Since I'm seeing a lot of this kind of stuff in Fan Word submissions and they're kinda bugging me, let's talk about the past!
I'm All Kinds of Tense Tonight!
If you talk about something in the present or something happening right as you read along, you write in the present tense; if you talk about something that's already happened or are writing in a more conventional narrative style, you write in the past tense. So far people are doing great with that, and are understanding tense agreement and the like.
And now for the next step...
There's more to past tense than just a simple "was" or "did". And those come into writing as well. There's actually a lot of different tweaked things here and there, but I'm only going to cover three main ones which should take care of most of your troubles. So that said, consider the following:
I was punching the baby in the face this morning.
I punched the baby in the face this morning.
I had punched the baby in the face this morning.
(Did any of you miss that baby?)
That first sentence is an example of past continuous (or "imperfect") tense.
The second sentence is an example of simple past (or "perfect") tense.
The third sentence is an example of past perfect (or "pluperfect") tense.
So what the hell's all that mean, right? Let's get to that now...
Not Finished Punching The Baby...
With past continuous, the idea is that whatever action that started in the past is more or less ongoing/continuing; you're "still doing it". Well, you're still doing it in the context of the rest of the sentence, anyway ("I was punching the baby when the phone rang," or something like that).
The most common ways for a verb to take this tense go by taking the word "was" along with the verb's participle form.
"I run to school" becomes "I was running to school".
"I storm the beach" becomes "I was storming the beach".
"NHL 2K9 sells far worse than NHL 09" becomes "NHL 2K9 was selling far worse than NHL 09".
So that's past continuous. Next...
Finished Punching The Baby...
If past continuous is an incomplete action, simple past is the complete one. Whatever happened has happened, and it's not happening now. This is the "normal" past tense that most people think of.
"Naruto ended its filler arcs."
"We tipped over the tractors to make them fart."
This is pretty basic. Let's not spend more time here than we need.
A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
Past perfect tense is for actions that happened way the hell back in the past. Y'know all the stuff that happened in the simple past? Yeah, past perfect happened before that.
Usually when using the past perfect tense, you stick the word "had" before the simple past form of a verb.
"I check the time" becomes "I had checked the time".
"Tony Stark becomes Iron Man" becomes "Tony Stark had become Iron Man".
"The piano explodes" becomes "The piano had exploded".
So now that we have all these tools, how do we use them?
Putting It All Together...
A basic way of wrapping your head around this is to simply put them in chronological order. We already have an understanding of past and future:
Past ---> Present ---> Future ---> "Really far into the future"
So let's stick all of that into the past tense:
Past Perfect ---> Simple Perfect ---> Past Continuous ---> Present
So let's hit some examples quickly! Telling a story in present-tense:
I'm playing a game of Connect 4 with my sister now that we've finished dinner.
So dinner happened first, then playing Connect 4 was next. Now say we were telling that story at a later point in time:
I played a game of Connect 4 with my sister after we had finished dinner.
We getting anywhere?
Last Words:
Now of course, not all past continuous verbs are going to be "was (blank)ing" and not all past perfect verbs are going to be "had (blank)ed". English the mutt-language of the ages has come up with all kinds of different ways to explain some sorts of actions...
...sing, was singing, sang, had sang, sung, had sung... gick.
Just so long you have an appreciation for how there's more than one way to speak in the past, and it's all good by me...
...unless you have questions?
