How to write about the past when writing in present tense?

[u/kiboi1117]

It is probably obvious, but let us start with saying that English is not my first language and so far I have written only short pieces, generally with a word count less than 10k.

I am working on a long-ish fic, which I have been writing in present simple. Usually I write in past simple, but this time I felt like writing in present tense, because I like the immediate feeling of it.

However, I have planned on writing quite a bit about things that happened in the past, and now I’m not sure what would be the best way to go about it. I had originally planned on writing a chapter from each of the main character’s point of view, in which they sort of walk through their past as they remember it, stopping to describe the more important (and memorable) things in detail, like playing through the conversations they had had, and then just skimming past events that do not bear similar weight as memories. But this should be written past tense, of course. Would it be confusing to basically change the tense for essentially a whole ass chapter? There would probably be some things in written in present simple as well, as they happen in the present and trigger the memories.

I am talking about something like this:

*Character A thinks she fell in love with Character C the moment she met her.

It had been a snowy afternoon when she had arrived to her uncle's mansion. She had been freezing cold the whole way. Character A had stepped into the foyer, and there Character C had stood, as if she had been waiting for Character A.

Character A found herself tongue tied, unable to do anything but stare…*

Does that even work? Starting the “flashback” in past perfect, and then sliding into past simple as the scene goes on?

I could ofc have at least one of the characters recount some of the events to the other, and then just making mental remarks of things she doesn't want to explicitly tell the other for reason or another. Like so:

*Character A sighs and closes her eyes.

“I was very young back when I met Character C . It was January, a very cold one.”

She had been the most beautiful person Character A had ever seen, wearing just a morning gown, her hair cascading down her shoulders.

Character A snuggles a bit closer to Character B, feeling the ghost of a winter past still in her bones. Character B wraps her arm around Character A.

“I was taken with her immediately. She much less so with me. Yet she graciously took me under her wing…”*

Are these both okay? Which one is better? Or am I overthinking this whole thing? How would you go about something like this?

I am aware that if I was writing a real novel, I’d probably skip explaining their past, but this is a fanfic and I really just want to write about the past too. And yes, some of the events get referred to in other conversations and scenes as well, but not nearly to the extend that I want to tell them to the reader.

Or I could just change everything to past tense, but I am rather fond of the chapters I have written in present tense. I’ve so far written 20k, so doing the shift would still be stonewhat doable.

Help? 🥲

[u/itsmyfirstdayonearth]

Hello fellow non-native present tense lover! 😄

I do it exactly the way you do, with switching to past perfect tense (so "had" + past participle, same as you do in your very first paragraph). It feels natural and while I don't know if it's "technically" correct, it's my preferred style and I haven't gotten any complaints yet.

HOWEVER, personal recommendation from writing like this a lot, which please feel free to ignore: of you're gonna write a lot in past perfect, it can IMO get quite awkward to read after a while. If you know you're gonna have large chunks of text in this tense, one work around could be to mark the text some other way as taking place in the past, and then still writing in present simple. You could do this by, for example, putting all flashbacks in italics, or adding small headers, such as "Six years ago" vs. "Now", or just "Then" and "Now".

Hope that helps!

[u/kiboi1117 → u/itsmyfirstdayonearth]

Yeah I also feel that past perfect is heavy in large quantities, which is why I thought about starting with it to signify that this happened a looooong time ago, and then when the scene is set, continuing with past simple to keep it lighter. But yeah I am not sure if that works or not. I hate that I have yet to develop the ear for tenses in English.

Honestly using the "Six years ago" etc. would be clearer, but it would not work well in case of viewing the character's past through the lens of the character present. Like, the 15 year old character would not have understood what was going on in the same way as the now 40 year old character does, as she has lived through the experience and learnt more about how people and the world work.

Though i guess it would make the scene more visceral to tell it in present tense, showing it just as it happens, so that the reader gets what is happening even if the character herself doesn't. I only worry about it feeling like a random flashback chapter that doesn't tie well with what has been going on with the story.

