SECTION Two--Developing Papers: Narrating: Telling What Happened

Narration and description occur together more often than not. As we said in the last section, you’ll sometimes want to keep a narrative thread running through a description. And it’s hard to find a narrative that doesn’t include some descriptive detail. Both narration and description appear in many papers that explain or analyze, and brief passages of both are common in persuasive and critical essays. An argument for slum clearance may open with a description of life in a decaying neighborhood. A movie review usually includes a narrative summary of the plot.

You’ll adopt the chronological arrangement typical of narrative when you present the development of an idea, a fashion or a fad, a theory in science, a movement in art or literature or politics, a strategy or technique in sports, a trend in television. You’ll also adopt it in explanations of how things work and how things grow and in “how-to-do its” (how to play tennis, how to cook spaghetti, how to set up a particular experiment), where directions are typically combined with descriptions of equipment.

Purpose is central to the kind of narrative you write. If you want to re-create an event in which you took part — a dance marathon, For example —you’ll tell what you did and what you saw. You’ll concentrate on actions and sensations. If you want to report the event so that readers will understand what happened and why and what came of it, you’ll give reasons (to raise money for scholarships) and point out significance (college students, as represented by the organizers and participants, are willing to give generously of their time and energy to help others). If you want to explain how to organize and conduct a dance marathon for a good cause, you’ll outline a procedure, telling not what happened at a particular contest but what should always happen to make such a contest a success.

The first account, which tells what happened, is a personal narrative. The second, which explains what happened, is expository narrative. The third, a special variety of expository narrative that tells how it was done, is called a process paper. Though all three may be rooted in the same personal experience, their purposes and possibly their readers differ, and so will the approaches used in the accounts and the material they contain.

Point of View

In narrating as in describing, you may want to make clear where you are in relation to the action. In a personal narrative, you’re likely to adopt a restricted point of view, re porting only what you could see and hear, and what you could hear about, while the event was taking place. As a reporter giving a comprehensive account of the same event, you might want to use an unrestricted point of view, so that you can jump from one incident to another (“Mean while, outside the building . . .“). You’re then free to be wherever you want to be, both in space and in time (“Two days earlier. . .“). In a process paper the unrestricted point of view permits you to coordinate stages of the process that take place simultaneously: “During this time other members of the committee have been looking for sponsors among the local merchants”). For some processes you may adopt a restricted point of view, identifying yourself with the reader and going through, or watching, the process with him step by step. In explaining a specific undertaking—making an omelette, changing a tire, setting up lab equipment—your paper may be clearer and more interesting if you take up the steps in proper sequence, limiting each one to what a performer of the action could do at any one time.

The advantage of the restricted point of view is its realism: you are there, and the reader is there with you. Even as an observer rather than a participant, you may choose to swap the freedom of the unrestricted point of view for the realism of the restricted. Once you’ve adopted it, though, you should stick to it. You shouldn’t suddenly announce that at the very moment you were dozing on your partner’s shoulder, or standing on the sidelines taking notes, a restaurant manager was deciding to send over-a van-load of pizzas. The pizzas can enter the narrative only when you first saw or smelled them or when someone told you they were on the way.

In the passage that follows, the narrator tells in chronological sequence what he heard and saw on a moonless night in the desert as he sat by a campfire. First, two yellow lights appeared miles away on the horizon. Soon they illuminated “a swirling, humming cloud of dust.” Then:

The hum became a buzz, a grumble, then a roar; each light split, and now four lights crashed through the dust to reveal an off-white Chevy Blazer. Just when it seemed as if the Blazer was going to stampede through the campsite, the lights bent away and the truck slid to a stop, driver’s door next to the fire. The lights flicked black; the hot engine creaked quiet; dust drifted down in the silence and settled over the campsite, on the men. A match was struck inside the Blazer to light a cigarette, and new born shadows slipped around a felt cowboy hat. The face and body under the hat climbed out of the Blazer and stretched. Pearl shirt snaps glowed like polished mescal buttons, and a sterling silver belt buckle reflected so sharply it seemed to be a tiny window into the man’s belly, where a campfire was burning. His filigreed blue cowboy boots had no cow dung on their pointy toes.

