My editor and I are looking over my first 10+ chapters and having a fist fight
about how best to portray voices. She's right, my tenses and voice (passive, active) are all over the place and that can't stand. The chapters are also still way too sketchy and short. Chapter 8 in particular is a disaster for all the above reasons.
One of the biggest problems is how to portray character thoughts versus mere descriptive/action text. It just feels right to deliver character thoughts in present tense first person like their dialog (e.g. "Hey!" <--> Oh, that'll hurt.). But how to work that into what is essentially descriptive past tense (e.g. They proceeded down the sidewalk.) is making me pull on my hair. I've seen some fiction use italics for internal thoughts, but ... I'm not fond of visual cues.
Anyway, that's today's behind stage agonizing. My chapter for today is essentially written but I'm trying to slow down til we get this resolved to minimize rewrites.