I agree. I'll leave the tense stuff to others, but what I will say is that as soon as I started reading your excerpt I said to myself, 'This isn't diary writing. It's an everyday, run-of-the-mill first-person narrative. I'll also add that even @BayView' revised edit fails to sound like a diary entry.
There's always the option of doing what Michael Lee Lanning did in a company commanders journal - where the journal entry comes first in each chapter then there's some looking back explanation and expansion.... however Lanning was writing non fiction based on his vietnam journal ... its very difficult to pull that off in fiction
Here's a random, real-life diary entry from the Carry On star Kenneth Williams, and while from his real life I think it's pretty typical of how a diary is written. --------------- Sunday, 23 November Did the Hancock show from the Piccadilly. It was a general disaster. Really terrible. This team is so dreary to me now! - how different to the jolly warmth of 'B[eyond] O[ur] K[en]' - this crowd, especially James & Hancock, are so listless and disinterested and their conversation is real pleb stuff. I don't care for any of them at all. ---------------- Pretty dull stuff outside the context of the collection, which of course you wouldn't want yours to be, but this is what diary entries read like to me.
Not really, no. The story is a fan fiction based on a videogame. What I'm after is to present the story as the main character's journal, so we can see his POV and I can skip uninteresting things that happen in between actions very easily. I think what you said here is accurate. I guess I call it diary because it's a man's journal of what happened in his day, but he also writes detailed descriptions of other, more interesting things. What I'm looking for is not something exact, like the examples provided above by @OurJud and @big soft moose (thank you for those by the way) But regardless of the style nomenclature, the problem I'm having of moving from past tense to present tense is really driving me nuts. I have made some corrections based on your input. How is this first revision tense-wise? I sat on the bed and scratched the bandage on my arm. The cuts from the blood ritual were still open, and my fingers became wet with blood that had soaked through the gauze. I drank a potion, even though I knew it would be wasted. I know these cuts will take a very long time to heal—it has happened before, and it will happen again. Every physical enhancer always has its consequences. The price of using lyrium is to lose one's mind. The price of using dark magic is——I better not think about it. Also, if you'll indulge me, I would like to dig into something else for a moment. I really love what @big soft moose wrote here: I find it very dynamic and super engaging. As I read it I feel like I'm inside the scene as it happens. But I have a question though. How do you move from this scene to the next? How can it be believable? If the man is writing everything as it happens, wouldn't it mean he is walking around with a pen in his hand (or a voice recorder ha) making notations of everything as it happens? After the character complains about his unhealed wound, he takes a horse and rides through the forest, where he meets a beautiful stranger, blah blah, and the day finishes when he returns to the Inn and writes the journal entry talking about all the above. In @big soft moose's example, how would you connect all these clauses? Thank you in advanced you guys, you are blowing my mind, I feel so humbled by your amazing knowledge and help
Well if it doesn't need to be a diary (or a journal) then my advice would be to ditch that particular angle and stay solely in past tense. If it helps your writing process to imagine it's a diary/journal, then stay with the idea, but I think you'll just end up with something readers think is a staright forward, first-person narrative with random changes in tense. The third option is to go for the diary/journal idea full-on. If you do this, then it's imperative you change your style of writing because what you currently have simply is not diary writing. Do a little research, hunt down some published fiction written in diary form, and study the style.
That's pretty much exactly how first person--really, any fiction--works. No need for a journal format. The boring stuff just gets skipped.
Oh, English, you hussy. Why do you have to be so difficult sometimes? To @Maksynne: this gets into the "formality" of language we talked about. As others have said, your diary entry reads more like normal prose, and doesn't stand out as a diary entry to me. Mostly I see diary entries as being "clipped" phrases (i.e., instead of "I got into trouble today," it would be, "Got into trouble today."). Odd, since I tend to be less truncated in my own journals, but I'm not typical in that regard. Now, to your example. First, you wrote: My take: The bandage on my arm itches, and I get more blood on my fingers every time I scratch at the cuts. They're still open from the ritual yesterday. I don't know why I bothered drinking the potion; I knew it wouldn't work. My wounds are going to take a long time to heal, just like before. There's always consequences to physical enhancement. It's a price I've paid before, and I'll pay it again. You use lyrium, you'll lose your mind. You use dark magic and...I don't even want to think about it. It's not really essential to say your character is on the bed, or they stood to do something, because those are the kinds of details I've rarely seen (or written) in journal entries. My take on your example follows my style of journal writing, so it may still not read like a journal entry to some. Let me know if this is helpful or not.
Both of them are valid. Depends on what kind of tone you want to set. I like the second version better, but that's just preference.