The man took a sullen drag on his cigarette, tilted the gray Stetson off his forehead with the side of an index finger and said with a sudden grin, “Damn, I need a tequila.”—Sam Moses, Sports Illustrated

Physical point of view indicates your location in space and time. Psychological point of view indicates your attitude toward your subject, the role you’ve assumed. As a participant, you may be so intensely involved that you al most pull the reader into the action with you. As a reporter who’s trying hard to be objective, you may be quite unemotional. But a reporter can also be amused, or bored, or ad miring, or disgusted. This applies whether you’re reporting something you witnessed or something that took place in Nazi Germany or the Dakota Territory or czarist Russia or imperial Rome. If you react strongly to the event you’re telling about, it may suit your purpose to share that response with your audience. Traditionally, process papers stress exactness of observation and clarity of presentation, but given the right rhetorical situation, you may choose to communicate your own curiosity about the subject or your enthusiasm or distaste for it.

As with physical point of view, a psychological point of view, once established, should be maintained. Don’t make fun of a dance marathon for two thirds of your paper and then expect your readers to believe you when you ex press great admiration for the organizers and participants in the final paragraphs. Don’t switch back and forth between the invisible, all-knowing reporter of a happening and the “I” who takes part in it. In a process paper you may choose to keep the reader at arm’s length with the formal, impersonal “one” (“At this stage one should be careful not to . . .“) or reduce the distance with the less formal “you” (“ You would be wise at this point to. . .“) or go arm-in-arm with “we” (“Now let’s see if we can run through those steps again”), depending on the rhetorical situation. Once you’ve settled on the appropriate relationship, stay with it.

Personal Narrative

The following two passages from papers by students show how feeling or attitude can be communicated through narrative. In the first the writer describes his emotions as the incidents occur:

The bus was coming to a stop. I pushed my way into the crowd to get on before some of the others. The doors opened. I felt pushing people behind me and resistance from those in front. Suddenly, I sensed something was wrong, or maybe I heard something. I glanced over my shoulder. I saw an old man (per haps sixty) with an expression of horror on his face. I was shocked and looked more closely. Behind him was poised a tall, nondescript man. His hands were under the old man’s long coat. His right had found the old man’s right hip pocket; his left hand, the left pocket. As if lightning had hit me, I froze. My heart beat furiously, After a moment, I realized what the situation was. Suddenly, I felt superhuman. I felt as though I could have run a mile in three minutes; I felt as though I could have defended myself against anyone. I realized the old man was only five feet from me. If some man would help me... . But then I was nauseated as I saw the old man struggling futilely. He reached behind him to grasp the robber’s hand. He wheezed. His tortured, plump face was deathly pale. His cap fell off, his white hair was mussed. The robber still did not have the wallet. They struggled. I heard the bus driver shout, “Somebody help. . . . That man is being robbed!” Several women said, “Why doesn’t somebody do some thing?” Still they struggled.

The last person got on the bus, and the driver closed the doors. I watched from the window. Still they struggled. The robber spun around, throwing the old man down. He hit him hard, I don’t know where but I think near the head. The old man gave up the struggle. The robber turned the old man over, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the wallet. As the bus pulled away, I saw the robber running north, up Wentworth. I also saw the old man, lying face down in the gutter, in the spit, and dirt, and rain water, and cold darkness, alone.

