Usage of past perfect

[Daemon99]

I want to narrate a story that happened yesterday. In that, I want to talk about an incident that happened the day before yesterday. And this incident is pretty long.

Ideally, I'd use simple past to narrate the story that happened yesterday and past perfect for the incident that happened the day before.

My question is, is it really necessary that I write the whole incident in past perfect?
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Non-native speaker of English
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I intend to live forever - so far, so good.

[Alan]

Hi,

I wouldn't worry too much about this past perfect/past simple use unless you are actually relating two past incidents one with another within the same sentence/context and are using conjunctions such as 'after' or 'before' ( or their like) indicating that there is this relationship with other times in your sentences. Let me give an example of what I'm on about: Yesterday we visited the famous caves where prehistoric man lived. I went there two years ago but it didn't interest me very much on that occasion... That's fine but you could pop in the past perfect in those sentences for precision? but it does restrict your freedom to pursue your narrative: Yesterday we visited the famous where prehistoric man had lived. I went there two years ago( I had gone there two years before) but it( hadn't interested me much) on that occasion.

I hope you can see that this use of the past perfect can inhibit the flow of the narrative. In that case it's best to stick to past simple unless the two different times are, as it were, forced together by words indicating that you need to differentiate the time difference.

Hope that helps a little.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
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[Daemon99]

[Alan]

Hi,

Sounds fine - I think the first paragraph is a bit too 'grammatical' in terms of tenses but in the second paragraph the narrative flows much better.

Just one small point - I would prefer 'even though' as two words.

Keep up the good work.

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
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