Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Writing better articles (section)

==== Use of fictional tenses ====
{{shortcut|WP:FICTENSE}}{{anchor|Tense}}{{anchor|Tense in fiction}}
Works of fiction are generally considered to "come alive" for their audience. They therefore exist in a kind of perpetual present, regardless of when the fictional action is supposed to take place relative to the reader's "now". Thus, generally you should write about fiction using the ''[[Historical present#In describing fiction|historical present tense]]'', not the past tense. (See {{section link|WP:Manual of Style|Verb tense}} and {{section link|WP:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction|Contextual presentation}}.)
Examples:

: Homer ''{{xt|presents}}'', Achilles ''{{xt|rages}}'', Andromache ''{{xt|laments}}'', Priam ''{{xt|pleads}}''.
: {{xt|Holden Caulfield ''has'' a certain disdain for what he ''sees'' as 'phony'.}}
: {{xt|''Friends'' ''is'' an American sitcom that ''was'' aired on NBC.}}

Conversely, discussion of history is usually written in the past tense and thus "fictional history" may be presented in that way as well.

: {{xt|Chroniclers ''claimed'' that Thalestris, queen of the Amazons, ''seduced'' Alexander the Great.}}

Articles about fictional topics should not read like [[book report]]s; instead, they should explain the topic's significance to the work. After reading the article, the reader should be able to understand why a character, place, or event was included in the fictional work.

Editors are generally discouraged from adding fictional information from sources that cannot be verified or are limited to a very small number of readers, such as [[fan fiction]] and online role-playing games. In the latter case, if you absolutely have to write about the subject, please be especially careful to cite your sources.

If the subject, say a character in a television show, is too limited to be given a full article, then integrate information about that character into a larger article. It is better to write a larger article about the television show or a fictional universe itself than to create all sorts of stubs about its characters that nobody can find.