To tell a good story in Spanish, you need to master how you combine different past tenses. This deck will teach you how to weave together the imperfect, the preterite, and the past-before-past to narrate events, set scenes, and describe what was happening when something suddenly occurred.

Let's start with setting the scene. To describe the background of a story – what the weather was like, what people were doing, or how things were – you use the imperfect tense. For example, 'Era una noche oscura y llovía.' means 'It was a dark night and it was raining.'

For the main, completed actions that move the story forward, you use the preterite tense. These are the key events in your narrative. For example, 'El hombre abrió la puerta y entró.' means 'The man opened the door and entered.'

A classic storytelling technique is the interrupted action. To do this in Spanish, you describe the ongoing background action with the imperfect, and the interrupting event with the preterite. For example, 'Yo dormía cuando sonó el despertador.' means 'I was sleeping when the alarm clock rang.'