Thread by @dtmooreeditor

Time for a #writingcraft thread!
Let’s talk about analeptic passages in present tense narrative.

This is inspired by an editorial letter I sent a couple weeks ago, but it’s not specifically about that – as I said to the author at the time, this is a very, very common issue. I’m confident it’s come up in 100% of present-tense manuscripts I’ve edited.

So: we talk about “present tense” and “past tense” narrative, but the truth is every text jumps back and forth in time, to narrate events before the rolling “now” of the story, or anticipate coming events.

I’m not just talking about whole flashbacks either! Consider the sentence “The suit hangs on the wardrobe door where I hung it last night in anticipation.” Definitely a present-tense sentence overall, but the second clause is in the past tense.

I call these “analeptic clauses.” It’s a slight misuse of the term – formally, an analepsis *is* a whole flashback scene – but as far as I know grammar doesn’t have a term for contextual tense like this; it just labels the specific tense in the clause.

Grammar Digression: we generally say that English has sixteen tenses. This is inaccurate, for two reasons: first, because there are at least four or five irregular tenses that I know of (and that can be the subject of another thread sometime)…

…but second, because it’s more accurate to say there are four tenses (past, present, future, conditional) and four *aspects* (simple, perfect, continuous, perfect continuous), and they can be used in any combination.

Tense tells you when the rolling “now” of the narrative is. In present tense, the “now” is, well, now; I’m telling you what happens as it happens. In past tense, the “now” is decidedly “then”; I’m recounting events to you after the fact.

In future tense, obviously, the “now” has not yet come to pass; and in conditional tense, the “now” is a hypothetical never-time dependent on other factors (e.g. “I would go,” “I should be going,” “I could have gone,” etc.).

Aspect, on the other hand, tells you when a specific action occurs *relative* to the rolling “now.” Simple verbs describe something happening immediately at the rolling “now,” perfect verbs describe something that happened and finished before “now”…

…continuous verbs describe something that was happening before “now” and will presumably continue happening after “now,” and perfect continuous verbs describe something that was happening up to the “now” but stops (or may stop) at this point.

In present tense, e.g., “I eat an apple” (right in front of you!) vs. “I have eaten an apple” (just missed it!) vs. “I am eating an apple” (and I would like to finish it, thank you) vs. “I have been eating an apple” (but I guess I’ll have to abandon it now ninjas are attacking).

With me so far?

In what we call “present tense” narrative, we tend to bounce around present tense in all four aspects, occasionally dipping into simple conditional. (“I eat an apple and get ready for work. I would normally walk, but I have been catching the train this week.”)

While in what we call “past tense” narrative, we tend to stick to past tense in all four aspects, occasionally shifting to conditional perfect. (“I ate an apple and got ready for work. I would normally have walked, but I had been catching the train that week.”)

End of digression. Let’s get back to analeptic passages.

At times, in narrative writing, we have to fill in details of the recent past, if only for context (e.g. that I hung my suit on my wardrobe door ready for this morning).

In present tense, we have two approaches to this: we can use present perfect (“I have eaten an apple”) or simple past (“I hung my suit”), to express slightly distinct ideas. (Same with continuous: “I have been catching the train,” “I was working in the office last week.”)

But past tense narrative doesn’t allow us this degree of nuance. We’re already *in* past tense, so to refer to events further back we have to use past perfect in various forms (“I had eaten an apple” or “I had hung my suit”).

(And in continuous, “I had been catching the train that week,” for instance, or “I had been working in the office the week before.”)

BUT, and here’s where the problem creeps in, we all learn language immersively (i.e. from hearing it spoken and reading it written), and the vast majority of English-language narration is in past tense. I really like present tense for the right book, but it’s pretty uncommon.

So when you’re writing and have to slip into an analeptic clause, most of the examples you’ve learned prose from are full of the “hads” and “had beens” and “had hads” of the past perfect tense.

And if you do try and force your brain to stick to simple past and present perfect, the fact that you have those two choices adds a level of complexity not normally required by past tense narration.

So it’s really no surprise that, at least once in any given present tense manuscript, most writers will accidentally slip from the simple past/present perfect tenses demanded by formal grammar to the past perfect tenses more suited to past tense narration.

So there you go. Hope this helps. Keep writing in present tense (seriously, I love it!), but keep an eye on your “dids” and “have dones,” and watch out for those “hads” and “had hads” sneaking in.