She had done it. Again. But also way back in the past tense, she had done it. Or, should it be, she did it? Had done, had gone, had been – all words of the distant past. We use the word ‘had’ to create a sense of the past, to allow some backstory to permeate the present action. It’s known as the past perfect tense. But do we overuse it? More importantly, are we using it correctly?

The past perfect tense is when there are two events which happened in the past, but one event happened before the other. Using ‘had’ creates the past perfect tense and presents a definitive line between which past event is more in the past than the other.

Confused? Here’s an example:

Sylvia had started to eat the chocolate cake before she realized that it was meant to be a surprise for her mother’s birthday party. 

Both parts of the sentence depict the past, but Sylvia’s eating the cake came before realizing it was meant for someone else’s celebration. We could, alternately, write:

Sylvia started to eat the chocolate cake before she realized that it was meant to be a surprise for her mother’s birthday party. 

Both parts of the sentence are still in the past. But does the reader get the sense of which past event happened first? No, not really. So, in this case, Sylvia had started, is the correct form. But, should the had’s continue throughout the paragraph, it might be prudent to fine-tune and edit out some of the had’s.

Like any other word in the English language, ‘had’ can be overused and misused. As the past tense of ‘to have’, a verb indicating possession or ownership, ‘had’ is the past tense of the past participle. As a verb indicating possession, we, as writers, need to be creative to avoid multiple, vague uses of the word, ‘had’. For example:

I had a glass in my hand from which I had a drink a water. I had a cookie waiting on the counter. I had worked hard all morning and had developed a great hunger and thirst. I had to eat. I had to drink.

That’s seven uses of ‘had’ in one short five-sentence paragraph. How about this instead:

I held the glass in my hand after enjoying a long drink of water. A cookie waited on the counter for my enjoyment. After a long morning, working hard, I was both hungry and thirsty. I needed nourishment and liquids. 

Fewer had’s make the reading less cumbersome and the defining line between the past tenses remains intact. Here’s another example, from the book, Mrs. Murray’s Ghost (Tell-Tale Publishing, 2018). This was the original paragraph before editing:

The only thing that had really worried Mary about the new house had been the bats and the ghost. Mom had mentioned the possibility of a ghost. There had been some eerie sounds when she had come up to London on her own to clean the house before they had moved in. Mary had overheard Dad mentioning bats. She didn’t like the idea of bats flying around while she was trying to sleep at night.

Six had’s. After multiple edits, this is the published version:

The only thing that really worried Mary about the new house was the bats and the ghost. Mom had mentioned the possibility of a ghost. For some reason, this didn’t seem to bother the rest of her family. There had been some eerie sounds, Mom said, when she came up to London on her own to clean the house before they moved in. Mary overheard Dad mention bats. She didn’t like the idea of bats flying around while she was trying to sleep at night.

Still some had’s, but fewer and the passage is less cumbersome to read. Like anything else in the game of writing, less is best. Upon reviewing my original manuscript of Mrs. Murray’s Ghost, I found 300 had’s. The published version contained (you see, I avoided the word had) less than 200. Still a lot of had’s, but not as many to complicate the text. As always, it’s a question of which had is really needed and which has been repeated far too often.