"We were playing before the bell rang" and "We had been playing before the bell rang."?

[ahsanul.irfan]

We were playing before the bell rang.
We had been playing before the bell rang.

Is there a difference between these two?

 

[Tarheel]

It's hard for me to think of a context for either one. Is there one?

 

[emsr2d2]

It's hard for me to think of a context for either one. Is there one?

Did your school not ring a bell to indicate the end of recess? That's the fairly international context that immediately sprang to my mind when I read those two sentences.

 

[Tdol]

If there is a need to stress a difference in timing, use the past perfect. As always, context is everything. What's the wider context? In most contexts, I would use the first.

 

[Tarheel]

Did your school not ring a bell to indicate the end of recess? That's the fairly international context that immediately sprang to my mind when I read those two sentences.

I might say:

We were playing when the bell rang.

Why stop before then?

It's been a long long long time since I've been in elementary school.

 

[jutfrank]

The difference is in use, so which one to use depends on the context of the narrative.