Past Tense in a Novel

Many novelists choose to write their stories using the past tense. There are many reasons for this: it’s a long-established convention, it allows for narrative distance, it provides a degree of flexibility and authorial control. Writing in the past tense can also help clarify the sequence in which events happen. But what do you do when you want to write about something in the novel’s past?

This is where flashback scenes come in. If your novel is being written in the past tense, you can’t use the past tense to describe things that happened in the novel’s past. In this situation, the past tense is being used to talk about the novel’s present day.

Instead, you need to use signposts to help guide your reader, and to give them all the information they need so that they don’t get lost in a time warp.

1. Past Perfect Tense for Writing Flashback Scenes

The first weapon in your armoury when writing flashback scenes is the past perfect tense (also called the pluperfect tense).

I ran = past tense (also called simple past)
I had run = past perfect tense (also called pluperfect).

Shorter Flashbacks

Where there is a short, simple flashback within a scene, the past perfect tense is your friend. If it’s just a very short flashback (so a few lines), the whole thing can be in past perfect. He had thought, she had said, they had hugged. But after a few lines, this tense gets very clunky and annoying to read.

Longer Flashbacks

For this reason, for longer flashbacks, the historical plot (your novel’s past) can be bookended with past perfect.

Bookending means that the flashback starts in past perfect, then merges into simple past for the majority of the section, moving back into past perfect as you are approaching the end of the flashback. This means there is not too much use of the clunky past perfect tense, and the reader is reminded that they are reading a flashback just before they are brought back to the novel’s present (simple past).

Peter had run away from home when he was just five years old. He had hidden in the woods and had nibbled on the biscuits that he stole before he left. The weather was kind, and he drank from the beautiful clear stream each day.

The birds sang, the sun smiled and he was as happy as a five-year-old could be. But he started to find the floor was hard to sleep on. And when his biscuits ran out, he had begun to wonder if his parents were missing him. He’d realised that maybe this wasn’t a sustainable way to live and had scuttled home, his tail between his legs.

I’ve highlighted the past perfect verbs in yellow to show how they begin and end the section, but the middle section (the larger section) contains simple past verbs in green.

Although it sounds technically difficult, this method of storytelling actually comes naturally to many people.

2. Telling your reader that they are about to read a flashback

Another way to signpost your flashbacks is to use phrases and words that tell your reader – explicitly – that they are about to read a flashback. And then tell them when they have been brought back to the present.

Phrases like earlier that week and four years previously tell your reader they are entering a flashback. And now and I was surprised out of my reminiscing, tell the reader that they have been brought back to the present.

3. Visible Signposts when Writing Flashback Scenes

My third and final suggestion for signposting your flashback scenes is to include some kind of visible timeline – either at the start of a chapter, or where there is a scene break.

Dates in Chapter Headings

One option is to use the date in your chapter/scene headings. This works well, but does mean that readers have to keep checking how one date relates to another – did this happen before the last chapter or after it?

Countdowns in Chapter Headings

Alternatively, you can take a fixed point in your novel and provide a countdown. For example, if the pivotal point in your story is when your main character starts a new job, you could include chapter headings or subheadings which relate to this:

Days until new job starts: 35

Days since new job started: 72

This is a simpler way to keep your readers on track, but may be a little clunky in some contexts and only works if the flashbacks are longer than a few lines.

In Conclusion

Use one, two or all three of these tips in combination and you will find that writing flashback scenes in your novel is not as tricky as first it seemed. Your readers will feel supported, and will thank you! If you’d like my support with making sure your flashback scenes are clear and well-structured, please do get in touch. I’d be delighted to help.

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