So here we go with another lesson on grammar.  Today's evil nemesis 
is:  Verb Tenses!  [peers out at FFML]  OK, folks, if you want to delete 
these unread, that's fine, but don't fall asleep reading them, all 
right?

   Okay, I guess I'll have to take drastic measures, here.  [Pulls out a 
spray bottle labelled "Essence of Lime", spritzes it over the rest of 
the post.]  There.  That'll at least get the attention of the hentai 
crowd....

   Before we start, I'm going to give a quick overview of the types of 
verbs:
   A verb is simply the thing that is being done.  Every sentence should 
have at least one.  The most common, and most fundamental verb is the 
active verb:
     As the warm water _washed_ over Ranma-chan, the ultra-tight
   G-String she _wore_ to the show _snapped_, which _exposed_ his
   now-erect member to the female subscribers to the FFML.

 Active verbs come in two subsets:  transitive and intransitive.
    An intransitive verb is something that is simply done:
          Everyone _facefaulted_ at Kasumi's "Oh, my."
          Gosunkugi _bigsweated_ as he _slithered_ under the floor
       while Akane and Ranma _humped_ liked rabbits in springtime.


    A transitive verb is something that is done to something else:
          Happousai _glomped_ Ranma-chan's warm, soft breasts.
          Nabiki _filmed_ Mousse and Cologne's reaction to the
       Passion Spice.

 Linking verbs, which are all intransitive, tie the subject of the 
sentence to a state of being.  These include "be", the sense verbs 
(hear, look, taste, smell, feel) and verbs like "seem", "appear", 
"become", "grow" and "turn", when they refer to a state or condition:
          Akane _felt_ hot and wet, but Ranma _was_ not certain she
       _was_ ready for this.
          Kasumi _was_ frustrated at Dr. Tofu's slowness in her
       gynecological exam.

 Finally, the auxiliary verbs are the ones that help give a little 
flavor to the other verb, be it linking or active.  Some verb tenses 
require a particular helping verb.
          Ryouga _had_ decided he _would_ pork Akari as soon as
       possible.
          "Akane _might_ be a lesbian," Nabiki _had_ told Ranma, "but
       I _would_ not want to be the one to ask her."

*******

   There are no less than eleven verb tenses:
         (Simple) Present         Past Perfect
         (Simple) Past            Past Perfect Progressive
         (Simple) Future          Future Progressive
         Present Progressive      Future Perfect
         Present Perfect          Future Perfect Progressive
         Past Progressive

   And that's without Setsuna or the Nanban Mirror!

   Now, I'm not going to cover the whole of this subject, which would 
take up a couple chapters in an English textbook.  Instead, I'm going to 
focus on that area which most comes up on the list:  writing in the past 
tense.

   First, a quick note on why past tense tends to work the best.  Below 
is a list, from hardest to easiest to "pull off", of different POV/tense 
combinations.

                     Third Person/Present
                     First Person/Present
                     First Person/Past
                     Third Person/Past

   Now, it's time to be brutally honest here, folks.  Are you a 
professional writer?  Are you one of the "known names" in fanficdom?  If 
you couldn't answer yes to at least one of these questions, stick to the 
simple stuff.  Writing a good, solid story is hard enough without 
getting fancy.  Take it from a fool who tried to write FP/Pres. on his 
first non-spamfic.  I may have to rewrite that thing just to erase the 
shame.

   Why Past Tense?  Because that's how we hear most stories, and that 
means one less hurdle you have to jump in conveying _your_ story to the 
reader.

   Now I'm going to discuss some common pitfalls that result when 
writing in the past tense.

   The "simple past" tense is generally easy to deal with.

   The first thing to watch out for are those auxiliary verbs, the ones 
that you tack on to a regular verb in order to modify it in some way.  
AVs are typically used to indicate that the action will occur in the 
future, or is may not occur at all.  For some reason, these always seem 
to pose a problem for a lot of people.

    _VERB_     _PAST TENSE_   EXAMPLE________________________________
     will         would          Ranma shrugged.  Akane would never
                               learn how to cook.
     may          might          Akane might be a good lay, but she
                               sure couldn't cook.
     can          could        <see above>
    should        should         Ranma knew he shouldn't eat Akane's
                               cooking, but he wanted to get laid
                               that night.

   Now, let's say you're in the past tense, and you need to refer to 
some event that happened before the present point in the story.  You're 
going to need the past perfect tense to talk about it.  When I'm giving 
feedback, I also refer to the past perfect as the "had form" of the verb 
or the "double past tense".

   As the first name implies, this form of the verb takes the 
supplemental verb "had" added to the verb's past tense:

       "Ranma shuddered as he thought back to the vile concoction
     Akane _had cooked_ the night before."

   In this case, the disaster that is Akane's cooking has already been 
completed, so we use "had cooked" (admittedly adopting a far looser 
definition of the word "cook" than most dictionaries would allow).

   Now, the biggest problem with using the past perfect seems to arise 
when people use the verb "have" in that tense:

       "Ranma hadn't been home in three weeks.  He _had had_
     enough of Akane's cooking, and had gone to Ucchan's, where he
     _had had_ great food and great sex all in one place."

   Yup.  You read it right.  I used "had had" twice in the same 
sentence.  Ugly sucker, ain't it?  Looks like a typo, or some kinda 
mutant phrase-ol-o-gy, wouldn'tcha say?  It is, however, grammatically 
correct.  The best thing to do in this situation is rewrite the 
sentence, finding another verb, or even a different sentence structure, 
to get away from the "had had" construction:

        "He _had resolved_ to have no more to do with Akane's
      so-called 'cooking'."

   BTW, I don't know why this is, but for some reason, FF writers 
(especially those who write SM fics) tend to write in the past tense 
until they hit the verb "to love", which seems to be taboo to write in 
the past:

        "Akane would never cook well, but Ranma loves her
      anyway."

   Look, folks, love may be eternal, but it's still _past tense_, got 
it?

   One other note needs to be made regarding the verbs we've discussed.  
They are all "finite verbs".  The so-called "infinite verbs", or 
"verbals", are not really verbs at all, and will feature prominently in 
my next installment.

   That's about it, for now.  See you all next time, when I plan to 
discuss good vs. bad sentence fragments.  Hope this is of some use to a 
few of you who get complaints about "staying in one tense".

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