So, let me turn your attention to this story excerpt I pulled out of my a- I mean four point of contact

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Sam walk onto the scene, his boots crushed several bones scatter along the path as he go. The crunch itself was an unnerved sound -it just don't sound right- but also the reason for it's existence make matters even worse. Sam looks over the scene. Bodies was everywhere, but strangely, no blood. There was skin, bone, clothes, but all around the scene of the massacre, was either full bodies, or exposing bone, no blood. The bodies of the victims weren't even being emaciated in particular. His stomach and mind churns simultaneously, how was this even possible, and how is he going to keep looking at it all without throw up?

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 What a thrilling set up right!? Great, mysterious, intriguing- clunky. The wording is all over the map. Is this scene taking place in the present or three years ago? There are several breaks in the flow of the words and yes, how they sound together ruins the experience of what the words are coming together to say. You could be forgiven for missing the fact that Sam is surveying an essentially supernatural crime scene- after all, the word choice makes some sentences nigh impossible to follow and what you can follow, the awkwardness is flat out distracting. It's like watching the new editions of the original Star Wars films. Some of the new elements are just so unnatural and jarring they tear you right out of the experience.

But the issue is, tense issues are grammar issues, and unlike spelling issues, modern computers can't be relied upon to catch those, not unless you have the latest version of Microsoft Word, and even then you might be up a creek.

Not only that, but tense is a very difficult to understand and remember set of rules in the English language that most people hated learning while growing up and have since put behind them- only to realize that their dream is becoming an author.

Thing is, did you know that most authors don't really know grammar rules that well?Oh sure they're aware of the basics, but a number of them would probably have a hard time diagramming sentences or saying precisely WHY each horrible phrase in my above example, is horrible. They would however know my example was worded terribly, and they would know what words need to be there if told it was supposed to be in past tense. How?

There is no cheat to this actually. Read and listen to stories. Read stories to get used to how sentences are supposed to look, and listen to adjust to how they are supposed to sound. Memorizing a series of rules isn't going to be very helpful when you're already sifting through a ton of your own lore to write a story. You need to know when something looks or sounds wrong on instinct.

One thing that I feel many writers overlook is listening to stories. Decades ago, parents read to their children, and for the kids this didn't happen for, TV shows often literally read stories to them as well. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, children are not hearing the written word as often as before, at least, not from what I've seen. Not that the material isn't out there, but it isn't placed before them. Many adults from the previous era had hundreds of books read to them out loud. Now, it just doesn't happen as much. Reading Rainbow, Arthur and many other shows are gone and probably wouldn't survive if they were brought back.

So yes, you, young author, need to replicate that experience, or it would surely help if you did. Listen to stories. Here- let me help. Perhaps you don't have a lot of money, and don't like illegal downloading, after all, you're a writer, its a crime against your own kind. Still, there's a ton of media that is public domain. Try these classics for starters:

https://youtu.be/7J-1pMESTI0

https://youtu.be/SF7lSyjmZwQ

https://youtu.be/n3fN_-rupwo

But still, eventually you'll need to either borrow some recordings from the library, "borrow" them from the internet or purchase more modern titles, because a few rules have changed.

The advantage to doing this is something many people are not aware of. Take this example. It has been shwon that many people will read wrods as wirtten correctly, if they konw what the wrods are suppsoed to be, and if the fisrt and lsat letter are correct and all the letters in the word are corrcet, just written out of order. They will read this way if they just gloss over a sentence with their mind. However, go back and read my last sentence out loud and see if you have any problem finding all nine misspelled words. When you read out loud, you process what you're reading more thoroughly, thus it becomes easier to spot mistakes. However, this will only work if you know what something is supposed to sound like.

I'm not saying you shouldn't learn the rules of grammar, and especially tense. After all, you need to at least know what it means to have your story be written in past or present tense in the first place. However, in order to write hundreds of pages of material in a grammatically correct fashion, you will need to see and hear hundreds of pages written in a grammatically correct fashion. There is simply no way around that.

I hope future tips will be more entertaining and easier to follow than this one, but that's how it goes sometimes. Grammar was the busy work of write, but it really show when it not done.