use of the past perfect tense

[GrushaVashnadze]

I recently experimented writing a whole scene in the past perfect (pluperfect) tense. It is a lengthy flashback embedded and intercut into a futanari time-travel story: the story was written in the past tense; hence the flashback ended up pluperfect. I am quite proud of how it turned out - but I sometimes wonder whether it might confuse some readers. The story is Metamorphoses Ch. 04. Here is a brief excerpt, in case it tempts any of you to have a closer look:

Daphne slouched back into her seat, but did not waste much time sulking, as her mind was too full of her unexpected encounter with Dr Gaia the previous weekend: "No," Daphne had insisted, "I am not leaving Lucy here to come back with you to the future! You sent me back here, and it was Lucy's foresight that allowed that to happen. We will not be parted!"

Al telaio tesserà lino e duolo pel lenzuolo che la coprirà... -- "To shroud herself shall she weave woe and linen at the loom," sang the chorus of gold miners on stage -- dressed, of course, in Ku Klux Klan outfits which they kept tripping over, much to Henke's annoyance.

"What we didn't realise, Daphne," Gaia had replied, "is that sending you back changed the course of the sexual history of mankind. It's one thing for women to want cocks. But now they're demanding multiple tits, or retractable dicks like the Vrdmlians. And men are wanting two or three cocks -- or both cocks and cunts, or expanded arseholes, so as to take all these huge ten-inch dicks we keep providing their wives with. And because Lucy has now learnt about this technology from you, and can research it at her Institute, all this demand has developed two hundred years earlier than we expected it to!"

Il mio cane dopo tanto mi ravviserà? -- "Will my dog recognise me after so long?" sang the chorus of miners, whilst bending over and miming buggering each other doggy-style through their KKK costumes. Henke smiled contentedly -- though Daphne could not tell whether this was mere directorly satisfaction, or because the mediocre but buxom mezzo-soprano, Bambi by name, whom he had cast as the squaw Wowkle, was now crouched at his feet, headdress feathers waving just above the level of his table as she slid her fulsome spit-lubricated tits up and down around his rather small penis. Daphne scoffed, but returned to brooding over the conversation with Dr Gaia.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Doctor!" Daphne had responded. "This is ridiculous! You can't expect me to abandon my wife now, and let you take me away just because of your bullshit story about a 'crisis of demography'! You're a doctor, for Christ's sake, and you claim to have all this amazing sexual technology! So use it! Sort the problem! Yourselves!!"

etc.

 

[Carnevil9]

You are a genre unto yourself!*



*and I mean that in a good way.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

You are a genre unto yourself!*
*and I mean that in a good way.

That's very kind of you (I think?), Carnevil! It makes it very difficult to choose the right category for my stories: I always seem to annoy one constituency or another by not fitting "correctly" into the category I have put it in. But that's for another thread...

 

[Carnevil9]

That's very kind of you (I think?), Carnevil! It makes it very difficult to choose the right category for my stories: I always seem to annoy one constituency or another by not fitting "correctly" into the category I have put it in. But that's for another thread...

True creative types always colour outside the lines.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

True creative types always colour outside the lines.

You are too kind!

 

[ElectricBlue]

I find pluperfect tense grinds the flow of a story to a halt, leaves it dead in the water. It may be grammatically correct, but for me, it puts far too much "distance" over the story telling, and becomes ponderous and slow.

 

[SimonDoom]

Sounds like an interesting story.

I think the way you worded is grammatically fine, but switching back and forth between simple past and past perfect is somewhat confusing. It makes it more confusing that you jump from Daphne's POV to Heinke's POV, and you switch back and forth between what's happening on stage and off stage. It's a lot to ask of the reader.

It is tricky to do a scene like this. If it were me I would try to keep past perfect to a minimum and I would avoid switching back and forth the way this passage does.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I found it OK (not my cup of tea in terms of content, but that's not the issue). Might clarify the flashbacks with a bit of formatting, something like this:

Daphne slouched back into her seat, but did not waste much time sulking, as her mind was too full of her unexpected encounter with Dr Gaia the previous weekend: "No," Daphne had insisted, "I am not leaving Lucy here to come back with you to the future! You sent me back here, and it was Lucy's foresight that allowed that to happen. We will not be parted!"

Al telaio tesserà lino e duolo pel lenzuolo che la coprirà... -- "To shroud herself shall she weave woe and linen at the loom," sang the chorus of gold miners on stage -- dressed, of course, in Ku Klux Klan outfits which they kept tripping over, much to Henke's annoyance.

"What we didn't realise, Daphne," Gaia had replied, "is that sending you back changed the course of the sexual history of mankind. It's one thing for women to want cocks. But now they're demanding multiple tits, or retractable dicks like the Vrdmlians. And men are wanting two or three cocks -- or both cocks and cunts, or expanded arseholes, so as to take all these huge ten-inch dicks we keep providing their wives with. And because Lucy has now learnt about this technology from you, and can research it at her Institute, all this demand has developed two hundred years earlier than we expected it to!"

