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?
Use past perfect for the first paragraph or so, but when the characters start speaking, switch to past simple. (Or whatever it's called).
Or, put it in a different chapter entirely and make it obvious what's going on. (Or should that be, obvious what was going on? Or... obvious what had been going on...)
Yep, I see the problem...
I like the above suggestion, using "had" just once, but am less keen on italics. They can be devilish to read and might slow down the reader, specially if it's a long section. I recently read an Anita Brookner book in which the plot looped constantly into the past and she didn't use a single "had" - yet the reader never got lost. As long as you tell the reader where you are, you needn't worry about tenses. Just keep it all one tense.
I read somewhere an author's suggestion of using 'had' just once, then using simple past tense so it didn't get too clunky. Creating the illusion of the pluperfect. Or italics, yes, I've seen that used effectively.