"Was"

[csr]

Besides, what do you do with Dickens' "It was the worst of times; it was the best of times"?

Hmmm... becomes a Led Zeppelin song?

[Alex Bragi]

“"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times”? Oh, but shouldn’t that really be, “"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times…” ?

Honestly, did you really expect me to pass up an opportunity like that, did you?

And, yes, what the Dickens do you do with it? (Sorry, but I couldn’t let that one slip either.) *gg*

Sure, the example you’ve given here is passive, but as juxtapositions, and not just those two—a whole string of them— it gives the story an incredible impact right from the start, doesn’t it? It’s a clever contrast, as Dickens then launches into a story set in times of competing and contradictory attitudes, as the entire tale becomes one giant juxtaposition of love and hate, sympathy and apathy, and poverty and wealth.

Besides, the hard and fast rule of fictional writing is, surely, there is none.

Oh, and…

I guess I haven't seen that much of this kind of thing for it to bother me.

…I wouldn’t go as far as saying it ‘bothers’ me. Just sometimes, it seems a pity to see a great idea for a story flattened with too much passive phrasing and/or a repeated and/or an excess of unnecessary words.

[ProjectEuropa]

“"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times”? Oh, but shouldn’t that really be, “"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times…” ?

Just to stop an interesting thread coming to an end I thought I would chip in. The Dicken's version is more poetic and therefore worthy of breaking grammatical rules. Rules are there to be broken but should only be broken to make a better or more powerful poetic sense. Metaphysical connections can say a lot more than literal meaning.

The irony of the poetry in Dicken's work, is that he was a really lousy poet.