Help with Tenses

Hi,
For some reason I always have trouble with tenses. I don't know why. I'll have on thing in past then in present. Is there anyway that you can tell? I know like if it was past it would be "He walked" and if it was present it would be "He is going to walk" or "He is walking". It's just for some things I don't know. Its mostly in my novel.

Someone PLEASE help!

Love,
N

Here are the basic tenses.

Past tense- "Jack walked down the street."
Present tense- "Jack was/is walking down the street."
Future tense- "Jack is going to walk down the street."

Also, it's sometime all right to switch tenses- like, when a charactor is talking, or when he's thinking, and so on. My last bit of advice is to focus on how other authors do it when you read.

Hope I helped.

actually, "was walking" is past tense. It's imperfect past tense, but still, the thing they're talking about HAPPENED. It's not in the process of HAPPENING right this second.

The two caps words are all you need to think about with tenses. Is the event HAPPENING now? Or has it HAPPENED in the past?

So:

Past tense: Jack walked.
Jack has walked.
Jack was walking.
Jack has been walking.
Jack had walked.

Present tense: Jack walks.
Jack is walking.

Future tense: Jack will walk.
Jack is going to walk.
Jack will have been walking.
Jack will be walking.
Anything with the word WILL.

That's the simple list. If you need to know anything more about any of these tenses, PM me, I'd be happy to give you way too much information!

~Ankhirke

Also Conditional: Anything with WOULD/SHOULD/COULD:

He would still be able to walk if he hadn't had the operation.
I would have said go home instead of stay at school. (Perfect Conditional)

And so on and so forth.