Getting It Perfect:
Understanding the Perfect Tense in Fiction Writing

Grammar nerd that I am, one of my favourite parts of my journey as a writer has been picking up names for the various technical components of my native language that I was never taught at school. I’ll save the rant about that for another day (though I do think it’s a bit backwards that my first encounter with subject/object and verb conjugations was when I learnt Latin, and I didn’t discover the existence of the subjunctive mood until A-Level French). But I know I’m not alone in finding myself confronted by something that I know is grammatically not quite right, and not having the tools to explain it until I Google my way down a rabbit hole.

And because Google rabbit holes are the enemy of writing progress, I’m going to save you some time and energy today by explaining one of the most common barriers to engaging, immediate writing I come across in initial drafts.

Let’s explore the verb form known — somewhat misleadingly, to my mind — as the perfect tense.

What is the perfect tense?

The perfect tense is a verb form consisting of a conjugation of the verb “to have” alongside the participle of another verb, which describes the action in question.

It shows an action has already been completed by the time of an assumed “now” of the sentence. Excitingly — and annoyingly, as far as definitions go — the “now” of the sentence doesn’t have to be right now, as in the present moment. It can be. Or it can be a “now” somewhere in the past, as long as the past perfect action happened prior to that. Alternatively, it can even be a hypothetical “now” in the future: a “now” that will occur after another event, which you’ll be describing in the future perfect.

To be honest, it’s much easier to understand in context — so let’s do that.

Past perfect

You’ll see the past perfect tense used in fiction where the narrative is being told in simple past tense. When a story is told in the simple past tense (“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” — The Crow Road by Iain Banks), then the past perfect is used to describe any actions that take place before the “now” of the narrative moment. For example:

She had finished watering the plants when the postman arrived. This is the past perfect form of the verb “to finish” — “she had finished” means that the “finish” action is in the past when the “arrive” action happens.

Past perfect uses the past tense of the verb “to have” plus the past participle of the action verb. In this case, we’ve got “she had” plus “finished.”

Present perfect

On the other hand, modern novels are very often written in the present tense, to give the reader an immersive sense of the narrative unfolding around them as they read. (For example, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.”)

But of course, when you’re writing in the present tense, you already have a verb form that deals with things that happened in the past. It’s called the past tense. The clue is in the name. So why do we need the present perfect as well?

It’s to do with connection — specifically, materially connecting the thing that’s happened with a thing that’s happening right now.

So, for example, if you were to say:

Yesterday, I read a novel. Today, I am giving a presentation on that novel.

You’re using the simple past tense (“I read a novel”) to signify that the action is fully in the past and tied to a specific time (“yesterday”). Something else is happening in the “now” (“I am giving a presentation” but any connection between the two events is implied — it’s not explicitly stated.

But if you wanted to emphasise the relevance of that past event to something that’s happening in the current moment, that’s where you need the connection that present perfect supplies:

I have read that novel, so I’m happy to give the presentation today.

The timing of when you read the novel is less important than the fact that (a) you’ve read it, and (b) it’s relevant to the fact that you’re happy to give the presentation. Note that re-introducing a specific timeframe (“yesterday”) would make the sentence grammatically incorrect — we wouldn’t say “I have read that novel yesterday.” Present perfect is for non-specific timeframes that are relevant to the present because of their impact on a current action or event.

And then, just to really shake things up a bit, you can even go wild and introduce a bit of past perfect in your present tense, too. It’s useful for stacking events temporally: there’s the present tense event — the “now” — then there’s the thing that happened in the past that’s relevant to that present tense event, and then there’s the thing that happened before that thing, which we need to know in order to understand the first thing that happened in the past.

Confusing? Absolutely. I’ll show you how it might look in practice, though, and you’ll see what I mean.

This morning, I was nervous about meeting him. Now, I’m at the airport and I’m feeling excited because I have never flown before. And I’m thinking about how, yesterday, he told me he had waited his whole life to find somebody like me.

The simple past (“I was nervous”) tells us about a thing that happened at a specific time (“this morning”). The present perfect tells us about something that has historically been true (“I have never flown before”) and is relevant to something that’s happening right now (“I’m feeling excited”). And the past perfect shows a past action (“had waited”) that was completed before another past action took place (“he told me”) without giving a definite timeframe for when the waiting took place and how long it took place for.

Using all three different tenses helps us clearly express when actions or events happen and how they relate to each other in time. Each tense provides important details like:

Whether something is happening now, happened before, or will happen later.
Whether an action was completed or is ongoing.
The order of events (which happened first, which came after).
The speaker’s attitude toward the action (how they perceive its relevance to the “now”)

Future perfect

At the time of writing (as far as I know), there’s no such thing as a novel or short story written entirely in the future tense. (I’m not completely sure how that would work, to be honest, but never say never. Narrative is constantly evolving, after all.) But for now, what you need to know about the future perfect is that it stacks hypothetical future events in the order in which we anticipate they’ll take place. For example:

By the time he comes home, she will have left.

Note that the first half of the sentence is rendered in present tense. The future perfect of the second clause is what situates it, by implication, in the future. (The technical term for this is a temporal subordinate clause, if you want to impress your mates.)

Future perfect is amazing, by the way, if you need to get a hook into the opening line of your novel or short story by calling ahead to actions that are about to happen.

Why does any of this matter in fiction?