Thank you @OurJud, @ChickenFreak, @Sclavus and @Mouthwash for your input. I have been thinking a lot about what you guys said, and I have researched a bit about diary style and first-person narrative. I have concluded that (as some of you have already pointed out) what I'm writing is not diary-style. However, I'm presenting the text to the readers as if the entries were part of some guy's diary (the hero) The story starts with a letter (that works as an epiloge I guess) addressed to the reader (who plays the rol of "The Inquisitor"). Right after this introductory letter I present the diary entries from the hero's journal. This is how it starts (letter and first journal entry): Inquisitor, The following texts are extracts from the diary of Garrett M. Hawke, a Fereldan rogue soldier and former member of the Stannard Company of Mercenaries, who was a known associate of the lost Aerials your organisation has been trying to locate for the past decades. These writings have been found in the Exalted Plains among the battlefield’s ruins, and we strongly believe they hold the key to finding these mythical creatures of the skies. Without further ado, I hereby present to you the recovered extracts. I hope you will find them enlightening. Sincerely yours, Magister Maksynne Heledahn, in the year 9:79 of the Dragon Age. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23rd Guardian, 9:37 Dragon - Firewater Garden, The Emerald Graves Meredith does not forgive, nor forget. She has sent a new squad of her lyrium-addicted mercenaries after me. They were waiting for us in Lydes. It was an ugly battle, we wouldn't have made it out alive if it wasn't for Anders and his healing spells. I should have known better than to recruit the twins for my new crew. I've put their lives in danger by letting them be around me. I should have known Meredith wouldn't let her precious watchdog go free without a fight. What would Mother think of me if she knew what I've become? Her eldest child—proud son of Malcom Hawke and heir to the Amell family—turned into a lyrium bound ex-mercenary hunted like a wild beast by his old mistress... I don't think Meredith cares about the lyrium she wasted on me while I was on her leash, or the unpaid dues accrued by my addiction over my years in the Company. No. She wants me dead because of what I made of her. She no longer wants to be the cheap, jilted lover of a Fereldan mongrel. If I die, her shame dies with me. I suppose I should have waited out the affair. Meredith would have tired of me sooner or later, and then I would have been able to leave the Company without her giving me a second thought. But the addiction was taking a hold of me... Had I stayed, I would have ended up like poor old Samson. Demented. Disgraced. Consumed by lyrium. I couldn't let that happen. Leaving Meredith's Company of Mercenaries was the only chance I had to get back on track and mend my past mistakes. But I should have been smarter about rebuilding my life leaving my siblings out of it. The moment the twins heard I was forming a new crew with Anders they begged to be a part of it. They had these hopes and dreams of adventure, and they thought joining us would deliver. What an utter disappointment it must have been for them coming to Orlais looking for excitement, and finding nothing but a price put on their heads... Now Meredith is out for blood. She won't stop sending mercenaries after us until I'm in my grave. I must be the one to end this. I've sent Bethany and Carver back to Ferelden with Anders. I plan to face Meredith alone, once and for all. Worthy told me she has retreated to a villa somewhere in The Emerald Graves. I've come to find her. I'm going to settle this, whatever the cost. I won't let this feud take the best of me. After this, the diary continues with new entries (with the date and location of each action) and the story develops following this guy's POV. The reason I show you this is so we can get a better idea of why I'm encountering these problems with the verb tenses. Some entries are like a diary (he describes a bit what it's going on in his head) but then in other entries he describes actions and characters that he has encountered during the day, like one would in a regular novel. But even if he is writing things like in a novel, he is still writing them in his "diary", and here is were I have the tense problem of jumping from what he narrates (in past) to what he thinks (in present) Does this format make any sense? Or is this something super amateurish I cooked up? Thanks for the help!
This is infinitely more diary-like than the extract in your opening post and reads very nicely. Your tense problems still remain, but I'm still not altogether sure why you feel like you need to change tense. You could save yourself a whole heap of head pain by staying in past tense. Ask yourself, is it vital that he writes things down as they're happening, and more to the point would anyone really do this? Surely the whole point of a diary is to record the day's/week's events after they've happened, not while. Maybe one solution would be to stay solely in past tense for the diary entries, and present tense for the more novelly type narration. A very basic example: Diary Pete and Sam had a blazing row earlier. Pete stormed out, Sam cried. It was horrible. None-diary The car engine splutters, sucking in the last of the fumes from the empty tank. Sam curses and drifts over to the kerb. "This is all we need!" she says through gritted teeth. I want to tell her we should have stopped at the last gas station, but decide against it.
