On Going Back into the More Distant Past from the More Recent Past

The Pluperfect

Apologies if you think this is a bit basic, but it’s something I often get asked about in writing workshops.

I’m writing a novel in the past tense, but I want my character to have a memory from when they were a child. What tense do I use?

That’s one way of asking it. Another is —

How do I do a flashback within a flashback?

This may seem a little like the very fair question —

Why aren’t science fiction novels written in the future tense?

But in English the past tense is richer and more complicated than the future tense.

For the future, we have —

She will travel by shuttle to the far side of the moon. Once she has landed at the spaceport, she will be met by a droid who will escort her to her room.

But if we want to take the character further into her future, we’ll just have to state that’s what we’re doing —

Two years later, the exact same droid will escort her to another room on Mars, although she will never know this. That second room will be where she finally receives notification her training is complete. But for now, she will look out at the lunar surface, doubting whether trying to become an astronaut was the right decision.

There’s no will will equivalent to the past perfect tense’s had had. There is, though, a future perfect —

She will have finished the induction module back in Florida two weeks earlier.

Or —

She will only have been sleeping ten minutes when the fire alarm wakes her.

Science fiction isn’t generally written in the future tense (I’m sure there are exceptions), because that would be clunky and monotonous. Will will will…

Within the past tense, we have more variety.

I am not a grammarian. I may say some of this in a less than technical way. What I’d like to do, though, is answer that initial question very directly and practically —

I’m writing a novel in the past tense, but I want my character to have a memory from when they were a child. What tense do I use?

The conventional way is to use the past perfect or pluperfect tense (had had, had been, had thought). This acts as a contrast, a recessing device, that puts a character further back in time, within what is has already been established as a past tense narration.

Not just then but before then.

This was happening but this other thing had already happened.

I’ll try to do this as simply as possible —

She lay back on the grass in the park. The smell of it reminded her of when she was a small girl. She had lived on a farm. Every autumn, her father had scythed the long grass in the small field behind the barn. The grass had then been used to feed the cows throughout the winter.

If we want to come out of this, we can make a clear transition back into the simple past tense, perhaps with a paragraph break —

There was a shout from over to her left. She turned her head to look across the field.

But if we want to continue narrating her flashback, we should modulate out of the past perfect and into the simple past.

You might think that once you’re in the past-within-the-past (the farm), you need to stick with the she had form the whole way along — until you return to the past (the park).

However the convention is that, after a couple of times through, enough to recess the chunk of time you’re talking about, you can then switch back to a less obtrusive simple past — She went… thought… saw rather than She had gone, had thought, had seen. From context, the reader will know they’re still in the further back past.

She had had, used again and again, soon becomes very cumbersome. I’d say that continued use of past perfect within a flashback is a clear giveaway of an unconfident writer.

Once the reader knows they’re in the past-within-the-past, you can let them remain there until you take them somewhere else. You don’t need to keep tapping them on the shoulder to remind them, Hey, this isn’t happening then, it’s happening then then.

A typical transition into and out of the past-within-the-past might read like this

She was driving towards the city when her car broke down. She had had trouble with it before. Once, she had been stranded outside Boston for two hours. Eventually, the highway patrol came along, and helped her call an automobile repair shop. She was extremely glad to see the mechanic when he drove up. He reminded her of her uncle Phil. Her car was fixed within a half hour. She had tipped the mechanic five dollars. She remembered how surprisingly clean his nails were. Cleaner than her nails were right now. She lifted them off the steering wheel and said yuck.

That was painless, wasn’t it?

The recessed past is introduced by had had trouble and specified by had been stranded, which then meld unobtrusively into the simple past tense, came along and helped, for the appearance of the highway patrol. We stick with the simple past for the memory of the Phil-like mechanic, he drove up (not he had driven up) and he reminded her (not he had reminded her). But then we return to the past perfect — she had tipped rather than she tipped — to close the memory off. When we hit She remembered, we know we’re exiting the past-within-the-past. The character is then given an action to perform, she lifted, that puts us back with them in the car, driving toward the city.

Building a flashback within a flashback works similarly. You can keep melting from the past perfect to the simple past indefinitely, as long as the past-within-the-past context is clear.

She looked at the penguins swimming toward the glass of the viewing window then swerving away just before they bumped into it. For some reason, they reminded her of the ice hockey players at the rinks she had gone to as a teenager, for ice dance lessons. The boys had always tried to intimidate her by speeding towards her then only turning away at the very last moment. One time the worst of them, Billy, wasn’t fully in control and smashed into her really badly. She caromed into the side boards at the edge of the rink then fell into a heap. Panicked people skated towards her. She looked down and saw red blood on the white ice. It reminded her of strawberries and cream. She had always had strawberries and cream for tea when she visited her grandmother in Ottawa. Her mother had driven them over every last Sunday of the month, though it was a six hour round trip. Her grandmother so loved to see them both. She would stand outside on the porch, waiting for them to arrive. But then, one time they hadn’t driven up to her cosy house down the long winding lane — they’d gone to some big ugly downtown building. It was very tall and had lions either side of the stone staircase. They walked up to reception, holding hands.

And so on.

We can come back to the penguins either smoothly —

She could still feel the gentle pressure her mother’s fingers on her own. They had come to this zoo together, too. Maybe they’d even looked at these same penguins. How long do penguins live, anyway?

Or abruptly —

Her phone started to ring. It was the funding committee. She pressed her fingers to her temples as she took the call. ‘You got it,’ the voice said.

Any questions?