Movement and use of gerund.

[Coragem]

Hi there:

So I write in past tense but I myself using the present tense gerund more and more when I'm writing movement (e.g., characters walking about). My instinct tells me this works well to suggest immediacy, hurry. I also find I do it simply to avoid repetition of the pronoun (So "walking, running, dodging" instead of always "he walked, he ran, he dodged").

A downside is that although I find I very easily slip into present tense gerund, slipping out again is often tricky or clunky.

I'd appreciate some opinions on this.

Couple of examples below.

Thanks very much indeed,

Coragem.

(1) Up and ripping free of the virtual, Tremblay’s dumbstruck mug stretching and elongating, furniture and walls and light itself shredding into a trillion motion rays. Dumped back to reality in vNL, blinking up at transparent dome and stark late-morning blue spreading infinite behind racing clouds and fliers like shuriken throwing stars. Lolling his head to see Samantha still under to his right and again, up, this time from his white leather recliner. Up and ducking past Felix and Torres.

(2) Mike jogged up the steps, yelled ‘Hey, amigos’ and waved an apology and slipped inside ahead of a thick troupe of guys rowing in Spanish, hurling hands like they just missed a shot on goal. He shirked eye contact with the ops around the entrance and stalked straight up corridor right, not keen on being suckered by another Trina Dorsey. Now passing the first rest room – rammed, guys piling out with quick hands doing final runs through hair, girls queuing – and keeping on towards International Diplomacy, a second glance at a trim older lady in high boots talking Russian to a guy about his age and height and hair colour. He ducked into rest room number two.

 

[Tecdavid]

I find the second example easier to follow than the first, but to tell the truth, that might be because I find the context easier to understand than in the first example. Because I felt a little lost reading the first, I'm not entirely sure whether the tense was what made me prefer the second.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I do it myself from time to time, but wouldn't be all that great at it. Anyway, some thoughts, for what they're worth:


(1) Up and ripping free of the virtual, Tremblay’s dumbstruck mug stretching and elongating, furniture and walls and light itself shredding into a trillion motion raysI quite like this. I wouldn't want to read too much of it, though.. Dumped back to reality in vNL, blinking up at transparent dome and stark late-morning blue spreading infinite behind racing clouds and fliers like shuriken throwing starsThis sentence, though, seemed to stretch it too far for me. Lolling his head to see Samantha still under to his right and again, up, this time from his white leather recliner. Up and ducking past Felix and Torres.And, by the end it's feeling fragmentary to me and I want a nice, long sentence with an and.

(2) Mike jogged up the steps, yelled ‘Hey, amigos’ and waved an apology and slipped inside ahead of a thick troupe of guys rowing in Spanish, hurling hands like they just missed a shot on goalThis sentence doesn't work for me. I think it's the double and. I'd be inclined to go, "Hey, amigos," waved an apology and ..... He shirked eye contact with the ops around the entrance and stalked straight up corridor right, not keen on being suckered by another Trina Dorsey. Now passing the first rest room – rammeddon't understand this, guys piling out with quick hands doing final runs through hair, girls queuing – and keeping on towards International Diplomacy, a second glance at a trim older lady in high boots talking Russian to a guy about his age and height and hair colour. He ducked into rest room number two.[/QUOTE]

For me, it was all too fragmentary and busy, more than the tense itself that I kept getting hung up on, and it didn't entirely work. But it might be a taste thing.

 

[chrispenycate]

Well, as far as I'm concerned, these aren't gerunds, just present participles (a gerund is a noun, as in "the shining"). And, as a grammar nazi, I have to complain that the majority of the sentences aren't; they're fragments. Even at that length you've managed to leave them devoid of transitive verbs (though the second example is better). Basically the subject/verb/object structure in English has evolved for a functional reason, and should not be sacrificed without careful attention; if you had a pedant judging this you would be severely castigated.

But present participle or gerund, the word has not a tense; that can only apply to verbs. You are not moving into the present by using a present participle, merely stating that the adjective is contemporary with the action, whereas the past participle (identical in many verbs to the imperfect tense) states that what is being described has its origins anterior (chronologically {are Chrons ever logical?}) to the action being described.

Is that clear? Of course not. Would it have been any clearer had I used simpler words? I fear not.

 

[Glisterspeck]

Well, as far as I'm concerned, these aren't gerunds, just present participles (a gerund is a noun, as in "the shining"). And, as a grammar nazi, I have to complain that the majority of the sentences aren't; they're fragments. Even at that length you've managed to leave them devoid of transitive verbs (though the second example is better). Basically the subject/verb/object structure in English has evolved for a functional reason, and should not be sacrificed without careful attention; if you had a pedant judging this you would be severely castigated.

But present participle or gerund, the word has not a tense; that can only apply to verbs. You are not moving into the present by using a present participle, merely stating that the adjective is contemporary with the action, whereas the past participle (identical in many verbs to the imperfect tense) states that what is being described has its origins anterior (chronologically {are Chrons ever logical?}) to the action being described.

