There are 12 main verb tenses used in writing โ all variations of past tense, present tense, and future tense. Writer’s often tend to naturally gravitate towards a specific tense (past or present) and stick to it throughout their writing careers without giving it a second thought. Most works contain a variation of tenses depending on if the characters are addressing a past, present, or future event.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
3 Tenses:
- Past
- Present
- Future
Now, there are more variations of past, present, and future tense such as, simple present, present progressive, simple past, past progressive, simple future, future progressive, present perfect, present perfect progressive, past perfect, past perfect progressive, future perfect, and future perfect progressive. However, today we’ll only be focusing on simple present, simple past, and present perfect (even though this sentence is in future progressive tense lol).
Simple Present Tense
“The simple present is a verb tense used to talk about conditions or actions happening right now.”
-Grammarly
To make this a little clearer, I’ll give some examples:
- Avery writes everyday.
- She sings in the shower.
- They dance in the kitchen.
In most cases, all you need to do is add an “s” at the end of the verb to make it simple present tense, unless the subject is plural (like in the third example), in which case, you use the present tense of the verb (in the example, the verb is dance).
Simple Past Tense
“We use the simple past tense to refer to actions or states that happened in the past and are finished and completed.”
-Thesaurus
A few examples of Simple Past tense are:
- Avery wrote yesterday.
- She sang in the shower.
- They danced in the kitchen.
With this tense, you simply use the past tense form of the verb (which often ends with “-ed”).
Present Perfect Tense
“The present perfect tense is an English verb tense used for past actions that are related to or continue into the present.”
-Grammarly
A few examples of Present Perfect are:
- Avery has written.
- She has sung in the shower.
- They have danced in the kitchen.
Present perfect is often used to tell something that has happened at some point in a story (usually without a specific time attached to it). Additionally, the verb is usually preceded by the word has or have.
Let me know in the comments below if you focus on verb tense when writing! If you liked this post, you might enjoy my post, “5 types of theme commonly used in story.” If you want to join a community of readers and writers, hop onto my instagram and send me a DM. I love hearing from fellow writers!
