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Use of plusperfect
Hi all
I am writing a first-person novel. The action opens with the protagonist in a tight spot, speaking in the present tense.
He then reviews everything that has led him to that moment — around 150 pages of action.
Now, I know I need to use pluperfect for when my protagonist is looking back, so the reader knows where they are in time.
However, I find plusperfect works better for passages of prose than it does dialogue (of which there is quite a bit). I feel the whole ‘she’d said ‘I’d said’ thing begins to intrude over extended passages of dialogue.
So my question is this: Is it okay to open such passages with plusperfect, but then segue into plain past tense, so the reader knows where they are in time but the reading experience is a little more streamlined?
I’d like to use plusperfect once for each speaker, before switching to past tense (and then back to plusperfect for the last para, which is nearly always prose.
Has anyone come across examples of published writers doing something similar?
Thanks in advance for any pointers.
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3 Replies
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I think that would be OK – the whole – he said she said thing can be intruding – but remember if there are only 2 people talking there are techniques to avoid the whole he said she said thing – like:
‘How many times have you been here?’ I asked, looking around the room.
‘This is my first time.’ Angela answered.
She was lying, ‘How come you knew where to find the plates then?’
‘What? In the cupboard beside the cooker, where else would they be kept?’
I kept my plates a long way from the cooker but maybe that was just me, ‘What about the key for the back door then, you knew exactly where that was as well.’
Angela lowered her gaze. She scuffed her shoe along the edge of a bumpy floor tile, ‘Lucky guess?’
I laughed. ‘Lucky guess, my arse.’
There we are no ‘he said she said’ anywhere – dialogue is fun
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I would look at this in a slightly different way with the simple question: why does the story require that opening tight spot? What you are describing is a 150-page flashback, hot on the heels of the opening. And, unless you’re going for something around 1500 pages in total, you’ve missed the meaning of “flash”. 😂
If you feel you absolutely need it, you could extract the present tense bit to a prologue, then simply write those 150 pages in past tense. The plusperfect form you’re talking about using has – from a perspective of use rather than any formal education on the point – a relative element to it. It is in the past, relative to the primary point of view timeframe, rather than the time-of-telling. If you are telling something in the present about a past event, you use the past tense, only dipping into plusperfect when you need to graft in even-more-historical feeder into what you’re saying.
Also, I agree with Datco’s comment that, especially with dialogue, you’re not going to need to indentify who did the speaking much of the time.
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Rick, Datco
Many thanks for your comments. Most helpful
