Pluperfect

God that's a term that's been buried for me. Just a side note: I've never heard pluperfect used for English.

Yes, you can use past perfect without the reader going spastic on you. Just the same with "was", there's no reason for there to be problems when used well.

Now, in the terms of a summary flashback (backstory told within the narrative using "had" to reference something has happened deeper in the past), having it go on for two pages is far too long for me to handle. It's summary, why should it be so long? Does it all have to be dumped onto me at that point? Can it be sprinkled in with the current events? Couldn't it be shortened?
Or, could you make a flashback scene instead? That could handle the length just fine.

arcan said:

Eric woke up. His past had resurfaced in his dreams.
When his parents died, his relatives hired a lawyer. And so on

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That is one of the conventional ways of handling it and is perfectly fine.

You can also use the "had" once to indicate the tense and then leave it out, e.g.:

When Eric was younger his parents died. His relatives had hired a lawyer, and after the funeral he called Eric into see him.

"You know, Eric," said the lawyer, "you're going to be a rich young man."

"What do you mean?" said Eric. "We were poor!"

The lawyer had explained how he was now the owner of the secret formula for Coca-Cola, and that he'd already received several billion-dollar offers for sale.

Thinking back, Eric wished he'd kept that formula. A billion goes quick when you're seventeen and stupid.

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The bold indicates the entry and exit into the flashback, using "had", but once you're in there you can just carry on in normal past tense.

Agree with Onesecondglance, you can use "had" in certain limitations to lighten the usage overall.

But...

arcan said:

As for my WIP, I'm relating the dream of my MC after he woke up.

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So you're telling us what just happened in his dream? Why not just have a flashback scene by showing the dream, and then him waking up? That goes around the entire problem.

Arcan - I'm with you. I like to be correct with grammar. But on the other hand, I also agree that a long passage all in the past perfect can be a little distracting. I think there are two solutions - using the past perfect to 'jump' back and then referring to that past of the past in the simple past tense. It's a bit tricky to come back to your 'now' in that case. I think you'd have to do something to refer to the characters experience of 'now' clearly to re-anchor the reader in the 'now' of the story. The other option (as I see it) is to use verbs sparingly in your past of the past account - and keep that passage short.

If you come up with a satisfactory solution I'd be interested in hearing what you did.

onesecondglance said:

That is one of the conventional ways of handling it and is perfectly fine.

You can also use the "had" once to indicate the tense and then leave it out, e.g.:



The bold indicates the entry and exit into the flashback, using "had", but once you're in there you can just carry on in normal past tense.

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Yep, that's what I do, use it once, twice max. I've had it published that way, too.

Use it at the beginning and end of the flashback, and leave the rest in simple past. That used to be a convention among literary writers, but I don't know how widely used it is today.

arcan said:

I'm using the past tense for my WIP. But I sometimes have my MC recollecting parts of his past. Though not very lengthy, these parts can still take one or two pages. The rules want me to use the pluperfect, but I find all the "had ...ed" a bit tedious after a couple of sentences. Is it just me being prejudiced or is the PP not writer- and reader-friendly? And if so how do you deal with it?

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Don't we call it the past perfect now?

Anyway, use "had" for the first couple of sentences to establish that this is a recollection, and then shift to regular past tense. Use "had" again the last sentence or so to ease out of it.

arcan said:

The rules want me to use the pluperfect

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Do they?

Please excuse my asking (I may be completely wrong) but seeing that your location is in France had made me wonder whether you might possibly be confusing "pluperfect" in English with what the French call "past historic" tense, in books? It seems to me you may be thinking of "aorist" past tense as "pluperfect"? The other possibility, of course, is that I've totally misunderstood what you're asking ... always possible.

BethS said:

Don't we call it the past perfect now?

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"Past perfect" is not the same as "pluperfect".

"Past perfect" = "he went"
"Pluperfect" = "he had gone"

For long stretches in the past perfect, you start out in the past perfect, but once you've firmly established that this is in the past, you don't have to keep using it. Just make sure you clearly signal when you've returned to the present narrative.

I thought "he had gone" was past perfect, "he went" being just past.

But them I went to school during a period when these things were not taught.

