Hi all, My mc is having a memory in the middle of a scene, the story is written in third person pov, past tense. And I know had's are important for past perfect. But I'm a little confused as to how many had's are needed. One to set the idea - or one for all? Here is the sentence - Searching for a bite mark and finding none, his father had hit him with the still warm barbeque tongs and hissed, “If you make me burn those twenty dollar steaks over your bullshit, Noir ...” Do I also need a had hissed?
No. It's perfectly clear how you have it in my opinion, although I'd probably word it: Searching for a bite mark and finding none, his father had hit him with the still warm barbeque tongs, hissing, “If you make me burn those twenty dollar steaks over your bullshit, Noir ...”
The ability to use a single had in a sentence hadn't crossed my mind. I usually end up with had hads and had had had hads...
No need. The first 'had' clearly applies to both verbs in the phrase. The ', hissing' change works fine too. I would also write 'still warm barbecue tongs' as 'still-warm', since it's a compound adjective, but that's more a matter of preference I think.
Your sentence is valid. It has a single "had" construction that takes both "hit" and "hissed". Note that "hit" and "hissed" are past participles, not past tense verbs. That is a tricky part of the English language because the past participle "hit" and the past tense verb "hit" are spelled the same. (Likewise with "hissed" and "hissed".) I will illustrate the point with the verbs "eat" and "drink", whose past participles ("eaten" and "drunk") are spelled differently: "He had eaten the food and he had drunk the water." "He had eaten the food and drunk the water." "He had eaten and drunk the food and water." In the first sentence, there are two "had" constructions: "had eaten" and "had drunk". In the second sentence, there is one "had" construction, which takes both "eaten" and "drunk". The third sentence contains the same construction as the second sentence, but it is easier to see why it is a single construction instead of two constructions. "He had eaten the food and drank the water." That sentence is invalid because the tenses are mismatched. "had eaten" is a past perfect construction. "drank" is a past tense verb that cannot be part of the past perfect construction even though the sentence is set up to make it look like it is. It is easier to see why it is invalid when it only contains the subject, verbs, and conjunction: "He had eaten and drank." Going back to your sentence, look at it with just the subject, verbs, and conjunction: "He had hit and hissed." It might seem like it is invalid for the same reason as "he had eaten and drank": it might seem like "hissed" is a past tense verb that does not belong. It might seem like you need to write "had hissed" in order to put it into the past perfect tense. But you do not need to do that, because "hissed" is a past participle like "drunk", not a past tense verb like "drank".
Simple answer - if you split the sentence into individual Simple Past sentences, then work out which action, or sentence happened first - that sentence is the one that get's the had! The perfect part of a compound sentence is there to let you know which part happened first. Easy example: I wrote a letter. You called me on my mobile. I had written a letter when you called me on my mobile. The letter was written (action complete), before the phone call. Here is a longer explanation: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/pastperfect.html Hope that helps! CJ!
Just to share: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/58832-good-item-seven-the-had-had-and-that-that-problem
