I was wondering what tense I should use for writing a story. What I use is a Present and past tense mixture. But I am not sure whether they are right or wrong. If I write something general, I use present tense.
The temple is situated on the river bank.
But if I describe some action, or a situation when the action occurs, I use past tense.
The temple is situated on the river bank. In the evening many people gather in the temple.The river runs dry most of the year. By the time I reached the river bank the sun had already set. I came far, and the journey was very troublesome. There are cut marks all over my face, and hands.
(Note that this is NOT a proofreading request.)
I am not sure how to determine the tense. Is there a general rule to follow in situations like this? I would prefer an answer that's applicable beyond just this specific short paragraph.
Best Answer
I think where you run into trouble is in the last two sentences of the paragraph.
From the previous sentence (“By the time I reached the river bank. . .”) the reader is pointed to a specific moment in time. These last two sentences are then phrased in the simple past and present continuous, respectively. If I am correct that these last two sentences refer to the time you reached the river bank, they would be clearer as:
As far as a general rule, there aren’t strict prohibitions on combining any number of tenses in a single paragraph. My advice would be to study past perfect, and diagram your paragraph temporally, like so: