: Re: Is there a complete guideline for which tense to use? There are questions here about specific use of tenses, but I wonder if there is a more complete guide on what tense to use when? For

@Kevin153

Vote Up Vote Down

Primarily simple past tense.
When fiction is past tense, the primary tense is simple past tense.
The other tenses are used briefly, for specific purposes.

Past perfect to indicate that an action was already completed.
This is the grammatical effect of past perfect.

Past perfect for timeframe transitions.
Writers often use past perfect tense
to switch into and out of flashbacks.
You're writing a scene in simple past tense.
To dip into a flashback,
you switch to past perfect for a sentence or two or three.
You continue the flashback in simple past tense.
Then you use a few sentences of past perfect
to transition back to the timeline of the main narrative.
The switch in tense becomes a hint to the reader
that you're switching timeframes.

Past progressive to relate an event to an ongoing action.
As far as I can tell,
this is used mostly to indicate that some event occurred
while some other action or condition was ongoing.
As I was going to Saint Ives [ongoing action, past progressive],
I met a man with seven wives [event, simple past].
So use this when it's important to indicate
the timing of some event
with respect to some ongoing activity.

Helping verbs.
In English,
past perfect and past progressive both use helping verbs.
Because of this,
it would be tedious to read a whole novel
(and probably a short story)
written entirely in these tenses.

(0)

Login to post a comment!