In the second the writer simply presents details, with holding comment until the final sentence:

The camp counselors would occasionally take us to a riding stable, where the horses would try to rub us off against fence posts, or to a monster swimming pool, where the sun never shone and the wind always blew. One day I remember as a series of particularly grotesque experiences. It was very hot and we started a forced march down an interminable road, ankle deep in dust. Eventually we arrived at a large deserted quarry, where the rock had been extensively exposed but not deeply excavated. I wandered off from the group and found myself confronted by two dogs that had apparently died at each other’s throats. Their seams had burst and I suppose they would have looked horrible to some, but to me they somehow looked natural in that jumbled rock setting. When I returned to the group I said nothing. Every body was gathered around a green pond, and a boy named Charlie had just hit a small fish with a large rock. “What a shot!” The fish fluttered down into the reeds, smoking dark brown.

The road back to the shelter was all uphill. Looking back on the day, I see it as a basic lesson in surrealism.

A personal narrative should have some central meaning. It should make a point. Building that point into your statement of purpose—the general indication of what you’re trying to do — will help give direction to your planning and writing. Since your point of view and your descriptive de tails will affect your readers’ understanding of the significance of the event you write about, choose them so that they help make that significance emerge. You can, of course spell out the meaning the experience had for you, but If you do, be careful not to inflate modest personal significance into cosmic importance. While “My First Date” should have enough point to be worth writing, no reader will expect it to arrive at a profound truth. And few readers will put up with the moralizing tone that sometimes creeps into retrospective comment (“That experience taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten: Hard work is the straightest road to self-respect”).

To avoid crossing the line that separates interpreting from moralizing, you can work at selecting details that will lead readers to make the comment for you. In writing about accidentally killing a songbird, a student chose to avoid making any explicit statement about his emotional reaction. Instead he made his point through a series of contrasts. Before the incident, everywhere he looked he saw beauty; after it, everywhere he looked he saw ugliness. Not that he used the abstract nouns beauty and ugliness. He relied on contrasting images—the colors of falling leaves, the taste of an apple, the glance of a girl; later, rubbish in the gutter, dirty words scrawled on a bus, a drunk lurching by.

One way or another, directly or indirectly, any narrative should carry its own meaning. Whether that meaning is clear to you in the prewriting stage or becomes clear to you only as you write the paper, you should have it firmly in mind as you revise. Weed out incidents and details that blur the impression you want to get across. Keep only those that sharpen the impression. On paper as well as off, the bad storyteller is always bogging down in details that are unnecessary and irrelevant. By so doing, he regularly leaves his audience wondering what the point of his story was. The more superfluous, distracting details you can get rid of, the greater the impact of your narrative will be.

Be honest, though. If the meaning you want to get across requires omitting facts that are essential to a truthful ac count, then you’re writing fiction, and you should label it as such.

This passage is an account of an incident that the author didn’t experience himself but that he presents partly as it may have been experienced:

On the third lap of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza last week, just as the cars were approaching the wrenching curve known as La Parabolica, a rabbit darted out of the infield grass and ended

its life under the wheels of Jackie Stewart’s Matra. Sixty-five laps later, with the rabbit little more than a blur of fur on the line through that treacherous corner, Stewart swept under the flag to win both Monza and the world driving championship. The only casualty of the day, if you discount a few thousand pinched bottoms in victory lane, was the unfortunate rabbit. Nobody mourned him, but let’s try to imagine his last impressions: the sudden approach of the pack— 15 cars flat-out, black dots emerging from the Ascari curve and magnifying almost instantly into giant torpedoes of blue and red and marigold orange. The noise ripping upward from a moan through a snarl to a steady explosion. The drivers barely visible within their bone domes. Stewart’s close-set, sensitive, mud-colored eyes, with one drooping lid masked behind the smoky visor of his helmet, the eyes of a hunter flicking down and seeing the rabbit sprint and freeze on the track, widening, holding firm on the line ahead. The broad reach of the Dunlop tire blurring into treadlessness, rising above the doomed animal. Thump.

Arrivederci, rabbit.—Robert F. Jones, Sports Illustrated

With “let’s try to imagine his last impressions,” Jones signals a shift from straight narrative to dramatic reenactment—from the rabbit’s point of view. Through the rabbit’s eyes and ears the reader experiences the head-on approach of fifteen Grand Prix racing cars traveling at top speed. In the sentences about the drivers generally and Stewart in particular, the angle of vision would require a very tall rabbit, but the final blur of the Dunlop tires re stores a believable perspective.