The dictionary tells me past perfect and pluperfect are the same thing.

veinglory said:

The dictionary tells me past perfect and pluperfect are the same thing.

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That's certainly not what I was taught at school; it isn't what my grammar text-books say, either. This must be different in America (I'm guessing you're in America?), I suspect, from other English-speaking countries? Apologies: I had not allowed for that, nor did it really even occur to me that these tenses might have different names in different English-speaking countries.

arcan said:

I've always refered to it as pluperfect. Maybe it's'because I learnt UK English. Or maybe my teacher was a bit old-fashioned?

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I think it has something to do with the way they teach the tenses of romance languages - pluperfect is from the Latin, and when I learned French (and Latin, and German, and Greek, come to think of it) we always referred to it as pluperfect.

I have no idea what we referred to the English tenses as, because this wasn't really taught. Everything I know about English grammar I know from analysing it to learn foreign languages.

arcan said:

As for my WIP, I'm relating the dream of my MC after he woke up. I've tried using the preterit for a flashback scene, but as it's'more a remembrance of a part of his life, it doesn't work too well. Would it work this way?

Eric woke up. His past had resurfaced in his dreams.
When his parents died, his relatives hired a lawyer. And so on

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I had no idea what 'preterit' meant until I looked it up - Aorist. Ok, that's a term I understand. Used that all the time in Greek.

I think that would work fine.

onesecondglance said:

You can also use the "had" once to indicate the tense and then leave it out, e.g.:

The bold indicates the entry and exit into the flashback, using "had", but once you're in there you can just carry on in normal past tense.

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Yes, I've always nagged people I beta for to get rid of as much pluperfect as humanly possible, especially in extended recollections - I call it 'excessive hadding' and it just gets so boring and repetitive after a few sentences. Use plupf to transition in, change to simple past tense, plupf to transition out. Simples

alexaherself said:

"Past perfect" is not the same as "pluperfect".

"Past perfect" = "he went"

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No, that's past tense. See this.

"Pluperfect" = "he had gone"

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Which is what we call past perfect in the US.

BethS said:

Which is what we call past perfect in the US.

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Sorry!

Call me naive, but as I explained just above, I didn't know that, nor did it even occur to me that tenses might have different names in America from how they're known in the rest of the English-speaking world. I should have known better.

I think too much "had" is tedious, because in a sense it is all about stuff that's dead and gone in terms of the story and in terms of immediate action, but a little does no harm. I believe I use it mostly for bringing the reader up to date in a new scene that opens in the middle or after some hiatus, and I transition to past or present as soon as possible.

E.g.
But of course there are plenty of other legitimate uses. The obvious use of this tense in lengthy passages is for exposition. Too much exposition may sometimes be tedious or disruptive, and so this may be why too much use of the tense doesn't always work well.

Telergic said:

The obvious use of this tense in lengthy passages is for exposition. Too much exposition may sometimes be tedious or disruptive, and so this may be why too much use of the tense doesn't always work well.

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Absolutely, which is another reason I always suggest keeping it to a bare minimum

Pluperfect?

That's when.,...er...it's when...

One of those thingummies. You know...


Nope, lost


Use what works for the scene. That works

ETA: I really have no freaking idea.

arcan said:

I'm using the past tense for my WIP. But I sometimes have my MC recollecting parts of his past. Though not very lengthy, these parts can still take one or two pages. The rules want me to use the pluperfect, but I find all the "had ...ed" a bit tedious after a couple of sentences. Is it just me being prejudiced or is the PP not writer- and reader-friendly? And if so how do you deal with it?

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Use it for one or two sentences, then switch to regular past. The reader will understand what's going on from context and can usually transition seamlessly (so seamlessly that you yourself haven't even noticed it in the novels you've read!) When you switch back to the current storyline, just include some sort of signal, like "'And that's how I was unjustly convicted of weasel-eating,' said Tim," or a chapter break.

I'll echo what has been said by several others upstream, and it's not critical for this particular application whether you call it past perfect of pluperfect.

Use it once or twice to start the flashback (or other backwards dip), and then go to straight past. Then when you want to re-emerge from the flashback, use it once again to signal to the reader this is the transition back.

This comes from several sources, including editors' directives, books on writing/editing, and advice from experienced authors.