Forums » Art & Creativity » the conditional tense and you

I'm making this thread because I've been seeing this tense specifically being used incorrectly all over the place in communities I frequent, but not any other tenses, and I can't figure out why. I've never seen it misused by any respected writers, nor have I ever witnessed a single writer, advice blog, style guide, or indeed any source, credible or otherwise, recommend using it as a narrative tense, so I have no idea where or how the precedent originated.

Anyway.

"Would" you please stop using "would" all the time: a helpful guide on how to stop using "would" all the time

The conditonal tense is used to refer to actions whose state (has or has not occurred) has a dependence on some conditon, thus the origin of the term. Let us consider some examples.

She would have filled her canteen, if the well had not been dry.

This is a correct use of the conditional tense. The dependent phrase "She would have filled..." and the condition "if the well..." are both present. We can tell what was supposed to happen, and why it succeeded or failed.

The sentence illustrates another key aspect of the conditional tense: a conjunction such as "if," "but," or some other word indicating a causal relation. A sentence in the conditional tense almost always includes one.

She will fill her canteen, if the well water becomes drinkable.

Another functional conditional statement. Almost identical to the last gramtically, except now we're referring to an event in the future, making this a hypothetical, or "what-if" kind of statement.

She would have filled her canteen.

In comparison to the last two statements, we can plainly see what is wrong. Half the sentence is missing. Not only do we not know what is preventing her from filling the canteen, we don't actually know if she was successful or not. In fact we don't know much of anything about what is going on for certain. What if the rest of that sentence was, "... but her canteen was already full," or "... but her canteen had been devoured by the slavering beasts from the land of ten thousand wailing warp-terrors"? In both cases what transpired technically remains the same, yet the information drastically changes the state of the narrative both in-world and in the minds of the readers.

Now consider:

She would fill her canteen.

This tells us even less than before. Did she fill her canteen? Is she going to in the future? Did she try, and fail? If so, what prevented her? More warp-terrors? No one can say for sure. We can't even tell if this is happening, going to happen, or has happened already. It's only a complete sentence in the barest, most technical sense of the word. As a communication device, it fails utterly, leaving the reader knowing less about the narrative than they started out knowing.

On top of the functional concerns, it's just bad form. The tenses exist for a reason: they provide a conceptual framework that helps keep the story coherent for the reader. This is basic stuff, and is why "don't mix past and present tense" is one of the first rules taught in English class. So when most readers, accustomed to reading in either the past or present tense, suddenly come across your paragraph written in the conditional, it's like hitting a speed bump at 40 mph. It's jarring and uncomfortable, and interrupts the internal voice.

On top of that, it sounds like the author couldn't make up her mind about what is happening. Clearly, if the author doesn't know what's going on in her own story, the reader has no chance of figuring it out, so why bother? Most people won't. They'll just read something else.

As a non-native English speaker, I used these words in all the wrong ways for a long time and still sometimes do. Mostly because other people were doing it and were my example for the English language. When I figured out why it was wrong, I did my best to use it correctly, but when something is ingrained into our minds as a habit it becomes hard to get rid of it.

When I see it used occasionally I don't mind too much (been there, done it, I have little right to judge!), but it can become frustrating quickly when 'would' is used in every other sentence in a way that makes no sense. Like you said, it reads as a speed bump and can throw off the flow of the story for me. If it is used correctly but excessively, I feel it can make a roleplay come to a halt quickly because nobody is making active choices. When your character is constantly passive because you as the writer are leaving everything open to someone else, the game is likely to stall quickly and die out.

I always encourage people to be more active and less passive - it does wonders to push a story forward, and in my experience the abundant usage of 'would' can significantly hinder this development.

I'm pretty sure English grammar is legendarily idiotic for a foreign language user to learn, so they get a pass.

The problems are mostly caused by people who think writing this way is an interesting style, or are emulating the bad habits of others and just don't know any better.

Tip: a tense is not a style. That's like telling a painter a paintbrush or a color is a style.

I think my first post could boil down to just that, really.

Edited for typos.

I have never seen this occur outside of RP writing, but in RP writing it's rampantly common. There's an understandable reason too!

I don't think it's a style or a flourish, I think it's an attempt at politeness. The conditional statement that they appear to lack is an implied "She would fill her canteen, unless your character does something to disrupt this action."

I have always read it as an invitation to not take the post as set in stone, and something mutable should your character not take the assumed action. It's just a way to expedite the process. Instead of three posts going...

She dipped her canteen in the stream to fill it

He stood there and watched her do it until she was done.

She recapped the full canteen and turned around.

It just gets condensed into one line with the invitation to disrupt contained in the "would."

That said, I agree it's always set my teeth on edge as a method of politeness, since it is also grammatically bizarre.

This is one of the reasons I used to do this!

However, it's also one of the reasons my RPs became so damn booriiiing. Everybody was just sitting around for stuff to happen, giving each other endless space and it just became a drag to constantly have my characters be passive this way.

I think a good RP has a nice balance between giving a character room to intervene and being aggressive enough in forwarding the plot that it doesn't become stagnant. In most cases where people use 'would' in a way to allow intercepting actions, it is so overdone that everybody just sits around and waits for someone to do something. Everybody is afraid to take charge because a fear of godmoding has been branded into our brains, when I believe it vital to a good story in moderation.

That said, I also don't believe 'would' is necessary to give others room to maneuver.

She dipped her canteen in the stream to fill it, then began to recap the full canteen and turned.