Pace

In most of the narratives you write, you’ll want to com press — that is, to summarize — some parts of your account, while treating the significant episodes or stages in appropriate detail. By so doing, you inform readers of what is important from your point of view and what isn’t; you keep the story moving instead of letting it stall; and you perk up your readers’ interest with the changes in pace.

If you’re a good oral storyteller, you already have the knack of compressing here and stretching out there for dramatic purposes. If you’re not a natural storyteller, you still can work on the proportions of your narrative in the revision stage. Look carefully at any narrative that proceeds at an even pace from beginning to end. If it’s an ac count of a process or the record of an experiment, such balanced, comprehensive coverage may be exactly what you intend. Otherwise, you’ll want to slow down actual time in some parts and speed it up in others.

• For Writing

1. In 500—700 words, write about a personal experience that has in some way been significant for you. Your reader is some one you can count on to be interested in you and your experiences. Tell about a violent incident that you were involved in or that you witnessed. Or report an episode in which you had a sharp disagreement with a close friend, a parent, or someone in a position of authority. Or write a section of your auto biography, telling about a stage—unpleasant or delightful, disillusioning or inspiring—in your growing up.

Here is one student’s response to the assignment:

Winning—The Only Thing?

It was a very hot, summer day. My family and I were sitting in the stadium at the local high school. The Annual Track and Field Day always drew a large crowd; it was one of the biggest events of the year in our area. I remember how close together everybody was sitting and how noisy the people were. Because I was little I had to sit in my father’s lap, pressed against his sweaty, tee shirted chest. At the close of the day’s activities there was an announcement of an unplanned, special event—a race for all four-year-old girls in the stands. Everyone in my family looked at me. I was four years old and a girl and therefore eligible to run in the race. My brothers and sisters encouraged me, saying, “Come on, Missy, if you win we can all hang up our ribbons in the family room. Why don’t ya? All of us did.” Although I was frightened by the large crowd, I decided to run in the race so that I could be just like my older brothers and sisters, who had each won a ribbon that day.

As I stood at the starting line the butterflies in my stomach went wild and I thought that I was going to get sick. Dust kept flying in my face, clogging my throat and stinging my eyes, making them water. There was only one other girl in the race. She looked very delicate and lady-like in her short dress and white patent leather shoes, which were starting to turn brown from the dirt track. When the gun went off, I ran.

The crowd was cheering and screaming their support and the dirt and gravel flew beneath my feet, biting my ankles. When I was half-way up the track I looked to my side and realized that my competitor was not nearby. I stopped and turned around and saw that she was still standing at the starting line. Her clothes were filthy from the dust and she was sobbing. I ran all the way back, grabbed her hand, and started to pull her along behind me. As we ran together I was laughing and the girl turned to me and smiled.

When we reached the midpoint the girl’s mother, who was standing at the finish line, started calling to her daughter. “C’mon baby, you can do it,” she yelled in a harsh voice. “Pour it on, now’s your chance!” Suddenly, heeding her mother’s advice, the girl threw down my arm and took off. The crowd laughed up roariously as I stood in mute, shocked surprise. The little girl crossed the finish line before me and ran straight into the arms of her gloating mother. I was even more hurt when, after I finally crossed the finish line, the girl’s mother leaned down and growled, “My daughter could beat you any day of the week!”

The girl won a blue ribbon for first place; I won a red one for coming in “second.” During the announcement of the other girl’s first-place award the crowd remained quiet, but when my second- place ribbon was presented the yelling, cheering, and whistling began again. I was confused and embarrassed and scared be cause I couldn’t find my family. It was then that the winner turned to me, laughed, and repeated childhood’s ancient taunt, “Hah-hah, you can’t beat me.”

I began to cry.

