The third great job of the imperfeito — alongside habits and ongoing actions — is setting the scene. When you tell a story, the imperfect describes the backdrop: what the weather was like, what time it was, how people felt, what the place looked like. It is the tense of description, while the preterite is the tense of plot. Understanding this division is the single most important key to telling a story in Portuguese.
The scene vs. the plot
Imagine a story as a stage play. Before anything happens, you need a set: the lighting, the props, the mood, the characters standing in their places. That is the imperfect — it describes the conditions that were simply there, without advancing time. Then the action begins: someone enters, a phone rings, a decision is made. Those discrete events that move the story forward are the preterite (pretérito perfeito).
Era uma noite escura.
It was a dark night.
Fazia frio e as ruas estavam vazias.
It was cold and the streets were empty.
De repente, ouvi um barulho.
Suddenly, I heard a noise.
Look at what is happening tense by tense. Era (it was), fazia (it was cold), estavam (were empty) — all imperfect, all painting the scene, none advancing time. Then ouvi (I heard) — preterite — and the plot lurches into motion. The story does not begin to move until that first preterite verb.
What counts as "background"?
Several recurring categories almost always take the imperfect in narrative:
- Weather and time of day — Chovia. Fazia calor. Era meia-noite.
- Physical descriptions of people and places — A casa era grande. Ele usava um chapéu velho.
- Mental and emotional states — Eu estava com medo. Ela queria ir embora.
- Age and ongoing circumstances — Eu tinha dez anos. Morávamos numa cidade pequena.
A casa era velha, e tinha um jardim enorme nos fundos.
The house was old, and it had a huge garden in the back.
Ele estava cansado e só queria dormir.
He was tired and just wanted to sleep.
Naquele verão eu tinha quinze anos e achava que sabia tudo.
That summer I was fifteen and thought I knew everything.
Notice how none of these verbs report an event. They report a state of affairs. That is the heart of "background."
A short story, narrated properly
Here is the canonical Brazilian narrative pattern in action. Read the whole thing first, then look at the tense of each verb:
Era uma noite de domingo. Fazia frio e as ruas do bairro estavam vazias. Eu voltava do trabalho a pé, pensando na semana que vinha. De repente, vi uma luz acesa na casa abandonada da esquina. Parei. Meu coração disparou. Então a porta se abriu devagar.
Translation: It was a Sunday night. It was cold and the neighborhood streets were empty. I was walking home from work on foot, thinking about the week ahead. Suddenly, I saw a light on in the abandoned house on the corner. I stopped. My heart started racing. Then the door slowly opened.
Now the breakdown:
| Verb | Tense | Role |
|---|---|---|
| era (uma noite) | imperfect | scene: time/setting |
| fazia (frio) | imperfect | scene: weather |
| estavam (vazias) | imperfect | scene: condition |
| voltava | imperfect | scene: ongoing action |
| vinha | imperfect | scene: ongoing circumstance |
| vi | preterite | plot: the event |
| parei | preterite | plot: next event |
| disparou | preterite | plot: next event |
| se abriu | preterite | plot: next event |
The story has a clear rhythm: a long stretch of imperfect (all scene-setting), then a cascade of preterites (the events fire one after another). This is not a stylistic accident — it is the fundamental temporal scaffold of Brazilian fiction and journalism. Open almost any Brazilian novel or news feature and you will find the same alternation. For more on the chain of preterite events that drives a plot, see the narrative preterite.
The same verb, two tenses, two roles
Many verbs can appear in either tense depending on whether they describe a state or report an event. Watch how the meaning shifts:
A festa era animada.
The party was lively. (describing the atmosphere — scene)
A festa foi ótima.
The party was great. (the whole event, now over — plot/summary)
The first treats the party as an ongoing condition you were inside of; the second treats the party as a completed event you are now evaluating as a whole. Both are correct English "was," but Portuguese makes you choose your camera angle.
Ele sabia a verdade o tempo todo.
He knew the truth the whole time. (ongoing state — imperfect)
Naquele momento, ele soube a verdade.
At that moment, he found out the truth. (an event of learning — preterite)
This last pair is especially instructive: sabia is the steady state of knowing, while soube marks the instant of coming to know. Same verb, opposite roles.
A note for English speakers
English does not grammatically separate scene from plot the way Portuguese does. In English, "It was cold and I heard a noise" uses the same simple past for both the backdrop ("was cold") and the event ("heard"). English readers infer which is which from meaning alone. Portuguese, by contrast, encodes the difference in the verb form itself: fazia frio (scene) versus ouvi (event). This is why English speakers often flatten a Portuguese story into all-preterite — they are used to one past tense doing all the work. Training your ear to hear the imperfect as "scenery" is the breakthrough.
Common Mistakes
❌ Foi uma noite escura. Fez frio. As ruas estiveram vazias.
Incorrect — using the preterite for pure scene-setting makes it sound like a list of finished events.
✅ Era uma noite escura. Fazia frio. As ruas estavam vazias.
It was a dark night. It was cold. The streets were empty.
❌ Quando eu cheguei, a casa era pegando fogo.
Incorrect — a sudden discovered condition described with the wrong structure; and 'era' cannot take a gerund.
✅ Quando eu cheguei, a casa estava pegando fogo.
When I arrived, the house was on fire.
❌ Ela teve medo, então fugia correndo.
Incorrect — the state ('was afraid') should be imperfect and the event ('ran off') should be preterite; this reverses both.
✅ Ela estava com medo, então fugiu correndo.
She was afraid, so she ran off.
❌ Eu tive dez anos quando me mudei pro Brasil.
Incorrect — 'I was ten' is an ongoing state of age, which takes the imperfect.
✅ Eu tinha dez anos quando me mudei pro Brasil.
I was ten years old when I moved to Brazil.
Key Takeaways
- The imperfect is the tense of description and scenery; the preterite is the tense of events and plot.
- Weather, time, physical descriptions, emotions, age, and ongoing circumstances all take the imperfect.
- A well-told Brazilian story alternates: imperfect backdrop, then preterite events that move time forward.
- Many verbs switch roles by tense — sabia (knew, a state) vs. soube (found out, an event).
- English uses one past tense for both jobs; Portuguese encodes the scene/plot split in the verb itself.
Now practice Portuguese
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Pretérito Imperfeito OverviewA2 — An introduction to the pretérito imperfeito — Brazilian Portuguese's tense for ongoing, habitual, and background past events.
- Imperfeito for Ongoing Past ActionA2 — Using the imperfect for actions that were in progress in the past — the equivalent of the English past progressive.
- Imperfeito for Habitual PastA2 — Using the imperfect to express what used to happen — repeated, habitual, or customary actions in the past.
- Pretérito Perfeito vs Imperfeito: OverviewA2 — The central contrast in the Portuguese past: perfeito for completed events that move the story forward, imperfeito for ongoing, habitual, and background states.
- Pretérito Perfeito in NarrativeA2 — How the pretérito perfeito chains together to move a story forward, and how it works against the imperfeito for background.
- Imperfeito as Narrative Tense (Literary)B2 — How Brazilian writers use the imperfeito instead of the preterite to narrate events, creating a dreamlike, immersive 'dramatic imperfect'.