Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Perfect past tense for memories

This is topic Perfect past tense for memories in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Gan (Member # 8405) on :

Hello guys. I need some help here. I decided to completely rewrite one of my stories in past tense (ugh), and there are sections of 'flashback', or memories. I've never really dealt with this before, as I'm not a huge fan of it. But well, the past is a huge factor in my characters story. I'm keeping it to a minimum, but the story does require some.

So anyways, onto my question, or questions.

Firstly, if the flashback is only a paragraph or so long, would it be better to use perfect past tense, or use italics, or some other method? Does it differ depending on perspective, and if so, how?

If I do decide to use perfect past tense... Do you do the entire flashback in perfect past? Or do you just start the flashback in perfect past, and then switch to normal past? It seems tedious to have long passages of perfect past sentence after perfect past sentence, so I wasn't sure.

Thanks for any help you guys can give. As always, I really appreciate it. I'm having a really difficult time tense wise, ever since I tried present tense... Yeah, not doing that again.

Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :

If you're doing a short flashback, you can usually just weave it in continuously with the rest of the narrative (unless it's someone else having the memory?) That sort of thing actually happens more than we realize in novels, it just slips by us as part of the narrative.

If you're going to have a really long flashback (a paragraph or more), you can use a little bit of past perfect to get the reader into the new time frame and then just use past tense as usual. I definitely agree that using too much of the past perfect for too long would be off-putting.

Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :

My understanding is that you use past perfect (which I assume is the "had gone to bed" type of format - had being the addition) as boundaries on the front and back end of a flashback, then simple past in the body of it.

"He remembered how it was when they were young. She had been his study partner at school. They were in love. It was sweet. She said sweet nothings to him between classes. That was in 1999, it had been a long time since then and he still missed her every day."

Terrible example, but hopefully it makes sense.

I believe I got this from a book...Jesse Lee Kercheval's book? Building Fiction I believe?

Posted by Gan (Member # 8405) on :

Thank you both, that will help immensely.

Posted by philocinemas (Member # 8108) on :

I would imagine there are a number of ways to handle a flashback - not sure how well this works, but here's an example:

As he lay in the middle of the road, another car whizzed by, missing him by inches. The blame crept back up on him and weighted him down, preventing him from moving.

It happens all over again. He peers around the side of the open hood as smoke billows out and drifts into sky. The truck appears in the distance, a wobbling shine in the distorting waves of heat. Its approach is lingering, almost creeping. Time has a cruel kindness. It grows closer, and then he realizes it's not going to stop. His eyes widen as they meet the unsuspecting eyes of his wife in the front seat. She turns her head. This is his last sight of her as he leaps out of the way.

[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited November 03, 2009).]

Posted by philocinemas (Member # 8108) on :

I was hoping to give you an example of using a different tense, other than past perfect, to create a flashback. But I'm not sure how well that worked - it didn't seem quite right.

Posted by Gan (Member # 8405) on :

Haha, thank you Philo, and no worries. I got the point, and I definitely see how that could be used as well. I've been messing around with all of these different styles in my NaNoWriMo project. It's pretty interesting, and they all have their benefits/issues.

Thanks guys.