Explaining narrative tenses (2) for proficiency: E6-04G

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Narrative tenses for proficiency-level students part 2: handling extended text

Preamble – linking to part 1

In the story we are examining, we enter at the point where the verbs saw and was and had set have appeared:-

“This morning, my alarm went off. I grabbed for it in the dark and fell out of bed. I got to my feet – somehow, found the alarm clock and saw the time. It was 4.30am. Apparently, I had set it for 4.30, instead of 6.30.”

The writer might continue this story in such a way that, from the point of view of the verb tenses, three different things could happen:

 

Option 1:        ‘I gave a cry like a wounded animal and went to the kitchen for a glass of water.’

 

Here, we have only one action at an earlier time. We then go straight back to the main time sequence of the narrative – the early morning. To do this, we MUST use, once again, the past simple.

Option 2:        ‘I had been so tired that I had failed to check the setting on the clock. Sleepily, I climbed back into bed.’

  

In this case, we have not one, but three actions at the earlier time – so they all use the past perfect: had set, had been, had failed. Once again, when we do go back into the original line of development – with climbed, we once again use the past simple.

 

Option 3:        (‘I had set it for 4.30, instead of 6.30). I had, I admit, been drunk. It happened like this: I arrived home from work, as usual, around 5.45. I parked in the driveway. I began to open the car door. Then I had an unmistakable feeling. I threw the door open, leapt out of the car and yes! – there on the doorstep waving a bottle of tequila, sat my old friend Carlos, whom I had not seen since the famous 60^th birthday party in Tahiti, the previous year. He raised the bottle. “Compadre, he said….”’

 

In this text (diagram below) once we go back to had set, we stay in that time period but we use the past simple. Then, when we go back even further, to had not seen, we once again use the past perfect. The next verb, raised, brings us forward in time again.

  

Summary

·         When you read a novel or other form of story, you will find that it is written predominantly in the past simple.

·         Each new development in the action is described using the past simple.

·         When an action occurs further back in time than the period being described, the past perfect is used.

·         If a whole series of actions  - a segment of the story, if you like – takes place at an earlier time (like a flashback in a film), only the first two or three actions are described using the past perfect.

·         After these first two or three past-perfect verbs, the continuation of the ‘flashback’ is described using the past simple.

 

This is the model which you should use in your own writing.

 

Why? To understand why these rules are followed, and to look further at narrative texts, see the file narrative tenses (3) for proficiency.