The ‘Perfect’ Blog Post You Don’t Know What You ‘Had’ ’Til It’s Gone

If I may paraphrase Hemingway: To Had and Had Not.

Or, if you prefer Shakespeare: To Have Had or Not to Have Had.

Indeed, that is the question. The answer is not. “Had” clogs up the prose, acts as a crutch, and puts the action farther into the past than it needs to be.

Past (Im)perfect

Most novels and short stories are written in the past tense. Fine. Whatever happened happened. The writer is already doing their best to make those past events relevant and engaging.

Don’t make your job more difficult by putting the action farther into the past when you don’t need to.

I’m talking about the past perfect tense. That’s the one with “had.” My old English teacher called “had” a “helping verb.” Turns out, it’s helping to encumber your prose with extra words and making your story more distant from your readers.

The past perfect is necessary sometimes, but far less often than you probably think.

For example: Her grandparents had moved to the United States fifty years earlier.

There’s no reason that can’t be: Her grandparents moved to the United States fifty years earlier.

It’s still fifty years ago, but now it seems less remote.

The ‘Perfect’ Storm

Worse, writers sometimes feel that once they’re in the past perfect, they have to stay there:

Her grandparents had moved to the United States fifty years earlier. Gramps had found a job at the local hardware store and they had bought the house where her mother grew up.

Read those sentences again without the “hads.” They work perfectly (no pun intended) well, in fact better. They’re less wordy and feel more current.

I’ll Had What She’s Hadding

Even if there’s a situation where you feel the first “had” is needed to separate time periods, you can switch to the simple past tense (no “had”) for the rest of the passage without breaking any rules or causing confusion. Read those sentences again with only the first “had.” See?

Many writers resort to the past perfect, even for things that didn’t happen in the distant past. Tom sat at the kitchen table. He had made breakfast for everyone. Now, he waited.

Much better to tell the story in order.

Tom got up early. He padded down to the kitchen and made breakfast for everyone, then sat at the table and waited.

That puts the readers in the action rather than having them hear about it. You could even use the opportunity to deepen Tom’s character with details of his cooking and what he was thinking about while he cooked.

Either way, it’s a small example of how you can follow the most basic writing adage: Show, Don’t Tell.

Did You Had a Crutch on Me?

Another way “had” can hurt your manuscript is when it appears as a crutch, something that makes the writer’s life easier but the reader’s life less pleasant. You neglected to tell us something, so you’re throwing it in now.

Steve ran the two blocks to where he had parked his bicycle.

If it’s important that Steve’s bicycle is two blocks away, you need to go back and show us that in proper sequence. Then you can just tell us Steve ran to the bike, or, better yet, add some information by telling us Steve got soaked or winded running back to the bike, or that someone saw him running.

Back in olden times, when people wrote on “instant printers” called typewriters, they (OK, we) had to literally cut and paste strips of paper to get new material onto previous pages, or retype the whole darn thing. That was certainly an incentive to save the hassle and write “Steve ran the two blocks to where he had parked his bicycle.” Nowadays, there’s no excuse.

And there’s another way “had” can be a crutch. It’s easy to overuse it as a simple past tense verb.

We had a service.

They had a party.

I had a cold.

Of course, simple wording like that is good. But you can make your writing less repetitive and more colorful, without being pretentious, by choosing stronger verbs.

We held a service.

They threw a party.

I developed a cold.

To Had and to Hold

It’s not possible to completely ban “had” from your writing. It has too many uses, among them frustration, possession, need, and various idioms.

Melissa had had it. She had what she needed. Tom had it in for her and he had to go.

All are legitimate uses of “had,” though I don’t recommend using them all together like that.

And did you notice the “had had?” Those should be even rarer in your writing than the single “had.”

You Had Me at ‘Had’ (Or Lost Me)

Enough talk. How about some action!

Open your manuscript and search for “had.” (Pro tips: Add a space to avoid words containing “had” like “shadow.” In MS Word, use the “list matches in sidebar” function.) Take note of how many times “had” appears. Then examine each “had” to determine whether it’s needed, or whether it slows down the prose, puts action farther into the past than it needs to be, or acts as a crutch.

Delete as many as you can, making other changes as necessary. When you’re finished, search again and see how many you eliminated. Post your results in the comments.

I’ll go first. I found “had” 347 times in 60k words. After looking at each one, I took out nearly half of them, down to 180. Beat that, if you can.

Try it with the hidden “hads,” too — the apostrophe-Ds like “he’d,” “she’d,” etc. And don’t forget “hadn’t.”

You’ll clean up your writing, and be able to brag that you had had “had” and had had “had had,” but had read a blog and had had to remove them.