I’m glad you asked. Because this goes beyond grammatical nerdery, and extends into the grammar of a narrative. And I’m not talking about rules and syntax: I’m talking about the way your reader feels when they engage with the story you’ve written.

I’ve talked elsewhere about the importance of immediacy in fiction. Immediacy describes the feeling that a reader has when they’re so immersed in the story that they feel as though events are unfolding around them as they watch. It’s not dependent on tense: no matter what received wisdom might try to tell you, stories written in the past tense have every bit as much capacity for immediacy as stories written in the present tense — it’s how the author uses language that’s important. And it’s not dependent on narrative point-of-view: third person narration is every bit as capable of delivering immediacy as first person narration. What immediacy depends on, ultimately, is the reader’s perceived distance from the events being described.

And that’s where past perfect often stops looking so perfect. Because it’s all about distancing events from the “now.”

Consider this, for example:

Gail slammed the door behind her and stalked straight to the kitchen. The argument had come out of nowhere, and it had left her reeling. One minute, she and Nicholas had been enjoying a romantic dinner — and then his phone, sitting between them on the table — had flashed a message notification. He had tried to hide it, to pull it back towards him before she glimpse the sender’s name. But he hadn’t been quick enough, and Gail had seen, as clear as day, that he hadn’t blocked Samantha as he’d said he would. Her blood had run cold, but she’d kept her voice steady as she’d said, “I thought you told me you two weren’t in contact anymore.”

Nicholas is clearly in big trouble and Gail has probably given him hell for it — but we’re witnessing the aftermath of the drama. The story has played out at a remove from the reader, and we’re joining the events after they’ve already concluded. This is telling not showing, and we all know what we’re supposed to do about that.

Now, look at how that scene might play out when the reader is allowed to witness it live:

Gail lifted her glass and chimed it gently against his. Candlelight framed Nicholas’ face as he smiled, soft and easy, and it was as though the past months simply melted away — all the hurt, all the tears, all the suspicion. It was just the two of them, together again at last, and Gail found herself believing that this time, maybe, he really had changed.

And then his phone, lying unheeded on the table between them, buzzed with a new message. And Gail saw the sender’s name.

His expression changed so quickly that she knew she wasn’t mistaken. Even if she’d had any doubt, the panicked way that he tried to grab the handset away from her would have told all the story she needed to hear.

“Samantha.” Gail’s voice was cold. “I thought you told me you weren’t in contact anymore.”

Showing, as ever, typically takes considerably more words than telling. That’s one of the reasons that telling can often feel quite attractive, especially when we’re faced with a difficult scene — emotionally tricky, or action-filled, or more characters than we feel we can comfortably manage. It can be very tempting to skip ahead to the “after” part and summarise the sequence once the outcome’s complete — look at how many more words the second excerpt comprises, and we haven’t even got to the good stuff yet. But look, also, at the way the second excerpt guides the reader through the set-up — the warmth, the candlelight, the tentative trust — through the tonal shift of the message’s arrival, and makes space for Gail’s emotional shift from loving to betrayed. The reader gets to experience this with the character; the text invites us to understand Gail’s response as it happens, which encourages the reader to identify more deeply with Gail’s emotional landscape and — with a bit of luck — mirror that response internally.

You can’t do that with an event that’s already happened. The reader knows going in that the night ended badly, and, while we might sympathise with Gail, we haven’t sat with her as she’s moved from hope to shock to anger. We weren’t with her in the moment, so that immersive sense of immediacy is gone.

Now, don’t get me wrong: the perfect tense exists for a reason, and sometimes it’s the only possible way to convey the information you need your reader to have. And little snippets of information that impact on the “now” but are less important than events as they’re currently unfolding? Absolutely: the perfect tense has you covered. There are plenty of occasions in which showing a tangentially connected event would be much, much less interesting to the reader than getting them all caught up through perfect tense while something bigger and more narratively significant gets going. If the argument between Gail and Nicholas existed, perhaps, only to set up Gail’s bad temper as she goes into an important business meeting that will change the course of her career (and especially if that’s Nicholas’ main narrative function), then past perfect will probably do the trick just fine, because it’s contextualising information rather than the main event.

But if the story focuses on Gail and Nicholas’ love affair and the many ways in which it’s doomed to fall apart — then, no. The argument over Samantha’s text is too narratively significant to relate in retrospect. And the past perfect tense, seductive as it might be, will do your storytelling no favours.

Final thoughts: perfect takes practice

As with many niche grammatical idiosyncracies, the perfect tense is one of those constructions that we don’t tend to think too much about. I’ve used it throughout this article (see, I just used it there) without giving it a second thought, and you’ve probably read it (there it is again) without noticing, because it’s designed to be invisible when it’s doing its job.

But sometimes you’ll find that you go back over the words that you’ve just written and something will be ever so slightly… off. You’ll read the sequence you’ve lovingly, painstakingly constructed, and you’ll know that it’s not landing the way you’d hoped it would — there’s something a little bit flat, a little bit surface-level about it, when it was supposed to be a character-defining emotional beat. And it won’t be that the content is wrong — because you know it’s not — and it won’t be because there’s a plot issue. The character development is doing what it needs to do, too, so what’s the problem?

Maybe it’s an issue with the perfect tense. Maybe it’s not. But now you know how the perfect tense works and where it can (potentially) drag your story down, it’s an option you can explore when a passage doesn’t hit the notes you want it to hit. It’s an extra tool in your editing workbox.

And that makes this grammar nerd very happy indeed.