Yes. This will most often happen in "was", "were", and "had been" constructions.
We walked out to the porch where grandma was sitting.
Now he just played the field at roulette, even when he was losing his shirt and had to be strong-armed out of the casino.
It feels a little weaker than more determinant past-tense verb forms, possibly because it follows a similar construction as the passive voice, or possibly because it just takes more words to express: "was sitting" versus "sat", but there's nothing wrong with it. It also becomes necessary to express certain things that are ongoing in the past, as opposed to happened and finished in the past.
That's what I thought XyZy. But sitting and losing can also be used in the present tense, right?
Yup.
We walk out to the porch where grandma is sitting.
Again, it is predominantly about conveying ongoing action. "Where grandma sits." implies something different than "Where grandma is sitting." There is some interchangeability, "sits" doesn't exclude the possibility that she is there now, but "is sitting" is definitely she is there now.
Doesn't this happen all the time?
The field goal was good. Now they were losing, sitting on the sidelines, the quarter back was helpless...
^Nothign wrong with that, is there?
"Here" is less commonly going to be used, because it's a word that would have to come from a specific narrator saying something. But you're probably overthinking.
I find this also happens a lot when you make a sentence more complex with a comma.
For example:
She stared at the ceiling for hours, sitting in the same chair as always. Losing her mind.
She stares at the ceiling for hours, sitting in the same chair as always. Losing her mind.
It's interesting how you can mess with verb tense and still make things make sense. Even down to says/said. Sometimes an author will be writing in past tense and start sneaking in 'says' tags, and I don't even notice because it just works. It's all one big experiment my friend. There are no rules.
For sure, as a writer, it's easy to lose track of tense when you're in the zone and writing the kinds of sentences above. But I disagree that it works. That stuff has to—has to—be caught in editorial. I've had many stories where tense was the reader's main anchor to multiple timelines, even beteween past and past-perfect, and it's absolutely critical you don't screw with them in such matters.
But to the original poster's question, yes, now and here can be used in past tense. It throws up a red flag to the writer, but isn't incorrect. I always rationalized to myself that the multiple meanings of then ("back at that time" versus "what came next was"), for example, would do more confusion damage than the slightly-jarring tense of now.
Oh I agree if you're messing with things happening at different times, you have to be very, very careful of tense. I just mean that sometimes, even in real life, we use 'says' and certain other present-tense things as if they were past tense. Like: After school I was walking down the street to the store and this chick there looks at me and says, "Blah blah blah." I get that it's not grammatically sound, technically, but sometimes that kind of stuff works if you do it with taste and care.
Yes, I do that all the time in conversation, and certainly in online posts, most often when telling an anecdote like your example. It's as if I want to establish that it happened in the past, but I'd rather tell the rest of it present-tense for more immediacy. And I'll do it within character dialogue on the page sometimes, just never in the narration.
Yea makes sense. It's so cool all the effects you can get with words.
Okay, I just had to post. I was reading Emergency, from Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson, and found this line:
They got him lying down, and Georgie says to the patient, "Name?"
And I thought it really worked. It's like the only time in this story, I think, that he does that; every other dialogue tag is 'said'. So it stands to reason that overusing this trick could get confusing and stale. But it makes it feel more, I don't know...real, maybe? Thoughts?
"Now here was a man who knew where to hang his hat."
The use of "-ing" in the past tense is referred to as the "Past progressive" or "Past prefect progressive" Depending on how it's used.
Past Progressive is set up like this: was/were/been + ing of verb. "He was talking to Miranda when the car drove by."
Past Perfect Progressive is slightly more difficult: had+been+ ing of verb. "They had been driving for hours before they stopped for dinner."
Just a quick grammatical explaination.
