is when the phrase is followed by “when.” “I was walking into Clarksdale when…” Then the action is disrupted. Which basic past/present tense doesn’t convey very well.

The only other time you should really use it is when you need to line up your rhythm with Jimmy Page’s playing. Then you’re going to send your old pal Tom tickets as I’ve only seen two Yardbird guitarists live. One has passed on, and the other has turned out to be an idiot. Unfortunately, Pagey is largely retired, so a pass to see him live would be greatly appreciated.