As a general note because people tend to confuse this:
Obviously, many written texts use the Präteritum, even though
one gets the impression that it is scarcely used in everyday
life. Now, this does not imply that Präteritum is the past tense
used in written form whereas Perfekt is the kind of informal
spoken form of it. Nor does it mean that one needs to convert a
spoken Perfekt to Präteritum when writing it or use Perfect when
re-telling a scary novel at a campfire. Obviously, there is a
point to it or people wouldn’t notice. However, it is of course
not that Präteritum was so complicated that it could only be
used at a desk with one hand in the conjugation table. The
reason is that the form and intention of texts which are written
down and texts which are spoken differs: Präteritum is the way
of telling a story. Therefore, it is also used when writing a
story. A story in that sense is anything which is remote. It may
be in the past, it may be in the future, it may just not be of
primary concern for the per