: Re: Is it a good idea to stay away from past progressive in fiction? I never noticed this in my writing until one of my readers pointed it out: We were driving down the highway in Tom's

@Samaraweera193

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Starting with past progressive feels very conversational, and I expect the sentence to end with a phrase that gives some kind of context about why you are doing that or what happened when you did that. Dale mentions a 'when' statement above, which illustrates the 'what happened'. Here's an example of the 'why':

We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, radio blasting to drown out the sounds of our own fear.

Your existing sentence feels awkward because you're setting the scene rather than contextualizing the story. The additional pieces are not related to the driving part, not really, but the progressive tense makes them feel like they should be, so when I read it, I try to connect them and it doesn't immediately make sense. They are more like stand-alone sentences. This is more comfortable:

We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner. Dim streetlights passed by and the night city scene faded behind us.

You could start with "We drove...". It's less conversational feeling, more subdued, and makes the whole beginning into setting the scene.

We drove down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, dim streetlights passing by, the night city scene fading behind us.

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