Timey-Wimey Tenses: Past-Tenseception

Finding the most efficient order in which to tell a story can be a tricky process. Sometimes, a perfectly linear narrative storyline will suffice—the story begins, progresses through a series of events, and then comes to an end. More often than not, however, your narrative will have important background information: events that happened before the book itself began that are important for understanding the plot. Some stories have only a little background information to be worked into the narrative; other stories are made up of fifty percent or more backstory.

When the characters learn a backstory that they didn’t know, it is usually easy to work into the narrative—the audience learns it in the same manner as the characters. Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father, he wants to find out how this could be true, he asks Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan tells him (and us) the backstory. Simple as can be. Other times, however, the characters already know their backstories, and your task as an author is to find a smooth way to inform your audience of the information.

The problem that often arises with backstory is one of tense: if your story is already written in past tense, then how do you relate information that is even more past tense?

Because it's timey-wimey and past tense within past tense! Eh? Eh?

Past Perfect Tense

The answer lies on our list of the sixteen different tenses in English. Most stories in past tense employ the “Past Simple” tense (Freja picked up the gun and pointed it at the guard). In order to relate events that happened before the current narrative, you simply need to switch to “Past Perfect” tense—it’s the tense that uses the word “had” a whole lot:

     Freja studied the ramshackle warehouse from the pub across the street. There were no signs of activity around it. But she had visited every other building on the list, and had found nothing. If this wasn’t where the cultists were hiding, then the list was wrong.

Most of that paragraph is written in past simple tense: “Freja studied,” “There were,” and “This wasn’t.” But that third, highlighted sentence is relating events that happened before the rest of the paragraph, so it uses had to drop into past perfect tense—even further in the past than the rest of the story.

Many writers forget the hads, leaving background events in the same tense as the rest of the narrative, like so:

     Freja studied the ramshackle warehouse from the pub across the street. There were no signs of activity around it. But she visited every other building on the list, and found nothing. If this wasn’t where the cultists were hiding, then the list was wrong.

See the problem? Now there’s nothing in that third sentence to indicate that those events happened before the rest of the paragraph—it almost sounds like Freja sat in the pub studying the warehouse, left and visited a bunch of other buildings, and then returned. Readers would probably puzzle out what the writer really meant, but it’s needlessly confusing.

So, you can use “had” in past perfect tense to relate events that happened before the current events of the narrative, but there’s still a problem: all those hads can really clutter up your prose. Past perfect tense can become really tiresome to read and to write if it goes on for more than a paragraph or so. For backstory that would take any longer than that to relate (anything you might call a bona fide flashback), you’ll probably want to use another method to share the information.

Past Perfect Introduction

One method is to use a few passages of hads to introduce your flashback, and then transition back into past simple tense for the rest of the backstory. Then, when you return to the “present” events of the narrative, you mark that transition with the word now or something similar. For example:

     Freja approached the warehouse empty-handed and alone. She had learned that weapons and backup would do her no good when she had gone up against the cult at the apartment complex in Copenhagen. She had been armed with an H&K MP5 rifle and her 9mm pistol, and had brought along two AKS squadrons for the raid.

     The first squadron went into the complex through the front doors while Freja led the second squadron through the rear. They rammed in the doors, forgoing stealth for speed and surprise.

     [More events, etcetera.]

     When her backup pistol jammed as well, Freya was forced to withdraw with the rest of the squadron. It had been an unmitigated disaster.

     This time, Freya was armed with only her wits and the small book of spells that Emil had given her. But with her new understanding of what the cultists were, she knew she could stop them on her own. She walked up to the warehouse door and pulled it open.

See how it works? A few sentences of past perfect tense at the beginning (and one at the end) let readers know that we’re jumping backwards in time. This can still be a little confusing for readers if you’re not careful with it, but it is far more readable than umpteen paragraphs of hads.

