The
past has vanished.
No,
I’m not talking about history. It’s the past tense that has vanished.
“The
past, present, and future walk into a bar. It was tense.”
Can’t
tell that joke anymore, because the past tense no longer exists.
Have
you noticed on TV, etc that no one uses the past tense anymore? It’s all
present.
Putting
a past event into present tense used to be an effective dramatic device. No
longer, since it is used all the time, for every past event, including football
games and court trials that were twenty years ago.
Then
Moses sees this burning bush, and he says, “Hey, this is different.” And I
notice that he’s taking his shoes off, so I take mine off, and we go…”
Yes,
present tense is dramatic. But, you know, the past tense is there for a reason.
So is future tense. They help to clarify. At least, they used to…
John Robert McFarland
Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be
published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.
Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author
blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no
idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and
consider it ‘high concept.”
My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who
are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in
2015.
I
tweet as yooper1721.
I
also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for
the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/
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