The Review Club Forum Discussion on Cameron's Crimso..

Discussion on Cameron's Crimson & Gray

Kim -

Thank you very much for the review. I appreciate all the work you put into it.

Cameron

No problem. I'm curious if you told the story with the tense issues on purpose. I honestly didn't notice them while reading through it the first time. It had such a great flow and tone, they didn't stand out to me. When I went back through to take notes of the smaller things I'd noticed, like the missing words, I noticed the tense issues. Oh, and I caught one more. The last line. I really wish I hadn't answered the phone tonight. Tonight should be that night.

One last thing, is I noticed a lot of passive voice statements, but since there are a lot of passive statements in journalism, I thought it added to the tone and didn't point them out.

I'm curious. I'm usually pretty good at keeping tense correct, but there is one word I've been wondering about lately. The word 'this.' Is it past or present tense. I've seen a lot of people use it in past tense, but it just doesn't sound right to me. At least in the sense of, 'this night.' But what about in the context of this thing? Any idea?

Well as far as the tense things go. I totally could have slipped into present tense without meaning to. Although there are times when I use a present clause, past sentence type of construction. I can't say for certain whether that is correct. As far as this", it's a pronoun it doesn't have a tense. So "This is" and "This was" should be equally correct. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

P.S. This might not be a pronoun, but I know it isn't a verb :)

Ha. This morning I was thinking about "this" and realized that duh it's not a verb and doesn't have a tense. Do you ever have one of those words that just seems odd to you when you read it, but there is no reason why it should seem weird?

I think "this is" would be present and "this was" would be past. The thing that has been bothering me is, in my own writing, is the line, "This was going to be hard." To me it has a present tense feel to it, because it is talking about something that is happening right then and the feelings of that moment and because it uses the past and present tense "was" and "be."

Anyway, I think it's just one of those brain fart moments and I've been wondering over it for no reason.

Actually I think it's interesting. I've never really thought about it, but mostly I've always assumed that even if you are telling the story as if you are in the past, you are still telling it as if it were happening. I'm not really sure, and trust me I can be completely wrong on this one. I'm so not a grammarian.

Review up shyster ::tongue:: Last time I call you a shyster I swear. Not even sure if I'm spelling it right.

Anthony,

Some interesting thoughts. I'm kind of attached to that last conversation for two reasons, because how Dan deals with being scared and pain is to lash out. It's part of his character, but I can also see your point. I will definitely have to make that clearer. I can see how it would come off as abrupt.

And I will take all of your money :)

Cameron

Gabe and Bill-

Thanks for the reviews. I will definitely admit there are some messy spots. I haven't really been editing as I go along. Mostly because I figure that I'll get to it when I'm done. Which will most likely be a while from now.

Until then I'm sorry to inflict my bad grammar on you guys :)

Moving this thread up