tenses - How to describe the future in the past


I've always used would as the past tense of will:



Present: Tomorrow, I will go to the beach.


Past: The following day, I would go to the beach.



However, in response to my question on Writers.SE, Robusto pointed out that my use of would creates an "an imperfect parallelism of tenses." What does this mean, and how do I correctly treat a statement about the future that is made in the past?


(I think it means that would could also be interpreted as a conditional, as in "I would go to the beach if the weather was nice," but isn't the intent clear from the context in which the sentence appears?)


EDIT (in response to Robusto):


Does the ambiguity introduced by would disappear if I put my sentence in its context?



It took me nearly a decade to write this script, and now I would pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood. But the following day, I got hit by a bus, and my dreams came to an abrupt end.




Answer



The point is, in the example you gave over there:



It took me nearly a decade to write this script, and now I’d pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood.



the switching of tenses makes it ambiguous. It could mean you wanted to pitch it to the top producer, or that you were going to, or that you still hadn't done it yet, etc.


The solution I offered:



It took me nearly a decade to write this script, and now I was about to pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood.



Keeps both clauses in the same time frame and makes it easy to see that you are talking about a future time in relation to a past event, and that both things happened in the past.


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