Break and Flashback

An even clearer method of relating a flashback is to simply use a line break or chapter break to show your readers that you are switching gears and to then relate your flashback in the same tense as the rest of the story. This method is used quite often by many authors. You can find some professionally-done examples in several books that I can think of off the top of my head:

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (Book four of The Wheel of Time)—this is the method by which Mr. Jordan related the history of the Aiel when Rand went to Rhuidean. Note that he used an in-world method of delivering the flashbacks; that is, these were memories being projected into the mind of the protagonist, and we received them as he did.

The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson—the first two books of The Stormlight Archive have both featured entire chapters devoted to the backstory of one of the characters (Kaladin in the first book and Shallan in the second). These chapters are scattered throughout the book, effectively serving as a series of flashbacks.

Holes by Louis Sachar—this book is actually unusually complex compared to most middle-grade stories. The story continually jumps around between the “present day” events of the story to the recent background of individual characters to various historical events that pertain to the narrative. In fact, in this book Mr. Sachar employs every single method of delivering backstory that I’ve outlined in this post. If you want to improve your flashback delivery, go read Holes and pay close attention to his tense usage. In fact, that’s your homework—who doesn’t want to read Holes again, am I right? Go do it.

The Inactive Beginning

If you’ve read my post on the purpose of the Story Polisher, then you know that I like to divide writing into three categories: Prose, Plotting, and Creativity. My posts here generally focus on Prose; this is in part because your prose will be the first thing an editor notices about your work (poor prose is the number one reason most stories get rejected, in my experience) and in part because it is difficult to teach people to write clear prose in any setting other than a classroom or one-on-one instruction. There are an abundance of resources out there to help new writers improve their Plotting and Creativity, but not many focused on Prose.

However, today I’m going to set Prose aside for a moment to focus on an element of Plotting. I do this in the interest of highlighting a common error that gets stories rejected by editors on a frequent basis. And that error is the inactive story beginning.

This error is easy to describe: a story begins, and nothing happens. More specifically, the protagonist and other characters aren’t doing anything, or the amount of activity on their part is miniscule compared to the number of pages it takes to describe it all.

This is almost always the consequence of heavy worldbuilding, backstory-telling, and other forms of info-dumping. Most stories have a fair amount of background information that the audience will need to know in order for the story to make sense, and it is tempting to try to get all of that pesky background information out of the way right at the start.

But here’s the thing: background information tends to be boring if your audience isn’t already emotionally or intellectually invested in your world and your characters. The most effective way to engage readers at the beginning of the story is to have something interesting happening at an efficient pace.

Here’s an example of how I’ve seen this done poorly (or rather, a summation of an example, since an actual example lifted from an actual manuscript would be far too long):

     The book begins with the protagonist in the back seat of an SUV, sandwiched between a pair of burly guards. He is being escorted into the dangerous jungles of Juduun, home of the dangerous and violent ape-snakes that guard the ancient ruins of a lost civilization. The various horrors that the ape-snakes have perpetrated upon humans are described. The ruins are described, along with the few little facts that are known about the ancient civilization and what happened to cause its downfall.

     Our protagonist is nervous and tries not to tremble, not wanting to show weakness in front of his captors. He reflects upon the unfortunate series of events that brought him here, how he was orphaned at a young age and stole to help feed his sister. He managed to find her good work and a place to live, but then everything went wrong when she caught the eye of a lecherous nobleman. Various things happened, our protagonist was charged with a crime that he either didn’t commit or was forced to commit even though he’s really a good guy.

     The jungles come into sight up ahead, covered in early-morning mist. The protagonist is being sent into the jungles to retrieve an artifact of the lost civilization as punishment for his crime. He will have no supplies or help; even worse, no one is even sure whether or not the artifact that he’s supposed to find is even real. He believes it’s just a myth and that he’s simply being sent to his death.

     They arrive at the jungles, and the guards throw him to the ground beside the trees. He pleads with them to give him some equipment, anything that might help him. The dangers of the jungle are described. He’s afraid of them.

