Can you switch verb tenses when beginning a new sentence?

Question

Tony had just **grabbed** another bottle of whiskey when it happened. **Dropping** it, he **reached** out and grabbed the closest thing to him, narrowly avoiding falling to the ground. Like going from "grabbed" to "dropping" and back to "reached" Is that allowed or is it right the way it is?

Answer 1

The passage you've quoted is fine. I think part of your question stems from the fact that you are misidentifying the verbs communicating the main action: Tony had just **grabbed** another bottle of whiskey when it happened. **Dropping** it, he **reached** out and grabbed the closest thing to him, narrowly avoiding falling to the ground. 

The words I bolded above are the verbs, and they are all past tense. "Dropping" in this passage is not functioning as a verb; it is a present participle. The participle and its object (it) combine to form a participial phrase, which describes "he."

Basically, the sentence is saying that He reached out and grabbed the closest thing to him ... "dropping it" provides a little more information about the "he" who is doing the reaching and grabbing.

Now, there is actually a shift in verb tense in your passage: Tony had just grabbed another bottle of whiskey when it happened. "Had grabbed" is past perfect tense, while "happened" is simple past. This verb shift is correct because it maintains a clear timeline of events -- the past perfect tense is used to narrate action that took place before events that took place in the past. The focus of this sentence is Tony's reaching out and grabbing something. Before this happened, however, he grabbed another bottle of whiskey.

Hope this helps.