I must have been looking out of the window during school that that day because my hazy recollection of what I learnt in English Language is not helping me right now.
I'm in the middle of re-writing a flashback scene and I'm having problems with my tenses. Obviously because the flashback happened before the current time flow in my story I need to use the word had to modify the verbs (past perfect??), but the section is quite lengthy and I don't want to do that all the way through because it’s going to sound clunky.
Somewhere or somehow I need revert back to the simple past tense. Does anybody have any experience doing this? How long do I have to wait before I do? What is acceptable?
Flashbacks are funny things. The transition should be done in past tense and then the body of the flashback in present tense. For some really good insights on how to do it the easy way, check out Randy Ingermanson's blog on the net. I found it simple to follow and it helped me no end.
I would check out Margaret Atwood. She is excellent at writing in flashback.
Thanks very much everyone. I have ended up using had twice, just because it sounds better that way and then I launched back into the simple past tense.