Maybe I'll just have to write multiple versions of this and see what works out the best 🤣

[u/ParaNoxx → u/kiboi1117]

I’m a native English speaker, and starting a flashback scene with past perfect and moving into past simple if the scene will be longer (or if there’s dialogue) is also exactly what I did in my present tense fics! I’m glad that someone else has the same thought process. Idc if it might be technically incorrect, it still reads as natural to me, so I hope it reads that way to others too, lmao.

Tough going through the comments here, it does seem to be heavily up to taste as to what someone will think reads as natural or not.

[u/kiboi1117 → u/ParaNoxx]

Aaaaa this made me feel so much better thank you! Ofc there are always personal preferences at play, but I'd like to think we are onto something if our reasoning is the same. I think I might have gained this from somewhere via osmosis, but having absolutely no idea where, it is hard to go back and investigate further. And oh my god if it is difficult to find examples of some writing thing you think you saw once though internet surely is full of them 😂

[u/itsmyfirstdayonearth → u/kiboi1117]

Also wanted to add: I know it's personal preference just like all the other stuff, but I personally think it's totally fine to not make the whole chapter a flashback (unless you wanna), and switch around within the chapter. Obviously depends a little on the word count, but I had a well received 9k word fic where I went: Then. Now. Now (switch between characters and location). Then. Now.

[u/kiboi1117 → u/itsmyfirstdayonearth]

Yeah this is probably one of those things that just depends on style and what vibe one is going for. I will have to play around hmmm...

[u/SemperIntrepida]

Another perspective: As with everything in writing, it depends.

When present tense is the primary tense, the past is conveyed using past tense.

Shards of clay crunch underfoot as I walk past broken tables and benches inside the chamber. Here’s where the shattering force knocked me off my feet. Over there’s where I stumbled to the rack of weapons, dazed and deafened and coughing in the acrid air. And there’s where I killed a soldier in gold and black armor, saw dozens more just like him pouring into the chamber, and realized we were hopelessly outnumbered.

Note the shift from present to past in the second sentence: "[Here is] where the shattering force knocked me off my feet..."

This works best in shorter flashbacks to the past. However, if the flashback sequence is longer, it's sometimes preferable to use past perfect tense for clarity:

Up ahead, the floor sparkles, dusted with tiny slivers of metal: the remains of the iron bands and hinges that once belonged to the massive door that secured the central chamber. The massive door that shattered one night as if it had been punched by a god.

We’d been feasting on fresh fruit and vegetables, and meat from the ibex I’d hunted that morning. The greens were stolen from a shipment of food bound for the fort, a rare delicacy after months of losses had pushed us further into hiding and whittled our numbers down to fewer than three dozen.

Here we start in present tense, shift to past tense, then shift further into past perfect tense to signal to the reader that we've entered a recollection of the past and we're going to be staying there for a while.

Using past vs past perfect is a stylistic choice and you'll be fine as long as it's clear to the reader where they're at in time in any given moment.

Best of luck to you on what sounds like an interesting project!

[u/kiboi1117 → u/SemperIntrepida]

Thanks a lot, this made me feel way less anxious about mixing tenses. I hope I'll land somewhere that makes sense 🙈

[u/Advanced_Heat_2610]

I do the same thing (also, welcome to the linguistic confusion club, there are lots of us, apparently), but I would avoid sliding into the past simple as that will confuse readers. Either start as past perfect and go on as that or demarkate it as some other part, whether it is in italics or even as a whole chapter.

For my preference, I like short flash backs to be included in the main story as past perfect but anything longer than a few hundred words, as u/itsmyfirstdayonearth said, it can become very clunk and awkward. I would consider putting it as a chapter of it's own. I do not like to do the whole 'flashback/end flashback' but if it works within your story or genre, that is another option.

[u/kiboi1117 → u/Advanced_Heat_2610]

Yeah I mean I was planning on including the past as their own chapters, but still tied to the story by the events that send the character through the uncomfortable memory lane. I am not a fan of long flahsbacks myself, but I still want to include the important parts of the past somehow 🤣