Young Writers Society

I love writing short stories. And I love to hear what people have to say about them.

But there's one common problem I have...
I always switch tenses. Whenever I post a story, I know there will be at least one post that will say:

Not sure about the tenses at this stage - you switch to present when you were using past.

-OR-

And you need to decide on a tense.

But I do it unconsciously do it! How am i supposed to stop?

When you're done with your story, just look it over, keeping an eye out specifically for tense shifts. You may not be able to stop yourself during the actual writing process, but I think you'll find that it's not hard to catch the errors with a quick once-over.

... or eight-times-over. Learn to love re-reading is my best advice.

Oh my gosh I have the exact same problem and the two post above are completely right you have to keep re-reading your stories and look for specific tense change. After you write the story decided what tense you orginally wanted it to be and look through it carely to change the other words to fit that tense
I hope that helps!

Thanks a bunch you three. I guess I have to be real careful of that from now on.

Yeah, tenses are rough to deal with

Good luck with that