Episode Description

Leslie & Alyssa critique the opening of Luke Kondor’s The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time, a science fiction/fantasy novel. They mention echoes and strengthening your verbs. They discuss how the author builds sympathy by getting in the moment, and they debate which tense might be the best choice for this piece.

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Show Notes

“It’s one of the apparently simple, but huge, decisions you have to make, right at the beginning: will your main narrative be in past tense, or present tense? It is always possible to change your mind later, but it can be anything between a nuisance and a nightmare. ”

— Emma Darwin

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Think more about past tense versus present and how it affects your story.