By using the word 'began' one indicates that the action is about to happen but can be disrupted by another event. If it's not disrupted however, everybody instantly knows what's happening next. 'Would' never saw the light of day, but the effect is the same. This is a method I favor and has worked out well for me so far, and unless my non-native Englishness is mistaken, this is also grammatically correct!

However, I also just assume at all times that a post is not set in stone. I tend to play with people who are flexible and don't mind having unexpected events injected. That probably has something to do with why it's easier for me to ditch 'would' almost altogether from my roleplays!

I have not actually found this to be the case! I think that's a culture issue rather than the fault of "would" itself.

This isn't at all the same, though. It implies that she was able to finish filling up the canteen, to begin recapping it, and to turn around, not that the action could have been aborted before completion. The only action you're making "iffy" is capping the canteen. To truly make it written entirely as a conditional, you'd have to do this:

And now we have "began" and "would" both in play -- although in this example they are being used in a grammatically correct manner.

In general, I think this should be something that a RP community agrees on and has stated somewhere in their rules -- all actions can be disrupted by a subsequent post, so you don't need to qualify everything. Otherwise you end up with a tangled mess of "woulds" or "begans"

But people are timid and don't want to godmode, so if it isn't a rule that is constantly reaffirmed by the community, people will do their utmost not to step on toes by writing it in themselves over and over.

Personally, I have used would in the manner that I demonstrated above (If she were allowed to finish, she would...) when writing aggressive, controversial or difficult actions that had a 50/50 chance to be contested, such as during a fight scene or some kind of struggle, but that I didn't want to end the post on to allow for response to keep the scene going at a steady clip. But I reserve it only for those kinds of tense situations, and let normal things, like hand shaking or canteen filling, go without qualifiers.

That could very well be it! I just know that the two go hand in hand more often than not (or did when I was actively RPing in Furcadia). That's not to say I 100% will never ever want to hear 'would' ever again, because that's silly, but I'm cautious of using it all the same.

Also, I learned something! Hurrah! I agree with the rest of your post too. I wanted to write a big explanation of how I see it but it's basically repeating what you said, so I'll skip that.

I use 'would' in moderation, and very rarely use it outside of a certain game dealing with two unpredicatble characters who know little of each other and therefore are walking on eggshells, so to say, by interacting. By using 'would' closer to the end of a reply, the entirety of the content is not completely dependent upon whatever that 'would' entails on my partner's part, and only what follows it is subject to change.

Using it does give me a sort of unscratchable itch, though, because a disruptive 'would' in the middle of a after the smooth flow of another tense makes me cringe. As of now, however, I have no better method than using this conditional.

I've RPed with people who uses it EVERY SENTENCE. It's infuriating. But in freeform roleplay it's very difficult to know when someone will or won't take exception to an action your character is taking.

Let me go into a little more detail about why it's both overused and actually quite important in many situations.

Most strict freeform roleplay takes place in "rounds," and while out of necessity there must be a posting "order" every post from the first person in the order to the last takes place in the same period of three to six seconds. This system is taken from tabletop RPGs like D&D. This means that if you're the first person posting in the round, things become quite difficult for you. You get to go first, but you also have to show your hand, and roleplay in anticipation of unknown actions taking place simultaneously to yours.

For some people, this means being over cautious, and for others, it means trying to force their actions through. This is one major root of god moding (but not the only), and one reason why freeform roleplay is a flawed system especially when it comes to combat. Unfortunately, without using dice there really is no better system yet.

Interestingly, being last in the round is a very powerful position - by the unity of time your post can not be interrupted. Your actions can be responded to but not prevented in the same way as if you posted first.

I think that Kim has it right. There should be mention of policy concerning this issue in the rules, and such careful language is only really necessary in tense situations.

Any sentence written in the conditional can be re-written in a different tense with no loss of meaning, guaranteed.

Furthermore, an action doesn't have to be written as an attempt to be an attempt.

A: She fills her canteen.

-

B: Suddenly, before she can finish, a wild warp-terror appears and magicks her canteen to another dimension entirely!!

This looks like god-moding to some people. That's because people aren't communicating outside of their IC interaction - they're simply posting whatever they feel like, without getting any feedback from other players first, what the intentions of each player are for the current arc, or even figuring out amongst themselves what general direction they're going in. This is called doing it wrong.

PS:if having your character be victorious in confrontation is important to you, you are also doing it wrong.

I like it when my characters lose. It's so much more fun!

A hero can't have a self-finding revelation and/or emotional flashback revealing suppressed memories which unlocks their supr sekrit speshul unike powarz unless and until she comes close to losing her life or that of a loved one in a poorly-paced battle shot on shaky-cam. Fact.

To get back on topic: the core idea here is that using the conditional tense in this way is simply wrong. There are no justifications or extenuating circumstances. The purpose of language is to communicate ideas. The usage discussed here does not communicate ideas, and in fact obfuscates information. Therefore, it is not actually language, you are not getting your message across, and you are not improving your writing. It's self-defeating.

This. Very much this. I agree. And with what you said about OOC communication.

Not everyone has been taught to write well, so discussions like this are important for the community, I feel.

Despite my tone I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. Nobody is a bad person because they use a tense, that's silly. Neither am I claiming that anyone who does this is a terrible writer. We all have our bad habits. I certainly appreciate it when people point out mine. This particular idiom just gets on my nerves in an irrational way. Like a dentist's drill for your language processing center.