@OurJud Thank you for the examples. The problem with this fic is that not all the entries are written in present as it happens in real-time (like in the previous example) The hero of the story is supposed to be travelling around, and sometimes he has time to just sit and write and reflect on what is happening, and other times he is very busy fighting all day and he can write only during the night when the action has already happened. Other times, he is reflecting in real-time while he narrates the past actions (and this is what just kills me! ha ha) This example is one of those times: 17th Drakonis, 9:37 Dragon - Villa Maurel, The Emerald Graves The Stannard Company of Mercenaries left Silver Falls three days ago. They went off to some unknown destination, to fulfill a new contract. Meredith was leading them—her loyal dogs—a leash in one hand, and lyrium treats in the other. They have left me behind, chained to a wall in a filthy room in one of the guest houses of the villa. The slavers that Meredith sold me to are also here. My new masters. They arrived at the villa the day before Meredith left. I could hear from my prison a big commotion at the courtyard when the slavers passed through the gates. It seems they captured a live Aerial in the Arbor Wilds and they were bringing it with them. Dozens of mercenaries tripping in lyrium, drunk and debauched had gathered to greet the slavers, shouting and cheering at the wondrous beast they carried in chains. Aerials. Winged men with lyrium-infused skin. I always thought those mythical creatures were nothing but a tale wet nurses told the children. Even after seeing several décor-macabre mementos of alleged Aerials in Val Royaux I always assumed they were shams. Phony trophies. A taxidermist's joke. But the slavers had indeed captured an Aerial—a live Aerial—winged, furious and unruly. Body shinning blue, covered from head to toes in lyrium tattoos. Cullen had been talking about it all night while he guarded me, anxious to end his vigil and go see the creature for himself. He had been so distracted talking that he didn't even notice when I took a small knife out of his leather roll and hid it in my gauntlet. The next morning, the mercenaries left and the villa became silent. Then, the slavers took over. Two robed men came into the guest house and examined me warily, trying not to get too close for fear of what I might do to them. Smart men. They talked in Tevene, but by the way they were inspecting me I figure they were trying to make an estimate of my worth as a slave. Despite their initial concern for their safety in my presence, the slavers have been very lax regarding my custody. Unlike Meredith, they haven't even bothered to put a guard in the guest house to watch me. They have been too busy guarding their other, more exotic acquisition, and for what I can hear from my remote confinement, the Aerial has been most uncooperative to the wishes of the slavers. I've seen them running up and down the place carrying whips, ropes, chains… And the corpses of two bloodied guards that were left alone with the Aerial and were brutally murdered by the winged creature during the night. I can only imagine the punishment for killing the slaver's men must have been a harsh one, given that following the slaughter, all anyone could hear were the Aerial's heartrending wails resounding in the darkness. Now the beast has quieted, and the slavers rest: The chance I was waiting for. It won't be easy breaking free from these manacles using Cullen's knife, but I've always been good at picking locks. Bethany, Carver and Anders' corpses are rotting out there, forgotten somewhere deep within The Emerald Graves. Murdered. Unburied. Unclaimed. I'm going to find their bodies and put them in the ground. Then, I will go after Meredith. I will follow her trail. No matter how long it takes me, I will find her. She won't even see me coming. Not until I'm gutting her with this stolen knife. By then, it will be too late for her. She won't even have time to scream. This is one of the examples where I struggled a lot with the tenses. He keeps going back and forward in time and it was very difficult for me to find a good flow. In the example you can also see the style I'm after seems to be a blend between diary-style and first-person. I figure the hero chooses to write his diary like that because he is afraid he will lose his mind (because he was an addict to lyrium and that is what lyrium does to people) and he wants to be able to re-live his experiences and know who he is once it happens and he goes insane.
Here goes another (maybe even more exaggerated) example of my struggling with verb-tense-changing: Petrice explained to me the reason for their visit. The gold in the bag was half of a full payment of Sovereigns I would receive if I retrieved a valuable artifact that was stolen from the Chantry a couple of months back. She informed me that the thieves who stole the artifact are a radical cult of mercenaries widely known and feared in the region, said to be extremely elusive and dangerous. They have a hideout somewhere in the Hinterlands, and no bounty hunter hired by the Chantry has been able to locate their lair and live to tell. I took the fat pouch in my hand and measured its contents by its weight. I reckoned at least four hundred Sovereigns in total. That is by far the biggest amount of gathered coin I had seen in my life, and it was only half of the payment. I could see that the Chantry was desperate to retrieve this stolen artifact, and I used it in my advantage to push the good Mother to sweeten the deal. This one is WILD. In the example the hero is telling us in past tense what happened last night, when he was hired to retrieve something for the Chantry. Then he tells us about the thieves in present (is this wrong? The hero hasn't killed them yet, so they still are a radical cult of mercenaries, aren't they? ) I recognize how it would sound sooooo much better if I just left it all in past tense, but that would not make much sense in the universe of this story, would it? Because as the hero writes this entry, the evil cultists are still out there waiting to be stopped. I'm eager to see what you guys think about this mess Thanks!