2. What are the major differences between ‘Winning—The Only Thing?” and “How I Got There,” reprinted below? In responding to the question, consider such matters as quantity and kind of detail, point of view, pace, and means of conveying significance. When you’ve listed the major differences, try to account for them in terms of the writers, their subjects, and what you assume to be their purposes and their audiences.

How I Got There

In 1962, I, a black woman, ran for election to the Texas House of Representatives. I live in populous Harris County, which includes Houston. The county was not divided into districts. Baker v. Carr—one man, one vote—had not yet arrived in Texas. It was necessary for me to run countywide. All eligible voters in the million-plus county voted for each representative. The political experts gave me no chance of winning, but in my political naïveté I believed that I was more articulate than my opponent, and sensitive to people’s needs and aspirations. These qualities, I felt, would help me overcome the odds against my election to the Texas House.

I rarely saw my opponent in person, but was confronted by his face on many billboards and on the television screen. He was obviously well financed. I had borrowed my filing fee of $500. I felt that if politicians were believable, and pressed the flesh to the maximum extent possible, the people would overlook race, sex, and poverty—and elect me. They did not. In that race, I received 46,000 votes; my opponent more than 65,000. I tried to rationalize the outcome by saying that I had a victory of sorts, but that of course wasn’t really true. To win a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, it was necessary to be backed by money, power, and influence. The candidate’s qualifications seemed to matter very little. My name on the ballot brought out a heavy black vote in 1962; every other “liberal” candidate running for the House won. The black vote helped them win, but it didn’t help me. It was clear then that if I was to win the right to represent some of the people of Texas, I had to persuade the moneyed and politically influential interests either to support me or to remain neutral.

In 1964, I tried again for the same position in the Texas House. I went to the newspaper publishers and acknowledged their probable difficulty in supporting me editorially, but urged them not to support my opponent—just to take a chance on the people making the best choice. One of the major papers in Houston made no endorsement; the other endorsed my opponent, A half- victory of sorts. But I lost the election, I received 66,000 votes; my opponent received in excess of 66,000, I made some Inroads into my opponent’s stronghold. This time there was identifiable support in traditionally white, conservative precincts, I was “on the move,” according to my supporters, but I was dispirited.

I considered abandoning the dream of a political career in Texas and moving to some section of the country where a black woman candidate was less likely to be considered a novelty. I didn’t want to do this. I am a Texan; my roots are in Texas. To leave would be a cop-out. So I stayed, and 1966 arrived. Baker v. Carr, and reapportionment had inched its way across the Texas political borders. People were to be represented, not vast acreage. The Texas Senate was reapportioned. I lived in a newly created Texas senatorial district which contained more than 70 percent of the precincts which I had carried in my two previous unsuccessful races. I would run for the Senate. It was a different kind of race from the one I had run before, because my opponent was a liberal who had served hi the Texas House for several terms. He called me before the filing deadline and asked if I was planning to run for the Senate. I said I was. He said he was going to run no matter what I did. It was a friendly and candid conversation.

The new district was 38 percent black; the balance was comprised of Chicanos and whites. Many laborers affiliated with the AFL-CIO lived in the district. My opponent asked, “Can a white man win?” My supporters were angered by the seeming intrusion of racism, and answered the question with: “No, not this time.” I was elected to the Texas Senate by a margin of two to One.

On the day I was sworn in to the Senate, the gallery was filled with proud supporters. Although demonstrations are not per mitted, my supporters cheered when I walked onto the floor. They didn’t know about the rules. I looked up at them and covered my lips with my index finger. They became quiet instantly, but continued to communicate their support by simply smiling. Finally I had won the right to represent a portion of the people of Texas. What next?

