The Witcher Storytelling: Track Past Events and Shifting Timelines in English
You understand the sentences, then suddenly realize you no longer know when anything happened. The trap is trying to solve that by identifying every verb tense in real time. In layered storytelling, tense helps—but the fastest route back is usually a visible time anchor plus the relationship between events.
Anchor: Find one explicit time point, duration, life stage, or “now.”
Backstep: Notice language that opens an earlier period or former state.
Sequence: Follow arrows such as after that and until, plus chains of simple-past events.
Reset: Watch for language that reconnects the backstory to a later point or the current situation.
English grammar can help you order events inside a story. It cannot, by itself, reveal the complete master chronology of an entire TV series. You still need lexical time phrases, event relationships, and scene context.
1. Start with an anchor, not a tense label
Stregobor: Irion created this tower, but he's been dead 200 years.
The clearest information here is not a grammar term. It is the duration: 200 years. That immediately gives you a rail.
Earlier: Irion created the tower.
Later/current reference: he has been dead for a long period.
Anchor: the stated duration connects the earlier death to the speaker's present reference point.
When a scene becomes confusing, numbers, durations, age phrases, dates, and words such as now are often more useful than naming the tense correctly.
2. Present perfect often builds a bridge from earlier to now
Stregobor: So, in order to honor him, I've taken his name as my personal sobriquet.
The action happened earlier, but its result matters at the current point: the speaker is presenting a present identity created by a past action.
Past event only: “I changed my name in 2020.”
Present relevance: “I’ve changed my name, so the old badge is wrong.”
For timeline tracking, treat present perfect as a possible bridge: something began or happened earlier, but the speaker is connecting it to the current reference point.
3. Simple past lays down event tiles
Stregobor: I studied the girls born around the Black Sun, and I found horrendous internal mutations among them.
This is classic narrative flooring: completed events are placed into the backstory. The simple past tells you these belong to a completed past narrative block.
Stregobor: I tried to cure them, locked them in towers for safekeeping, but the girls always died.
More simple-past actions follow. English does not need a special tense for every step. Once the past frame is established, a chain of past verbs can carry the story forward.
“I opened the email, read the attachment, called my manager, and sent a corrected version.”
The verbs create a natural event sequence unless another time marker tells you to reorder them.
4. “After that” is stronger than tense guessing
Stregobor: After that, I organized a manhunt to find the princess, but... eh... she was gone.
After that gives you an explicit arrow: whatever comes next belongs later than the event block just described.
Earlier block → AFTER THAT → manhunt / later state.
If you miss half the grammar but catch the sequence marker, you can still preserve the timeline.
5. “Until” marks a boundary
Stregobor: Two years. Until she reappeared, robbing and murdering merchants on the roads of Mahakam.
Until tells you an earlier period continues up to a new event. Think of it as a fence post on the rail.
“I lived there until I got my first job.”
Earlier state: living there → boundary event: got job.
“Nothing changed until Monday.”
Earlier period: no change → boundary: Monday.
6. Watch for the reset toward the current situation
Stregobor: She's chased me for years, bent on revenge. And now she's tracked me here, just as you arrived.
This one line contains a whole rail. A duration reaches backward, then now pulls the story toward the current situation, and the final time relation aligns another arrival with it.
Backstory: pursuit over a long period.
Reset: now.
Alignment: another event happens at approximately the same point.
This is why listening for small timeline words matters so much. The nouns tell you what; words such as now, since, until, after tell you where to put it.
7. “Used to” opens an old normal, not one event
Renfri: I used to be a princess. Did he tell you that?
Used to marks a former state or repeated pattern. Do not put it on your timeline as one dot. Draw a span: this was true during an earlier period and is contrasted with the later/current situation.
One event: “I visited London in 2022.”
Former state/habit: “I used to live in London.”
The second sentence creates an earlier life phase.
8. Another “until” can close that old life phase
Renfri: Until he sent a thug into the woods to kill me.
The boundary marker tells you the earlier state did not simply fade away. A named event becomes the endpoint of that previous phase.
When a character tells a life story, a useful sketch is:
OLD NORMAL → boundary event → NEW SURVIVAL PERIOD → NOW
9. Necessity can explain why the next events happen
Renfri: I had to survive. I stole rather than starve. I killed rather than be killed.
