This paper examines the representation of tenses in two novels. The research was conducted on the novel of Bolja polovica hrabrosti written by Ivan Slamnig and Kratki izlet written by Antun Soljan. It is important to mention that throughout the work is a separated part of the slogan written in Slamnig's novel and the term "story in the story" is used. The compilation of simple and complex tenses is structured according to the division of two linguists Josip Silic and Ivo Pranjkovic from Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika za gimnazije i visoka učilište which is used in high schools and universities. In the introductory part we explained the term „jeans prose“, since both novels belong to this direction in literature. After that, a brief overview of Slamnig's and Soljan's lives was made and in a few lines the action and the main determinants of both novels were presented. Also, we looked at verbs in general, verbal categories and verb forms. Tenses are especially described as they are the main part of this work. In the research part of the paper, special contribution was given to the verbal categories of faces and numbers, then the allocated verb times were established and their representation was established. This research could be used in further research, but should include more novels „jeans prose“, and thereby determine the representation of verbs because this research does not have the correct insight into the representation of certain simple or complex verb times.