If you're native language is anything other than English, you'll know how much of a pain our language can be. From certain adverbs, syntax, spelling and pronunciation. I'm sure tenses also made that list. There are a lot of people whose native tongue is English and struggle with tenses.

That includes writers. It's something I sometimes mess up in my first drafts... I then have to do another draft that focused on looking at the tenses.

What is Tense

In English, there are three types of main tense: Present, Past, Future. Something that is happening now, something that happened in the past, and something that will happen in the future.

I play with the cat. He played with the cat. She will play with the cat.

On the surface of it, it seems simple enough. That is until you realise that each of these tenses have subtenses. I will go further into the present tense and future tense later this year.

For this post, I want to focus on past ten

I'd like to focus on the past tense for this post as many writers write in the past tense more than they do the other tenses.

Simple Past Tense

This tense doesn't need much explaining, it is self explanatory. Simple sentences tend to fall into simple tenses, and so this Simple Past Tense is exactly that.

• The bear read a book.
• Berg sat on a tree.
• He lived a long, happy life.

It is used to say something that has already happened and presumably finished. Let's try and create a paragraph with nothing but this tense.

The teddy bear read a book and enjoyed it. He had seen the images in his mind; they were beautiful. He wished there was more to the story, but there wasn't. He put the book on the self.

It's possible, it it's clunky and it doesn't flow very well. That's why we need to use the other tenses as well. Stories are made from a mix of the three main tenses and their sub-tenses, in fact I think it would be a challenge to only use the one tense, unless maybe in a short poem?

I'm not a poet, I don't know... but what I do know are the few sentences above don't really tell us much about the teddy bear and his book.

Past Continuous

If you're a writer, you should have had many scenes where your narrator or character arrives late to the scene. That means the action has already started but hasn't finished yet. This is the perfect tense for those moments.

The teddy bear was reading a book when the cat knocked on the door.

The use of "was", "when", followed by the action "knocked" all help to make this a past continuous sentence. Let's add onto the teddy bear paragraph in past continuous.

The teddy bear was reading a book when the cat knocked on the door. He was miffed that he had to stop reading. The cat was desperate for the toilet by the time the teddy bear made his way down the stairs and opened the door.

This is already more engaging than the simple tense paragraph, all with the help of conjunctions and prepositions to show something that had happened and is still happening. We could make it better by adding the simple tense to the story.

The teddy bear was reading a book when the cat knocked on the door. He was miffed as he put the book on the shelf. The cat was desperate for the toilet by the time the teddy bear made his way down the stairs and opened the door. She ran past the bear and upstairs.

Two more sentences and we've added urgency to the story. You see how well they work together.

Past Perfect

This tense is used to show something happened before an even recently past event. You might be able to apply cause and effect to this type of tense, for example: I paid before I got on the bus.

You can play around with the syntax too: Before I got on the bus, I paid.

Words like "before" and "just" connect the two events but let us, the reader, know what happened next. Let's return to the teddy bear, and the cat. What we are going to do is change the last sentence to a perfect tense.

The cat ran past the bear and upstairs before she tripped on a stray piece of lego.

It's useful to show cause and effect, like the cat tripping because they ran, but also to join two related events. It doesn't always have to be cause and effect, as the first example sentence shows. I do think they need to have some relation with one another though.

Past Perfect Continuous

Like Past Continuous, this tense would be great for the arrive late, leave early scenes. It is when an event had already been going on before something happened. It can also link to cause and effect.

The teddy bear had been reading when there was a knock on the door.

The visible difference here is the use of the "had been" rather than the "was". Had been suggests no longer, whereas was can still be happening. For this reason, the following sentence, "he was miffed," cannot be converted into past present continuous as that would imply he was no longer upset that he had to put his book back.

Additionally, in the Past Continuous Tense, the empathise was on the knock of the door. In this tense, the empathise is on the reading.

Often, this tense is also used in speech: "I had been planning to de-weed my garden on Sunday."

The speaker is no longer planning, although without context, we do not know if they decided not to de-weed the garden or not. I'd imagine it'd be a response to, "do you want to go out on Sunday?"

It also works for reported speech. That part of writing where dialogue would just slow down the narrative and not add anything, but you need to make it clear that the conversation had happened.

The teddy bear, Berg, told the cat, that he had been working all weekend and he just finished.

Sometimes, that is much better than:

"Hi Berg, how are you?" asked the cat.

"Good, I worked this weekend and just finished." Berg said.

The same point comes across in reported space, uses less white space and gives a lead for a much more important conversation or action.

Conditional Past Tense

Wait five?

Yep five, although it comes under conditional tense, which there are four of those too. So what is Conditional Past Tense?

It's a tense based on fabricated past. Something that could have happened, but didn't because the condition that would have got the result didn't happen: "If I had studied at school, I would have been a famous scientist now."

It's used a lot in speech, especially when dreaming of the perfect life that could have been, but it can also be useful to introduce your character to the reader.

If Mary's circumstances had been different, if she were a boy, she would have been able to put her mind to good use. Mary, however, was a girl, and this meant that she was expected to stay at home and raise children. Something she had no intention of doing. She thought about this as she made a cup of tea for Lady Herrish.

Alright, I got a bit carried away there. The first sentence is written in conditional past tense. It tells us that Mary has intelligence that can be applied for good, but because she is a girl, she is unable to do this. The next sentence uses was rather than had been. It's still happening, so we know this to be past continuous. The third and forth sentences are simple tense. By mixing the tenses, I am able to give a clear idea who Mary is, and without saying it, we have a rough idea when the story is set.

Thanks for reading

Tense is definitely one of the most complex things about the English language. I hope you found this useful, I have other blog posts on writing, such as first person narrative, the third person narrative, and creating strong voices. You can expect a post on present tense by 3rd February.

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