Pet Peeves

Today it's time for me to share one of my personal pet peeves/common mistakes in writing that I hate. And yes, I call it a mistake, regardless of its grammatical gray-area status, because it makes me cringe.

Said pet peeve is the use of the words 'this', 'these', and 'now' in a past tense narrative. These words are all, as far as I'm concerned, present tense pronouns. "This was", "These were" or "Now he had to" just sounds wrong, unless you're making a narrative aside. Those are grammatical constructions we use all the time in verbal storytelling, but they just don't work on the page.

I'm writing about this because I spent all weekend reading the Dragonlance Chronicles for my research project, and they are guilty of doing this in freakin' spades. Then I got to work today and found, in the midst of a manuscript that made me cringe for many other reasons, someone that at least used 'that' and 'those' and never said 'now', and I literally breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I wouldn't have to deal with that for the next 3 hours as I plowed through it.

Here is an example from Dragons of Winter Night that will, hopefully, illustrate my point to the world.

And so, "like the other scum," as Raistlin observed, the companions floated along upon the tides of war and were deposited in Flotsam. Here they hoped to find a ship that would take them on the long treacherous journey around the northern parts of Ansalon to Sancrist--or wherever--

Compare that to:

And so, "like the other scum," as Raistlin observed, the companions floated along upon the tides of war and were deposited in Flotsam. There they hoped to find a ship that would take them on the long treacherous journey around the northern parts of Ansalon to Sancrist--or wherever--

Hopefully you can see for yourselves what I'm talking about. The addition of one little letter makes a HUGE difference in the flow of the text. I couldn't find an example of 'now', but I still have one book left to go and I'm sure they'll use it. I'll rip the sentence when it does, but for now, just trust me that it's a superfluous word and cutting it out will yield a 100% increase in the quality of your manuscript.

...in other news, I apologize for any double 'r's...my 'r' key is apparently broken, making me sound like a pirate from time to time.