Is that clear? Of course not. Would it have been any clearer had I used simpler words? I fear not.

This matches my thoughts almost exactly.

I would add that, because you're using present participles, it should follow that everything you're describing is happening simultaneously, in the present. Given that, even if you're okay with fragments (as I generally am), then the first example is still not going to be engaging because you are describing a sequence of events that is logically impossible. (If all those things are not going on at the exact same time, you shouldn't be using present particles.)

Furthermore, present participles feel like description not action because they are generally working as an adjective or an adverb. You'd probably never write a whole paragraph using nothing but nouns, adjectives and adverbs, because you'd be missing the action words, but that is, in effect, what you've done here, causing it all to fall flat.

The second works better because you're using verbs to set up actions and then using the participial phrases as they are meant to be used, to describe the environment or actions you've set up.

In either case, you should be aware of the sing-song meter that can be set with all those -ing endings.

 

[Mouse]

All I know is that Boneman once told me off for using too many 'ings.' He was right, when I changed them to 'eds' it all sounded much better.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

All I know is that Boneman once told me off for using too many 'ings.' He was right, when I changed them to 'eds' it all sounded much better.

You too...?

 

[TheDustyZebra]

The first one, if it were a movie, would be filmed in dizzying camera pans running circles around the actor. It sounds like a bad acid trip (I'm guessing!) with everything happening at once in all directions. There aren't actually any verbs in that paragraph.

The second one, as mentioned above, does have better context to judge by, and it's somewhat better, but it jars as it goes from normal verbs to a verbless sentence.

Unless you're trying to convey total chaos and confusion, as in a drug trip or maybe viewing the aftermath of a natural disaster that destroyed your neighborhood, something like that, you don't really want those long sentences of "ing" words with no accompanying verb.

To get them to work for what I think you're wanting, you really need to combine the two in the same sentence.

(2) Mike jogged up the steps, yelled ‘Hey, amigos’ and waved an apology and slipped inside Mike jogged up the steps, yelling 'Hey, amigos', waved an apology and slipped insideahead of a thick troupe of guys rowing in Spanish, hurling hands like they just missed a shot on goal. moment of puzzlement as I sorted out "rowing in Spanish" and came up with the meaning of "fighting" instead of my first thought, "propelling a boat" -- and then "hurling" is more of a throwing away action than I think of for a hand motionHe shirked eye contact with the ops around the entrance and stalked straight up corridor right, not keen on being suckered by another Trina Dorsey. Now passing the first rest room – rammed, guys piling out with quick hands doing final runs through hair, girls queuing – and keeping on towards International Diplomacy, a second glance at a trim older lady in high boots talking Russian to a guy about his age and height and hair colour. There is no verb in this sentence.He ducked into rest room number two.He decided against the first restroom -- ... -- and kept on towards International Diplomacy. Passing a trim, older lady in high boots, he risked a second glance at the guy she was speaking Russian to -- about his age, his height, his hair colour -- and ducked into rest room number two.

 

[Ursa major]

As has been mentioned by others, example (1) is entirely composed of fragments**, all of which lack a subject (who should, as far as I can tell, be Tremblay). The use of the -ing words is to place what they describe in the same time frame as that of the main action. So:

He stood up, coughing.
​

Means that as he was in the process of standing up, he was simultaneously coughing. Another way of doing this is to write:

As he stood up, he coughed.
​

but this implies a single cough, whereas the first version implies more than one cough.

Without the main verb (in whatever tense you write it***), their is no 'main-verb timeframe' with which to link the subsidiary actions.

But that does mean that your paragraph of fragments is more easily seen as dreamy and timeless, which is a valid thing for which to aim . (The lack of an identified subject also helps in this regard.)



** - Even the second sentence: the verb, dumped, in 'Dumped back to reality in vNL,' is not a main verb. In a non-dreamy sentence, it would lead into the subject and main verb:

Dumped back to reality in vNL, Tremblay blinked up at the transparent dome, beyond which stark late-morning blue spread infinite behind racing clouds and fliers like shuriken throwing stars.
​

*** - Writing in the present tense would give you:

He stands up, coughing.
​

As you can see, the main verb indicates the timeframe (in this example, the present).

 

[Coragem]

Okay, okay, thanks all for your time and your responses, but I had better put a stop to this. There seem to be a few problems with my original post/question:

1) Sorry, I was never taught English grammar and the only grammar I know is actually Portuguese. In Portuguese the word "gerund" is used to describe the continuous (comendo, caminhando, etc.).

2) On reflection I can see that my first extract makes absolutely no sense out of context. Again, sorry.

On the positive side, the responses have been useful. I will be rethinking what has been a recent habit of slipping into the present participle.

Coragem.