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Q&A Shifting tenses in the middle of narration

Yes, you're totally fine. If your tense shift happens between paragraphs — that is, the new tense starts a new paragraph — it should be clear what's happening. If this is a first-person narrative a...

posted 5y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:48Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47301
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:42:21Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47301
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T12:42:21Z (almost 5 years ago)
Yes, you're totally fine. If your tense shift happens between paragraphs —&nbsp;that is, the new tense starts a new paragraph — it should be clear what's happening. If this is a first-person narrative and you as the writer have shown that this is the narrator addressing someone, there's no reason you can't shift. People do this in reality in their speech.

What you can't do is have the entire _story_ randomly shift tenses without cause. Third-person narration, or even first-person which is addressing the reader and not another character, has to stay in one tense unless there's an explicit reason (like a flashback or a dream) to change.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-08-14T11:06:48Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 15