the trouble with the first one is why have the slavers left him his diary (given that he's chained to the wall in a filthy room), and if the chance to break free is upon him why is he still writing... in that circumstance you wouldnt be thinking "the slavers are asleep i can pick the locks now... but first I must note it in my diary"
As far as your tenses go, they're fine. As you say, when you slip into present it's to tell us something that is now. If you change it to ...the thieves who stole the artifact were a radical cult...it just sounds wrong. Whereas, the rest of the story is what happened back then. The problem with this piece is that it doesn't read like a diary, it reads like a distant form of first-person POV. The verbs...explained, informed - told would work in both cases...are too writerly. The adjectives seem excessive - you'd know if something was valuable, you wouldn't need to tell yourself this in your diary...plus... ...a full payment of Sovereigns I would receive if I retrieved a valuable artefact. Nobody would pay a load of sovereigns for an artefact that wasn't valuable. mercenaries widely known and feared in the region, said to be extremely elusive and dangerous. They have a hideout ... and no bounty hunter ... has been able to locate their lair .... If they're feared, it's probably because they're dangerous. And if nobody's been able to find their lair, it's probably because they're elusive. You're overdosing the description - even for regular narrative, let alone a diary form - in an attempt (I think) to make them sound more scary; it does the opposite. This is my attempt to turn this into a diary...more chatty, less description, more specifics. Petrice explained that the gold was down-payment to retrieve the orb they'd had stolen by the Yakuza - a group of badasses with a hideout somewhere in the Water Margin. Probably about four hundred Sovereigns in the pouch - most gold I've seen in one place! Told them it wasn't enough. They agreed ... after a bit of a chat! My feeling is that you should dump the attempt to write it as a diary, just write a normal story!
Thank you @ChickenFreak @big soft moose and @Shadowfax. If you all agree then it must be so I will try, but I am very attached of the idea of starting the fic with the letter to the Inquisitor, and I also like having personal entries every now and then, like the one that comes right after the introductory letter (that you all seemed to agree was more diary-like). Would it be possible to marry these two concepts into a normal story? If so, do you have any pointers? As always, I really appreciate your efforts. I feel like in these past few days I've learnt more than if I had taken a fancy course in a fancy university. Bless your hearts PS: Once my 20 day ban-for-being-new is over I will post my fic in the workshop for critiquing. I would be honored if some of you could check it out (considering you are interested in the theme the story presents, which I'll admit is not for everybody) I hope that seeing the full context of the story might shed some light into what I was trying to achieve, so you can advise me further still
I'm unclear about the personal entries. Why couldn't you achieve these with normal first person past tense, minus the diary idea?
I've seen it done...I think somebody mentioned Asimov's Foundation trilogy as having an entry from Encyclopedia Galactica at the start of each (?) chapter. And Len Deighton's Funeral in Berlin starts each chapter with a quotation from the rules of chess. As long as the quotation is apposite, there shouldn't be a problem...although somebody will probably be against it...somebody is always against it...
Also, this is fanfic. There are fanfics in the form of poetry, fanfics that have no clear narrative structure but are still effective, fanfics that are merely strings of scenes meant to be inserted into the cannon material... fanfic is the land of experimentation. Experiment! (Not to say that having a few diary entries or letters interspersed in regular narrative is all that experimental. I've definitely seen that done in conventional novels. But just in general - you're already taking characters from a video game and making up extra stories for them. The "standard" rules don't need to apply, not if you don't want them to!)
Yeah, I think I mentioned that. I believe it is every chapter (so far at least - I haven't finished it yet). What I would say is that they are very brief. However, David Brin inserted all sorts of extracts from Pandora's Cornucopia and interviews before, during and after chapters. I didn't mind it, but I realise that for some it would be infuriating. I completely agree. If the extract, quotation or whatever is relevant to the chapter, it can really enhance the reading of the prose. I see this as a stylistic choice. If the writer likes it and thinks it enhances the story, they should do it. Not all readers will like it, but that's not really within the writer's control.
If you can get hold of a copy, I urge you to read this (or at least study it). It's sci-fi to an extent, but far from your obvious love of fantasy. But from what I can gather the writer appears (I never finished it) to be doing precisely what you're hoping to achieve. This one has the 'look inside' feature so you may not even have to buy it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0552999709/?tag=writingfor07a-20
Maybe he has the diary rolled against his arm under the gauntlet, or in an inside pocket on his shirt. His captors are former comrades, some of them were even his friends. I think it is safe to assume they would do him a kindness and allow the poor man to keep his diary, so he can kill time while he is imprisoned. Also a diary is such an innocent thing, he is not going to use it to break the locks, that is for sure He could have been writing while waiting for the slavers to go to bed, and when they finally did he just finished the entry and "got to work"
