Most stories exist in the recent past. In contemporary culture they are written or filmed. If a scene is fictional, it can describe something that has happened and is now being described.

This construction is classic simple past, as would be used in a novel or any description of past events.

I have a test tomorrow, but she gets nowhere. “Following

the test, lets put it up into the present-tense. Why

does the sentence above come in some way about a friend who is currently struggling to revise for a test? Why should an object be written in the present if it contains very little information about an event previously experienced, then just change the verbs (“has” and “is”) and delete them and voilu00e0…the original sentence. She had

a testing tomorrow, but was getting nowhere. I really tried it. So I got a problem! I just got into that. When will her answer be? In

your second example, Tomoko Ishii is Japanese. Think about the present form you would get if you changed verbs “wasn’t” and “pulled” to their present forms. “isn’t” and “pulls”.