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Author Topic: question on ed vs. ing
walexander
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If ed is mostly used for personal emotion.

Can you say?

The fire flared

If anyone can point me to an in-depth, concise explanation of uses for various versions of ed vs. ing I would appreciate it.

So far all the articles are pretty vague on the subject. It's starting to confuse me.

W.

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Jack Albany
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As I understand it, flare is a verb and the choice of flares or flared is indicative of tense. The use of 'ing' could be either past or present depending on context. You might want to check out past and present participles.
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extrinsic
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Verb tense matters for prose are covered in detail through excerpts aggregated from here and there.

Chapter 14, "Verbs," The Little, Brown Handbook
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, Chapter 5, "Common Errors"
Orson Scott Card, Characters and Viewpoint, pgs 167,170 - 73

Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse, several sections about verbs for prose, a primary source for the concept of stasis statements, state of being, static voice, 1978, pgs 31 - 32. Identical -- Ms. Dalton Woodbury independently coined the term "static voice" for a contrast to passive voice, 2008.

Chatman contrasts stasis statements with process statements and asserts process statements' dynamic event criteria more so suits prose overall. Process statements are dynamic voice, is static voice's opposite, also coined by Ms. Dalton Woodbury. Progressive verbs invariably entail stasis statements, owed to their -ing suffixes and to be auxiliary verbs.

An entry from "Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction" by Clarion workshops' David Smith, SFWA hosted.

Not Simultaneous

"The misuse of the present participle is a common structural sentence-fault for beginning writers. 'Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau.' Alas, our hero couldn't do this even if his arms were forty feet long. This fault shades into 'Ing Disease,' the tendency to pepper sentences with words ending in '-ing,' a grammatical construction which tends to confuse the proper sequence of events. (Attr. Damon Knight)"

The former also is in Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction, pg 166, worded different and other related content. -ing words as well risk dangled and stranded participles and incomplete clauses and sentences and ineffective passive voice.

The topic of tense covered in Chatman also explores prose's metaphoric simple past tense substituted for present tense for a more objective sensibility due to express determined time of event incidence. -ing is the progressive verb suffix, of an indeterminate ongoing time, therefore, stasis state of being.

Companion narratives for such study include Gertrude Stein and William Gibson for abundant -ing participle phrase and appositive content, rhetorical rationales, and -- well, select a writer who rigorously avoids -ings and is averred as such, say, Damon Knight.

Whether an -ed suffix, simple past tense, expresses personal emotion is a writer's self-imposed selection and design that wants for access if that is the case. Stein uses -ings to maintain an ever present now moment state of being, for the subjectiveness of present progressive and its unsteady emotional status.

Gibson's uses do, too, though for more complex and less accessible rhetorical rationales, too. Does cyberpunk space in Gibson's prose milieu entail a different time sense from alpha reality, likewise unsteady status? If yes, what does cyberpunk then express about written word's likewise different from alpha reality time senses? Chatman explores "story time" and "narrative time" and time dilation and suspended time, and how verb tense and show and tell inform those time senses.

"The fire flared." could be a metaphor about anger. Reads like a writer-narrator summary tell to me, though.

[ February 26, 2018, 09:19 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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LDWriter2
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Is this the active vs passive debate?

I just had a proof reader change a bunch of ed words to ing words. I hope that wasn't from active to passive. But its been a while since I have done a novel in Second Person.

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extrinsic
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The topic is somewhat about static and dynamic voices. If a proofreader changed any words, that infringes the first law of editorial review, Do no harm. Changed -ed words to -ing words? Likely more harmful. Some of them probably changed to passive voice and worse. A proofreader's sole duty is to mark nondiscretionary adjustment suggestions.

Standalone -ed verbs and irregular past tense verbs are facets of active voice, simple past tense, though not necessarily dynamic voice.

Use of to be, to have, and to get auxiliary verbs are invariably static voice, regardless of tense, and too often passive voice as well. That's the second degree of static voice. First degree static voice entails standalone to be verbs: is, are, was, were, am. Third degree static voice entails simple sensation verbs that state stasis statements: she heard, he sits, it felt, Carey smelled, Marge tasted -- Sean brokered the crooked real estate transaction; physical, visual, aural, tactile, olfactoral, gustatoral, and emotional sensation summaries and explanations, plus other somatoceptal sensation summaries, nociceptal, thermoceptal, temporaceptal, for examples.

Second person does not necessarily want a particular main tense or grammatical voice anymore than another grammatical person or voice, except at least active voice and lively dynamic voice emphases are overall composition best practices, more so for prose.

[ February 26, 2018, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Jack Albany
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I'm with extrinsic on your proofreader's antics. Are they a professional or just some 'dude'?
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walexander
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Thanks, everyone, esp. E.

This was one of those problems about staring at a sentence you like for hours, but knowing something is wrong with it.

And no, it wasn't - The fired flared.

It is tied to paragraph and sentence structure. This is where as a writer I hate being my own editor because a love for something that feels special needs to be put aside for proper grammar. At the same time if this had been a simple matter I wouldn't have worried so much about it. I've learned the hard way, several times now, that usually when I hit a wall like this it means the sentence is out of place and needs to be restructured or dropped altogether.

But I dropped this into the bucket because it led me to question other complex problems with ed vs. ing, especially when using both forms in a sentence separated by a comma.

I'll take a look at that reference material E. Thanks again.

W.

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