The Word Cloud

Once upon a time, writing used to be about having an idea and getting it down on paper - not any more!! Now I've managed to totally confuse myself, which in turn has shaken my confidence a bit in what I am doing and the effect I want to achieve.

First things first, though - this paragraph is a first draft and so it is rough - very much warts and all, with all my bad habits there for the world to see (I have done this deliberately so I can hopefully not only 'correct' it, but also know exactly HOW I have corrected it and apply it to future editing).

So... I posted an extract up for a bit of critique on a fantasy-specific forum:

"Alicia awoke and suppressed a strangled scream, her blood thundering in her ears. She glanced wildly about the room, her mind populating it with unspeakable monsters and terrible beasts. Her heart stopped when she spotted a shadow lurking by the corner of the window; it took her a few seconds to realise that it was Kailas, standing just outside of the window's influence, his head cocked to one side as if he was listening."

- and one chap commented on how I had got my tenses muddled here. He said I was writing in present here when the rest was in the past. Now, I will admit that this totally confused me, because I don't read this as being in the present at all, and I don't know what he is getting at. He did, however, mention that by using 'ing' words means it is in the present. I was not the only person to question is logic in this.

However, it does have me thinking. I know 'ing' words are often frowned on for being passive, but if I change them, then I risk changing PoV. This scene is from Alicia's PoV, and she is watching Kailas and relating what she is witnessing. If I change, for example: " it took her a few seconds to realise that it was Kailas, standing just outside of the window's influence, his head cocked to one side as if he was listening" to "it took her a few seconds to realise that it was Kailas. He stood just outside of the window's influence, his head cocked to one side as if he listened' then, as far as I see it, the PoV swaps to Kailas (or at least becomes more omniscent), which I don't want. But then I get more confused, because the second one is more active than the first, and I have been led to believe that passive = bad; active = good. But, at the same time, tight PoV = good; omniscent PoV = bad; head-hopping PoV = you're a baby eating monster.

So, to untangle that mess (possibly, since I don't really know what I am doing any more) 1) am I getting my tenses mixed up? Is this present (even though I read it as past?). 2) How far do you take the 'must make it as active as possible'? Which in turn leads to 3) Can the 'rules' be bent to keep the PoV tight to one character? Or should I always seek to use active phrases over keeping to the PoV?

For the record, I know I overuse 'ing' words (as per my blog, they are my crutch words!), but in using them, I avoid the dreaded 'was'. For example:

" Alicia awoke and suppressed a strangled scream, her blood thundering in her ears."

becomes, as far as I see it, either:

"Alicia awoke and suppressed a strangled scream. Her blood thundered in her ears." (this sounds very slow and stilted to me).

or

"Alicia awoke and suppressed a strangled scream whilst her blood thundered in her ears" (again, this sounds wrong to me... I don't know why, but it seems clumsy and not very 'immediate').

But I could be totally wrong... *sheepish grin*

Oh, what a tangled web you've woven! There are a lot of issues going on here, but my gut feeling would be to have warning signals go off in my head any time someone tries to convince me that any particular style of writing is "bad" or "good" - language is a living, breathing being, and never as black and white and "good" and "bad" lead us to believe!
-ing verb forms can be used in past continuous; I'd say the chap was muddled who called those tenses in the first paragraph "present". In all of the -ing verbs in that paragraph, you can place "was" in front of them (if you chop the sentences down to their bare information), confirming that they are past continuous with an assumed "be" verb.
The best way that I've found to know if a tense is working, or PoV, or anything else, is to read it aloud; if it makes sense, it's fine; if it sounds choppy, or "told" and now "shown", then do something about it.

I hope that helps!

Thanks, Persia - it helps a great deal. As is happens, quite a few people leapt to my defence over this one (leading, unfortunately, to the chap getting a little defensive and then deciding to pull apart the entire extract and telling me exactly why he thought it was rubbish, on many and varied levels, as well as going on about my attitude towards his critique sucking (because I was, well, right, I suppose!)... oh well, you can't win them all!), and after digging out my grammar book, I went through and managed to identify what was going on. I am grateful to him, even though he did have a bit of a mini-meltdown over it, because it made me look at this from a far more analytical / grammatical point of view than I had previously done, and I feel I learned loads.

Silly thing is, I knew I was 'right' all along (that I wasn't getting my tenses mixed up), but his confidence in his own opinion totally threw me and made me think that I had to be wrong. Maybe I should trust myself a bit more!

Good on you! Take the grain of helpful from the load of... unhelpful (in this particular case you may want to add an explicative there if it makes you feel better). Don't let someone else's immaturity at dealing with criticism get you down; there are all kinds of reasons why people get into writing, and some of them may not be healthy ones (control, keeping people at a distance by giving advice rather than receiving, etc. - all those complicated psychological bits in life). The better you know yourself and build confidence in areas like grammar, the easier it will be to take that grain from the oyster and turn it into a pearl!

I sympathise Elysia, it can be a confusing thing -this being a writer passtime/vocation! I dispair sometimes when I read critiques and people mention things I have never even considered, let alone learned about (as a new writer). Still, it's all worth it in the end I feel, and I hope your experience has strengthened your belief in yourself as a very competent writer. Best of luck.