Consistent Verb Tense in a Memoir

One of the jobs of verbs, besides showing action and state of being, is to show time. We know if a story happened in the past, is happening now or will happen in the future by the tense of the verbs in the story.

VERB / PAST TENSE / PRESENT TENSE / FUTURE TENSE
To cook / I cooked / I am cooking / I will cook
To sleep / She slept / She is sleeping / She will sleep
To run / He ran / He is running / He will run
To read / We Read / We are reading / We will read
To be / I was – he/she/it was – we were – they were – you were / I am – he/she/it is – we are – they are – you are / I will – he/she/it will – we will – they will – you will

When writing a true story, such as a memoir, the events have already happened, and verbs should be in the past tense. If the verbs in the memoir are in different tenses, the reader will be confused and feel as if the memoir is stuck in a time warp, moving back and forth in time.

Read the example below. Notice how the verbs are not all in the same tense:

The day is chilly and rainy, and I was feeling hungry for something chocolate. It is a perfect day to bake some chocolate chip cookies. I wander into the kitchen and checked for cookie ingredients. In the closest I find flour, sugar and chocolate chips. In the refrigerator there were plenty of eggs and butter. I checked the time – only 2 o’clock. I had plenty of time. I decide I would indeed make some chocolate chip cookies.

Now read the same paragraph in which all the verbs are in the past tense:

The day was chilly and rainy, and I was feeling hungry for something chocolate. It was a perfect day to bake some chocolate chip cookies. I wandered into the kitchen and checked for cookie ingredients. In the closest I found flour, sugar and chocolate chips. In the refrigerator there were plenty of eggs and butter. I checked the time – only 2 o’clock. I had plenty of time. I decided I would indeed make some chocolate chip cookies.

Exceptions to past tense verbs in a memoir

  1. When quoting someone who spoke using present tense verbs (“I want a cookie!” my brother exclaimed.)
  2. When speaking in the present about the past, such as in the memoir closing (As I look back on that day, I now realize…)