Tense and point of view checker
Paste a scene: the tool works out the narration's main tense and person, then highlights the sentences that drift from it. Dialogue is ignored, since characters speak in the present even in a past-tense story. The analysis runs in your browser.
Up to 60,000 characters. Dialogue is ignored.
- « She pushes the door and climbs the stairs. »present-tense verb in a past-tense narrative
- « I think she was afraid. »"I" in the narration of a third-person narrative
Detection looks at verbs after a subject pronoun: a flag is a sentence to reread, not a certain mistake (a past memory in a present-tense story is often deliberate).
Point of view, scene by scene
In SagaScope's Workshop, you set each scene's focal character, and the tense and point-of-view analysis uses it to flag drifts in the selected passage.
Join the waitlistChapters too long or too short, sentences with a flat rhythm.
The two most common slips
The tense slip: a past-tense narrative that jumps into the present for a sentence, often in an action scene. The point-of-view slip: in first person, the narration enters another character's head ("she wondered if…"), which the narrator can't know; in third person, an "I" leaks into the narration.
How the tool spots verbs
The tool looks at verbs following a subject pronoun (he, she, I…) and recognises their form: -ed and irregular past forms, or present forms. Every flag is a sentence to reread: a past memory inside a present-tense story is often deliberate.
Common questions
- Can a novel mix past and present tense?
- Yes, when it's a readable choice: present for the main thread and past for memories, or one tense per point of view. What bothers readers is an unintended switch in the middle of a scene.
- Does it work in French?
- Yes: the French version of this page analyses French texts (passé simple, imparfait, présent; je / il).
And for the whole novel's consistency?
SagaScope builds your story bible from your text and alerts you when a detail contradicts itself. Join the waitlist.