Grammar Girl here, recently a listener named Joy had a question about writing a flashback

in a work of fiction.

She wrote,

I'm writing a story in the past tense, and I've reached a scene where my protagonist

recalls an event that happened further in the past.

The story within a story runs for about a page and a half, and starts with, I'd had

a few drinks.

Should I continue the whole recollection in the past perfect or shift to the simple past?

I want to be sure the past of the main storyline and the earlier past of the recollection

don't blend together and confuse the reader.

This is a great question, so I asked guest writer Neil Whitman to talk about techniques

authors use to take their readers from one point in the past to a place even further

in the past.

He'll use examples from two novels he's enjoyed.

Joy is right that you can use the past perfect tense to show a flashback.

The verb phrase, had had a few drinks, is in the past perfect tense because it begins

with the past tense of the helping verb have, and then has the past participle of the

ordinary verb have, to give us had had.

The past perfect tense is very useful for showing a shift away from a time in the past

to a time even further in the past.

However, for an extended flashback, you might not want to use the past perfect tense

for the whole thing, for a couple of reasons.

...