Third person uses pronouns like “he,” “she” or “they” and their variations. In simple sentences, a pronoun is combined with a verb. For example, “He walked” is a sentence in simple past tense. The sentence, “He had walked,” is written in past perfect tense, which implies that the action in the sentence was completed before another action, according to Purdue Online Writing Lab. The British Council also makes distinctions between past continuous and past perfect continuous tense. “He was walking” is written in past continuous, and adds the “be” verb “was.” “He had been walking,” written in past perfect continuous, adds the “had,” like in past perfect, and the “be” verb “been.”
When writing a story or novel, you might choose to write from the third person point of view, which means the story is told from the perspective of a narrator. This narrator uses “he” and “she” pronouns to refer to characters in the story, and the narrator might know everything about every character or only one character, or he might only be able to report about what he sees and hears. You use past tense when the narrator recounts events that already happened. You can also use past tense to refer to the present or future in conditions, such as found in the sentence, “If she was parking the car, she couldn’t answer the phone,” or for wishes, such as, “She wished it wasn’t true.”