Now, my summation of this example was four paragraphs long. The actual examples that the summation is based on, however, tend to be anywhere from ten to fifteen or even twenty pages long. That’s ten to twenty pages where our protagonist:

     1. Sits in a car

     2. Sits in a car and tries not to tremble

     3. Sits in a car and sees the jungle up ahead

     4. Is tossed from the car and pleads for help

See the problem? That’s nothing. Nothing happened in over a dozen pages of story. It was all just backstory and worldbuilding—one long infodump. It doesn’t matter how you frame all the backstory; if your protagonist is reminiscing about it, describing it to someone, or having it described to him or her, it’s all the same. Which is to say, it’s boring. It doesn’t matter how action-packed or interesting the backstory is—it will still be boring if it’s a flashback given while your protagonist does nothing. If all of that backstory is so interesting and eventful, then just go back and start the story there!

The pure-backstory prologue gets criticized often (with good reason), but even that would be better than watering down the action of the beginning of your story with infodumps.

Picture what the introduction to a movie would be like if it were done in this manner. Try the original Star Wars movie: after the opening crawl (which is itself a backstory infodump, but it’s traditional and deliberately evoking old pulp action films and comics—not to mention short—and is therefore somewhat justified), we see a star destroyer capturing Leia’s ship. C-3PO and R2 discuss how serious this is and the things the empire is likely to do to all of them. The imperials board the ship, and C-3PO reflects on how brutal the empire has gotten over the years and how hopeless the situation of the rebels seems. Vader comes on board, all menacing, and we’re shown a long introductory flashback depicting some of his history of brutality and his position relative to the Emperor. Jump back to the present, where Princess Leia records a long message explaining her position in the rebellion, what her goals were for her present mission, how she obtained the stolen plans for the Death Star, and then paused to reflect upon what type of droid R2 was and what his normal functions were.

"Ah, we've captured you, senator. Now I will explain the lengthy process by which we uncovered the fact that you are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!"

Slow, ponderous, and boring, right? And that’s with actual action going on in the background—the imperials capturing and boarding Leia’s ship, fighting in the corridors, ominous villains arriving, and our heroine hurrying to get the plans off the ship. If that’s not enough to counter the effect of excessive infodumping, then nothing will be.

Don’t let this problem happen to your story! The inactive story beginning is the most common reason—after poor prose—that I’ve seen stories rejected. So remember: reflecting, reminiscing, explaining, and flashbacking are not action. There’s nothing wrong with introspection in reasonable doses, but introspection does not an interesting story introduction make. Get your characters out there and get them doing things right from the start.

Phrases to Avoid: "As You Know"

     Deana frowned. “Why don’t we just turn him over to the police?”

     “Well,” Artiom replied, “as you know, I’m involved in a few . . . less-than-legal activities. If I turned him over to the police, he could rat me out.”

This is a small example of what is often called “maid and butler” dialog—dialog wherein character one explains something to character two which character two should logically already know. The worst examples of this are scenes in which two supporting characters (a maid and a butler, for instance) have a conversation about plot-important information that they both already knew.

"As you know, the master will be home in just a few hours, and he is always upset if Puddles is not washed and perfumed when he returns."
"Yes, the master is so very particular about cleanliness. That's why I have to bathe Puddles every day, and I dislike it."

The problem with this sort of dialog is that it breaks the fourth wall (and not in a good way). Since both characters already know the information, the only reason for them to explain it to one another is for the benefit of the readers. And if the only reason your characters are doing something is “because the plot demands it” or “so that the readers will understand,” then you haven’t written the scene well.

The phrase “as you know” almost inevitably introduces maid-and-butler-esque information. After all—if someone already knows something, then they don’t need it explained again. This phrase highlights awkward or stilted dialog, ensuring that no one will miss the fact that this dialog is awkward and unrealistic. Avoid “as you know” whenever possible (which should be practically always).

