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Topic : Re: How to deal with things that still exist when writing in past tense? Say I write this: I lived near Les Gobelins, which was a beautiful intersection full of trees. Should it be this? - selfpublishingguru.com

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I almost agree with John Craven -- I gave you an upvote, John :-) The conventional story-telling style in English is to use the past tense. So for the "normal case", just make all narration in the past tense. It's simple and easy for both writer and reader.

So in your example, it would be "was quiet". Whether the hall is still quiet today is pretty much irrelevant. You're talking about what happened at the time the story takes place, not the state of the hall today.

Of course this does not apply to dialog. The tenses in dialog will depend on the context in which the characters are speaking. If a person would have said something in present or future or whatever, you don't change that because you are relating the story as a whole in the past tense. Just think about it logically. If I want to tell you that ten years ago Bob told me what he was going to do the next day, I'd write something like

Ten years ago Bob said, "I will do that tomorrow."

Bob is speaking in future tense, because at the time he says it, it is future. The fact that at the time I am relating the story it is 9 years and 364 days ago doesn't change that.

You can write a story in the present tense. Indeed I recall a time travel story I read years ago that was written in the future tense: The story was written as the time traveler telling someone what he is going to do in the future. It was all, "and then you will do this, and then this will happen, and then you will do that", etc. But the "default" is to use the past tense. Any other tense will jump out at the reader, and so you should only do it if you have a good reason. Also using other tenses forces you to think about it more. If the story is in past tense, then everything happens in the past, and it's simple. But if the story is in present tense, you probably will find it necessary to refer to things that happened in the past, and so you will be shifting tenses, and you have to think about it a little more.


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