: Re: Is it a good idea to stay away from past progressive in fiction? I never noticed this in my writing until one of my readers pointed it out: We were driving down the highway in Tom's

Past progressive is great for relating the context in which some event occurred:

We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner when the earthquake hit.

There are probably other uses, too. But readers (like your reviewer) likely expect ongoing conditions expressed in past progressive to relate to something in simple past tense. (Similar for present progressive and simple present tense.)

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: Re: Is it a good idea to stay away from past progressive in fiction? I never noticed this in my writing until one of my readers pointed it out: We were driving down the highway in Tom's

More posts by @Kevin153

: Is there a problem in switching from present to past for a backstory sequence? My understanding was that it's fairly normal for a present-tense novel to switch into past tense in a backstory

: The fine line between accurate science, and confusing my reader I recently wrote a blog post (original here) about a scientific study. At the end, I included some "fine print" which states,

: How To Write Concisely I am a high school student, and am concerned with my recent compositional tendencies. This past year, I took AP English Language and Composition. It was a rather difficult

: Should an author seek copyright clearance before finding a publisher? I would like to include some material which will need clearance. Is this something that needs doing before finding a publisher?

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