One of the most common ways to avoid maid-and-butler dialog is to insert a character into the story who is not familiar with what is going on or with the most basic information about the world. This character can be a sidekick to the protagonist or even the protagonists themselves. Harry Potter, for instance, was raised without any knowledge of magic and the wizarding world, so it wasn’t awkward for him to need constant explanations about things that everyone else knew. These explanations were simultaneously helpful to the audience without feeling forced.

Another common method for avoiding the “as you know” problem is to have character one explain something that character two knows (but the audience didn’t), and then have character two get irritated over it. Just make sure that character one has a plausible reason for thinking that character two wouldn’t know the information. But be careful about using this method too often—it can grow very tiresome very quickly.

Other phrases that often lead to this sort of awkward, in-dialog expository infodump are “let me get this straight” and “tell me again.”

Maid-and-butler dialog is a cliché that most writers encounter over and over again—it can just be so difficult to get exposition through in a smooth, natural-feeling way. But don’t give up. Keep trying, keep looking for new ways to share exposition, and you’ll almost always find something better than “as you know.”

Writing Spicy Description

Last time, we discussed the need to keep your descriptions to the minimum needed amount. Here are a few tips for doing so.

Determine how much description you need: Here’s some useful questions for figuring out how much description to give the reader.

What genre are you writing? If you’re writing a long epic like War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings, then you’ll be able to take a bit more time on description than you would be able to for, say, a fast-paced thriller like The Sum of All Fears or Carrie. Short stories should generally give less time to description than novels. If you’re writing romance, you’ll probably describe character appearance more than you will in, say, a murder mystery; if you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, you’ll probably spend more time describing the fantastic settings than you would in a comedy.

How familiar will the setting or character be to the reader? Some things don’t need description (if a character is buttering toast while they talk to someone, you don’t need to describe the butter knife); some things don’t have to be described but could definitely benefit from some brief description; while other things absolutely have to be described. You can’t just say “the policeman dragged a plangle into the room” without telling me what a plangle looks like.

If your scene features a police officer on the streets of New York City, then the odds are good that your reader will be able to picture the scene clearly with very little description. If the scene focuses on an alien flying a spaceship into a tear in spacetime, then you might need to give a larger amount of description.

How important is the description to the story? If this is a brief scene in a setting that the story won’t return to with a character that won’t be important later, then it’s not that important that the reader picture everything absolutely perfectly. If the setting or character are central to the story, then you’ll want to spend more time on the description.  Again, what is important will depend on the story: if your protagonist is going to recognize a disguised character later because of a scar on their neck, then you’ll probably want to describe the scar when we first meet the character. And for all that people have complained about the nigh-excruciating detail with which Stephanie Meyer described Edward Cullen, let’s face it: those descriptions were important to her audience.

If your reason for describing something in detail is that you really like the amazing and vivid metaphor you’ve concocted, well, too bad. That is not sufficient reason for spending a whole paragraph describing a woman’s hairstyle (or whatever). Now, that doesn’t mean you have to cut the description; give it to some friends, and let them tell you if it’s too much. Try at least ten readers with different tastes; if four or more of them tell you that it’s too much, then cut it down, no matter how much it hurts. Listen to Spock:

Focus on a few strong details: Generally, I recommend focusing on two or three details that give a clear picture of whatever you’re describing. For a very expansive scene or a completely alien and unfamiliar creature, a little more could be allowed. So for an old woman, I might focus on her long white braid, the deep creases in her dark skin, and the slight hunch in her back. Bam: three details, and you’re now picturing something close to what I am. Strong, vivid details often enable the reader to fill in the rest on their own.

Use multiple senses: When writing description, most writers tend to focus on the visual elements of a scene or a character. However, describing the sounds, smells, feel, or even taste of something can often convey a setting more quickly or more vividly than visuals. Let’s say your character wakes up in a white room that smells strongly of blood and antiseptics—your mind probably immediately jumped to a hospital or operating room, right? And the smells are probably giving you a more vivid image than if I’d simply said “your character wakes up in a hospital room.”

