Verb Tenses: Simple Past vs. Past Perfect
Why do American writers have such difficulty grasping the difference between tenses? I can only imagine that it’s the collective-cultural result of our being traumatized by hellishly pedantic high-school English grammar teachers who forced us to diagram sentences, a pastime I thoroughly detested as a teenager but have started to believe may have deserved closer study.
Let’s take a quick look at how to use past tenses and then study simple past vs. past perfect, since those are the tenses I see most often confused.
The Past Tenses of a Verb in English
When Droit entered the room, his cousin was pouring himself a brandy. Michael had always been fond of brandy; he had been drinking it for years.
The simple past tense is the past tense you all know quite well; the past tense in which most novels are written. In this example, “entered” is simple past: Droit entered the room. You create the simple past tense by using the past participle of a verb — usually verb+ed (enter+ed=entered), although numerous irregular verbs break that rule (not drinked, but drank).
Past continuous is the tense used when something’s going on at the same time as what’s going on in simple past tense. “Was pouring” is past continuous: his cousin was pouring himself a brandy. It implies interruption, although there’s really nothing to stop Michael here from continuing to pour. 
You form the past continuous by adding was or were to the past participle.
Past perfect is the tense you use when referring to something that happened before what’s going on in simple past tense in your story. Here, Droit is reflecting on Michael’s past as a brandy-drinker. “Had been fond” is past perfect: Michael had always been fond of brandy. You create this tense by had + the past participle. (By the way, “always” is an adverb; we’ll cover the difference between adverbs and adjectives some other day, OK?)
Past perfect continuous is the tense you use when you’re in past perfect and referring to something ongoing. “Had been drinking” is in past perfect continuous: He had been drinking it for years. You form the past perfect continuous by had been + past participle.
You’ll find a useful overview of tenses at Purdue University’s online writing lab.
Simple Past vs. Past Perfect
Many writers use the simple past when they need to use the past perfect. If your story or novel is written in the simple past, whenever your characters start to muse over what happened in the past, you need to enter past perfect. The only proper exception to this is if you signal a scene change, so that suddenly we’re transported to that past event. In that case, you can continue with simple past.
Droit remembered their fathers drinking together, back when he and Michael had been children. They’d hated each other, but they’d hated the blind ferocity of their drunken fathers even more. Despite the boys’ differences, they had become reluctant allies by necessity, escaping the parlor to hide in back rooms where their heavy-handed fathers couldn’t find them after hours of drinking and complaining had finally taken their toll.
“Remembered” is in simple past tense, and everything else is in past perfect. Don’t forget, “they’d” is a contraction of “they had.” I find that using contractions can help smooth over the awkwardness of past perfect.
If past perfect seems too awkward to me, I can tell the story in a flashback and revert to simple past:
Droit remembered their fathers drinking together, back when he and Michael had been children.
***
Their fathers were drinking again, and Michael and Droit hurried away from the parlor to find somplace to hide. Neither of the boys liked each other, but they liked their fathers’ tendency to come out of a drinking bout ranting and swinging their fists even less….
Get it? In this case, the flashback is “live,” so it’s told in simple past tense again. The benefit is that I can avoid writing a whole passage in past perfect. The disadvantage is that I will need to spend more time and effort to develop this scene, when sometimes all I really want to do is present a short, expository reminiscence that doesn’t break the flow of the story.
What would be incorrect would be to write the passage as follows:
Droit remembered their fathers drinking together, back when he and Michael were children. They hated each other, but they hated the blind ferocity of their drunken fathers even more. Despite the boys’ differences, they became reluctant allies by necessity, escaping the parlor to hide in back rooms where their heavy-handed fathers couldn’t find them after hours of drinking and complaining finally took their toll.
This is written entirely in simple past tense, and it doesn’t make grammatical sense, especially if Droit and Michael no longer hate each other — or are no longer reluctant allies. Writing this reminiscence in the same tense as the rest of the novel makes it sound as if it’s still happening — it’s conflating the events of their childhood and adulthood.
No doubt many writers would like to ring the death knell of the past perfect tense, but it’s necessary to keep events properly sorted out along your story’s or novel’s timeline. If time elements are important in your novel, then so is the past perfect tense. Use it correctly and your editors will thank you!
drupagliassotti @ December 19, 2007