narrative tenses: past simple, past continuous, past perfect, past perfect continuous narrative tenses

1.use the past simple to talk about consecutive actions in the past, i. e. for the main events in a story.

2 use the past continuous (was / were + verb + -ing) to describe a longer continuous past action,
which was in progress when another action happened.

3 .use the past perfect (had + past participle) to talk about the earlier part, i. e. things which happened before the main event(s).

4 use the past perfect continuous (had been + verb + -ing) to talk about a longer continuous action that was going on before the main events happened. non-action verbs are not normally used in the past continuous or the past perfect continuous. ​