This can be especially effective when combined with the two-or-three-strong-details rule: the protagonist is tied to a chair in a dark and windowless room. It is cold and drafty and smells of mouse droppings. That’s three things: the lighting, the feel, and the smell of the room. I could spend more time on each of them, to make things more vivid, but the bulk of the description has been accomplished.

Don’t use two words where one will suffice: I once edited a story where a character approached a sea where “along the shore was a row of several straight wooden walkways that jutted out into the ocean, held up by thick pylons sticking up out of the water.” I edited this to say, “Along the shore was a row of wooden docks.” So that you don’t have to count for yourself, that’s nineteen fewer words. Everyone does this, at some point—I’ve done it myself. Always look for the shortest, most descriptive word possible. A white dog with extremely curly hair should be shortened to a white poodle. He didn’t swing the long black bar with a curved end, he swung the crowbar.

Work in details through action: We’ve already discussed blending action and description a bit in these posts. Paragraphs of pure description can grow tedious very quickly, but purposeful action almost never does. So if your character walks into a kitchen, you might give a brief overview of what the kitchen looks like and who is in it. Then, when your character begins conversing with one of the people in the room, you can use the conversation to give more details about the person—maybe she scrunches her nose when she’s thinking, or perhaps the scar along her arm seems to pain her as she kneads dough. Maybe she tucks a strand of brown hair out of her eye, leaving a smudge of flour on her tan forehead. The protagonist can help her cut vegetables, and you can use this action as an opportunity to describe more details—the appearance of the countertop, the vegetables, or the cutlery; the lighting, the smells. Since the details are smoothly blended into action and dialog, they don’t grow tiring.

Think of description as a spice—it adds delicious flavor and depth when added to more substantial dishes, but can be overwhelming when eaten in large doses on its own.

Description: How Much Is Too Much?

Without turning your head, take a quick inventory of everything that you can see right now. Then do the same for everything you can hear, smell, taste, and feel. It’s a lot, isn’t it?

At this moment, I can see myself—my shirt, my jeans, the brim of my hat, my hair hanging into my eyes, my nose, my hands, and my wedding ring. I can see my computer tower and monitors, keyboard, mouse, a mess of cables, my desk phone, cell phone, notepad, water bottle, and headphones. There’s a sticky note, a plastic cup, and a paper bowl with a plastic spoon on my desk. Beside the desk on my right is a set of shelves and drawers with my satchel on top. Beyond my desk, I can see my trashcan, three walls, a window with raised blinds, a thermostat, fire alarm, lightswitch, and a doorway into another room. For now, I won’t bother describing the other room and its contents, or the yet third room and its contents which I can see beyond that, or the group of people that just walked past me.

You get the point—that was already a lot of information, and I didn’t even go into color or visible textures of any of those things, let alone any of what I can hear, smell, feel, or taste. Plus, I’m already noticing things I didn’t think to mention in my list—the carpeted floor or the ceiling and ceiling lights, among other things.

Describing Scenes

If I were describing this scene in a story—a character sitting at a desk writing—I obviously could not describe every sight, sound, and other sense of the scene. There’s just too much. Our job as writers is to narrow down that vast list of information into just enough description for the reader to picture the scene. How much description is that? The answer depends on the scene, the genre, and your personal preferences. But the general rule of thumb is this: the proper amount of scene description is the absolute minimum amount that you can get away with.

Most writers instinctively put far more description into their story than is needed. Always try to remember: no matter how beautiful, breathtaking, or mind-blowing the scene is, description tends to be boring. Small amounts can be interesting, but any more and it becomes tedious or even purple prose. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your powers of description are so mesmerizing that you are an exception to the rule. 

Pare down your descriptions and then ask some friends to read it. If they still have a clear description of the scene, then cut it down again. Ask some new friends to read it, and keep doing this until people start to say that they can’t picture the scene. Then take it back to the last version and leave it there.

