Before Sending Your Manuscript To An Editor. [Part 2]

Clean Up Your Use of Time [First Installment]

This second post on self-editing revolves around the use of time. In the next post, I will write about time sequencing and flashbacks.

1. The historical present looks like the past, but it isn’t.

What tense are you going to use to narrate your story?

For must writers, that choice is clearly the historical present—i.e., the past tense. When you write, “She walked into the room,” while the verb is in the past, the reader sees the character walkin...