Il mio cane dopo tanto mi ravviserà? -- "Will my dog recognise me after so long?" sang the chorus of miners, whilst bending over and miming buggering each other doggy-style through their KKK costumes. Henke smiled contentedly -- though Daphne could not tell whether this was mere directorly satisfaction, or because the mediocre but buxom mezzo-soprano, Bambi by name, whom he had cast as the squaw Wowkle, was now crouched at his feet, headdress feathers waving just above the level of his table as she slid her fulsome spit-lubricated tits up and down around his rather small penis. Daphne scoffed, but returned to brooding over the conversation with Dr Gaia.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Doctor!" Daphne had responded. "This is ridiculous! You can't expect me to abandon my wife now, and let you take me away just because of your bullshit story about a 'crisis of demography'! You're a doctor, for Christ's sake, and you claim to have all this amazing sexual technology! So use it! Sort the problem! Yourselves!!"

etc.

But that's a question of taste.

 

[SimonDoom]

I found it OK (not my cup of tea in terms of content, but that's not the issue). Might clarify the flashbacks with a bit of formatting, something like this:

But that's a question of taste.

I like your formatting idea. I agree this makes it MUCH more comprehensible, because the italics/non-italics format signals to the reader that the paragraphs are taking place in different periods. It takes care of the problem.

HOWEVER, I would make this one change: the Italian lines from the opera should be put in quotation marks, not italics, and I would skip the translation, because it's not at all important to the narrative. The Italian text should be in quotation marks so it is not confused with the italicized narrative taking place in the past. The only point of the Italian lines is to signal that it's an opera. It doesn't matter what they're saying. Although, I think it's an interesting choice of opera by the author.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I like your formatting idea. I agree this makes it MUCH more comprehensible, because the italics/non-italics format signals to the reader that the paragraphs are taking place in different periods. It takes care of the problem.

HOWEVER, I would make this one change: the Italian lines from the opera should be put in quotation marks, not italics, and I would skip the translation, because it's not at all important to the narrative. The Italian text should be in quotation marks so it is not confused with the italicized narrative taking place in the past. The only point of the Italian lines is to signal that it's an opera. It doesn't matter what they're saying. Although, I think it's an interesting choice of opera by the author.

Yeah, it needs cleaning up, and clarifying how you use italics, quote marks (double & single), etc. I have my system for my own stories, but each needs to find the convention that works for them and their stories, as long as the reader can quickly understand it.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

I like your formatting idea. I agree this makes it MUCH more comprehensible, because the italics/non-italics format signals to the reader that the paragraphs are taking place in different periods. It takes care of the problem.

HOWEVER, I would make this one change: the Italian lines from the opera should be put in quotation marks, not italics, and I would skip the translation, because it's not at all important to the narrative. The Italian text should be in quotation marks so it is not confused with the italicized narrative taking place in the past. The only point of the Italian lines is to signal that it's an opera. It doesn't matter what they're saying. Although, I think it's an interesting choice of opera by the author.

I too like Bubo_bubo's formatting idea - though, as you both agree, getting the various layers of formatting (italics, single quotes, double quotes etc.) right would take some care.

However, I'm afraid that the meaning of the Italian does matter very much in the wider context of this story - though this may not have been apparent from the excerpt above. So omitting the translations isn't really an option.

Thanks for the advice! I'll work on it.

Here's the whole chapter, in the meantime: Metamorphoses Ch. 04

Grusha

 

[KeithD]

The conventional guidance to good writing is to reduce your past-tense prose to simple past as much as possible.

 

[SimonDoom]

However, I'm afraid that the meaning of the Italian does matter very much in the wider context of this story - though this may not have been apparent from the excerpt above. So omitting the translations isn't really an option.

Fair enough. Here's an idea: find a way of formatting the Italian and the English translation that does not entail italics. The Italian could be in quotation marks and the English in parentheses. I think Bubo_bubo's idea is a really good one and takes care of your problem. But you don't want to use italics for two completely different purposes in the same passage.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Past perfect is passive. Action verbs flow better. But if you can pull off an entire story in the past perfect, with no one contemplating how much fun they had during their last root canal, you're a better writer than me.

 

[yowser]

A trick mentioned (by Joe Moran I think?) is to start in with PP, go a few paragraphs, and then shift to simple past (once the reader is acclimatised.)

If you do it unobtrusively it makes the writing (and reading) go a whole lot smoother and doesn't really confuse anyone.

 

[Carnevil9]

A trick mentioned (by Joe Moran I think?) is to start in with PP, go a few paragraphs, and then shift to simple past (once the reader is acclimatised.)

If you do it unobtrusively it makes the writing (and reading) go a whole lot smoother and doesn't really confuse anyone.

I've used something of this sort. If I have a character with a strong foreign accent, or some other distinctive difference, I will write one or two lines of dialog emphasizing this accent or dialect. Then, I assume the readers have grasped the idea, and just have them speak normally from then on, with only an occasional word or two in the dialect.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

I normally switch from past to present tense at random for no reason. I think it only lowers my story's rating by half a star, maybe a whole star at most.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I normally switch from past to present tense at random for no reason. I think it only lowers my story's rating by half a star, maybe a whole star at most.

 

[Voboy]

A trick mentioned (by Joe Moran I think?) is to start in with PP, go a few paragraphs, and then shift to simple past (once the reader is acclimatised.)

If you do it unobtrusively it makes the writing (and reading) go a whole lot smoother and doesn't really confuse anyone.

I do this a lot.