If you’re one of those somewhat rarer writers that tend to put too little description into your story, then do the reverse—add a bit of description here and there until your readers say they can picture the scene, and then go no further.

Next time, we’ll discuss some tips for fitting maximum amounts of description into the fewest possible sentences.

Overview: First-Person Perspective

I discussed here the most common perspectives and tenses that are seen in fiction writing. Over the next few weeks, we'll delve into each of these modes of writing with a little more specificity and discuss some of the strengths and foibles of each.  Today we'll look at first-person perspective.

A story told in first-person perspective is being told by one of the characters in the story, usually the central protagonist. Here's an example:

     I closed my eyes and jumped off of the roof, silently praying that Dall was as good a pilot as he claimed. The duke shouted in alarm, screaming for his men to stop me, and then his voice was drowned out in an angry rush of wind.
     I had been determined to keep my eyes closed as I fell, in hopes that I would be less afraid if I couldn't see the ground approaching. But it turns out that not knowing how far away the ground is was far more frightening than knowing. My eyes popped open after only a few seconds of falling.
    The ground wasn't nearly as far away as I would have liked, and for a brief moment I panicked; then Dall's skimcar appeared from around the side of the building. Dall waved at me from the cockpit as he pulled up alongside me, matching my pace. I reached out and grabbed the top of the car, my fingers clenching so hard that I thought they might actually bend the di-steel.
     Dall slowly maneuvered the skimcar beneath me and then slowed our descent. He slowed more abruptly than I would have liked, and I thudded into the cockpit with a grunt, spread-eagled. It wasn't bad enough that it hurt, but it did knock the wind from me.
     "Sorry, Joan" Dall said with that irritating grin of his, his voice muffled by the glasstic between us.
     "Just let me in!" I shouted.
     He shook his head. "Not until we come to a complete stop. Too dangerous otherwise."
     "Too dangerous?" I shrieked. "I just jumped off a three-hundred story building without knowing for sure that you were down here, and you think that would be too dangerous?"
      I should take a moment to mention that I'd had a little problem with heights ever since I was six years old, and Dall knew that perfectly well. He was just being a jerk.
     "You'll be fine out there for a minute or two," Dall replied, still grinning.
     "Two minutes?"

In the case of this example, one of the characters—Joan—is telling the story, as though she were sitting in front of us speaking. She uses "I" to refer to herself, marking this as first-person perspective.

So, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of first-person perspective?

Advantages

Intimate: Because the character is relating the story themselves, first-person perspective often creates a more close, intense, and intimate feel than other perspectives, and the action often feels more immediate.

Strong Personality: When a character is relating a story "in their own words," so to speak, it can often be much easier to get their personality across than it might have been in another perspective.

Unreliability: If you want to tell a story with an unreliable narrator, first-person perspective is often the way to go. Since the perspective character is telling the story, their opinions and prejudices can color the narrative, or they can even outright lie to the reader. This can make for some very interesting stories.

Info Dump: It's easier in first-person for your narrator to step away from the story for a moment to explain something that the reader needs to know; Joan did it near the end of our example.

Simplicity: First-person can often be one of the easiest perspectives to write without making perspective errors.

Disadvantages

Most limited perspective: Since one of the characters is telling the story, the author cannot relate anything that the main character cannot see. If you want your audience to know something, then your main character has to know. You can't just jump to someone else's head for a bit and then come back. (There are stories with multiple first-person perspectives, but these can be very tricky to write well.)
Difficult to explain character appearance:   After all, if I were sitting and telling you a story, I wouldn't need to explain what I look like, would I?  Look back over our example; there's not any information there on what Joan looks like, and it would be very awkward to try to fit in a description of her anywhere.
Difficult to make the audience worry for the character: Since first-person perspective requires the main character to be alive and well to tell the story, it is difficult to get your audience to worry about the safety of the narrator. How would the story be told, after all, if the main character weren't around to finish it?  This is particularly true of first-person stories told in the past tense.