The first statement is not merely another event. It supplies motivation for the actions that follow. Timeline comprehension improves when you separate event order from cause/reason.
WHO | EVENT | BEFORE/AFTER | TIME ANCHOR | WHY
10. Not every past-looking form belongs on the confirmed event rail
Renfri: I could've become so many things.
This is an unrealized possibility. It describes an alternative past path, not a confirmed event that actually happened.
Mark hypothetical branches differently:
Confirmed rail: what the story says happened.
Possible branch: what could have happened but did not.
This one distinction prevents a surprising amount of timeline confusion.
11. “Since” measures the gap from an earlier point
Renfri: But it's been a long time since someone saw me.
The construction measures elapsed time between an earlier event and the current reference point. The event after since is your back anchor; the present-perfect phrase measures the distance from it.
“It’s been three years since I moved.”
Move = earlier anchor → three-year span → now.
“It’s been a while since we spoke.”
Last conversation = earlier anchor → elapsed span → now.
12. “When I was…” opens a mini timeline inside the story
Renfri: When I was a girl, my mother used to run her fingers over my forehead.
The opening phrase creates a temporary childhood frame. Inside that frame, used to describes a repeated habit.
You can mentally indent it:
Renfri's larger backstory
↳ childhood frame
↳ repeated family habit
then return to the larger backstory
Nested memories become easier when you treat them as a small rail inside a larger rail.
13. “Would” can describe repeated past behavior—but only with context
Renfri: She'd say she'd give a lovely lintar to know the thoughts going around in there.
Because the childhood frame is already established, the first contracted would can describe something the mother habitually said. But would has many other jobs in English, including hypothetical meaning and politeness. Never label every would as “past habit.”
“When we were students, we’d meet at the same café every Friday.”
14. Past perfect: useful, but not a universal flashback button
The past perfect can mark an event as earlier than another past reference point.
“When I arrived, she left.” → the events are presented close together; context decides the exact relation.
“When I arrived, she had left.” → her leaving is explicitly earlier than my arrival.
But past perfect can also occur inside hypothetical/counterfactual structures. So do not see had + participle and automatically shout “flashback!”
Stregobor: If you'd been alive during Falka's Rebellion, seen what I saw...
Here the grammar frames an unreal past condition. It is about imagining a different past, not simply placing one confirmed event before another.
15. The four-column rescue when you lose the timeline
WHO: Whose story is this?
EVENT: What happened or what state was true?
BEFORE / AFTER: Relative to the last known event, where does it go?
TIME ANCHOR: What word or phrase proves that placement?
If the line is hypothetical, add NOT CONFIRMED instead of forcing it onto the rail.
16. Three-line timeline reconstruction
Try this writer-original mini-story before opening the answer:
A. “I used to work from home.”
B. “Then the company opened a new office.”
C. “I’ve worked there for two years now.”
Show the rail
A: former state/old normal.
B: boundary/sequence event that changes the situation.
C: past-to-now duration ending at the current reference point.
Rail: HOME-WORK PERIOD → OFFICE OPENS → TWO-YEAR OFFICE PERIOD → NOW.
17. Practice a harder reconstruction
A. “When I was a student, I’d take the bus every day.”
B. “After that, I moved closer to work.”
C. “I could have stayed near campus, but I didn’t.”
D. “It’s been five years since I moved.”
Show the rail
A: nested earlier period + repeated habit.
B: confirmed later event.
C: unrealized alternative branch; keep it off the confirmed rail.
D: elapsed-time bridge from the move to now.
18. Turn subtitles into a timeline diagnostic
With FunFluen, hide the subtitle before a backstory line and use Smart Auto-Pause. Write only four notes: who, event, before/after, anchor. Then reveal the subtitle and check which tiny timeline word you missed.
If the problem was until, since, now, after, or a former-state marker, you do not need more plot summary—you need better timeline-word recognition. Repeat that one cue, then reconnect it to the previous and next event.
The rule to remember
Build chronology from relationships, not from tense names alone.
Find an anchor. Step backward when the language opens an earlier period. Follow explicit sequence arrows. Watch for the reset toward now. Once those four moves are visible, even a story that jumps around becomes much easier to track in English.
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