Tense selection help

Actually grammar is almost as interesting as spanking as a subject for discussion. It is something I feel I could do with more expertise in. Sometimes I find I have changed my tenses in a story and have to go back and rewrite almost the entire thing. I am not even sure about which tense I prefer. I like the directness of writing in the first person but I find it limits you as you are only seeing things from one point of view. One of these days I would like to try a "stream of consciousness" spanking novel, with every little minute detail recorded, or maybe a short story incorporating Thomas Hardy's famous "microscopic vision". Each breath, smell, thought, word, movement, texture etc.

Point of view is an important decision to make and it sometimes takes me a long time to figure out which is best. If I want a sense of immediacy and I'm primarily interested in the reactions, thoughts and feelings of one character, I use first person. If I want to show what everyone is thinking, I use third person omniscient observer. If I want to know what one character is thinking and first person doesn't seem right, I use third person, observer. In other words the main character merely observes what the others are doing and saying, but the reader is not privy to their thoughts. Use this if other characters are ciphers or if the story's MacGuffin is that the main character is reacting to the seemingly wacky actions of others, as in a fish-out-of-water story.

There's a fun book about English grammar called:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

It has some interesting history of English grammar (like how much of the punctuation didn't exist before the printing press) and is more or less an enjoyable read on a dry subject.

Goodgulf

Seen it Goodgulf. It is a very good book

Not available for download in my region... Well, tomorrow I'm traveling to Texas, should be available there.