The leadership of the Senate was white, conservative, and male. Indeed, of the thirty-one members, thirty were white and male, and twenty-four were “conservative.” The black who pre ceded me served in 1883. (There had been eighty-three anemic years!) The Texas Senate was touted as the state’s most exclusive club. To be effective I had to get inside the club, not just in side the chamber. I singled out the most influential and powerful members and was determined to gain their respect. “Texan” frequently evokes images of conservatism, oil, gas, racism, callousness. In my judgment, the myths should be debunked, or at the least, should include the prevalent strain of reasonableness, compassion, and decency. Willie Morris, in North Toward Home, wrote accurately of a pervasive Texas characteristic:

“There was a kind of liberality of spirit there, an expansiveness which, as I was one day to learn, is one of the most distinctive qualities of Texans, even though it can be directed toward things that don’t deserve being expansive about.” Individuality and populism are constant components of the stuff of a Texan. We have a sense of humor and don’t take ourselves too seriously. These admitted generalizations apply equally to politicians. Lyndon Johnson was the prototype of the Texas politician; tough, expansive, and pragmatic. Yet he was largely responsible for unprecedented civil rights legislation which brought our country closer to the constitutional ideal of equity.

Dorsey Hardeman of San Angelo, then chairman of the Senate State Affairs Committee, and Tom Creighton of Mineral Wells, then chairman of the Privileges and Elections Committee, exemplified what I have tried to describe as the typical Texan —and Texas politician. Senator Hardeman knew the rules of the Senate better than any other member. In order to gain his respect, I, too, had to know the rules. I learned the rules. One day I sought to pass a pollution control bill by obfuscating some parliamentary fine points—a tactic for which Hardeman was noted and which he practiced masterfully. I almost succeeded until Senator Hardeman started to listen to what I was saying. He raised questions. He asked, “What are you trying to do?” I said, “It’s simple, I’m using the tricker’s tricks.” Hardeman could not contain his appreciation for what I was doing, nor his mirth. His respect for me was affirmed at that time, and our friendship continues.

Senator Creighton sponsored a bill, the effect of which would be to restrict the Texas electorate severely and compound the difficulties of voter registration. He needed twenty-one votes to gain consideration of the bill. I opposed it, and needed ten other senators to join me. I made a list of ten senators who were in my political debt. I went to each one and said I was calling in my chit. I needed their votes in order to keep the Creighton proposal from Senate deliberation. Armed with ten commitments, I went to Senator Creighton and asked when he planned to bring the bill to the floor of the Senate. He smiled, but with resignation, and said, “I, too, can count; the bill is dead, Barbara.” These men, and others, were conservative, decent, and practical. I respect them.

At the conclusion of my first term, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution citing me as the outstanding freshman member. In spite of the unanimous voice vote adopting the resolution, Senator Hardeman asked that the names of all senators and the lieutenant governor be added for unquestioned unanimity.

In 1968, I ran for re-election to the Texas Senate. I was unopposed. My next political race was in 1972, when I won 81 percent of the vote and was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

I’m glad I stayed in Texas.—Barbara Jordan, Atlantic

The Process Paper

The basic structure of any narrative is the sequence of actions in time, and the simplest pattern is straight chronology, with one action following another as it did in the actual event. (The student paper is an example.) As in all the other kinds of writing you do, your first — responsibility in narration Is to make your material understandable to your audience. That means linking the successive actions with words and phrases (then, later, next, after that, meanwhile, and so on) that make the temporal relationships clear to readers. In expository narrative and process papers, where you’re not only telling what happens next but explaining why, there’s the further need to pro vide such indicators of cause and effect as because, thus, therefore, and as a result, to make these more complex relationships equally clear.

As we said earlier, process papers are one kind of expository narrative — the kind that explains how to do something or how something is done. In a process paper you tell your readers how to bake bread or make a hook shot or chair a meeting, or you tell them how a combination lock or an antibiotic or a state legislature works. Everyone knows how to do something or how something is done.

In how-to papers your job is to present the process so clearly and completely that your readers will be able to per form it. Such clarity and completeness call for a chronological ordering of all the steps in the process, sometimes with warnings against missteps. Being clear also means adjusting vocabulary and coverage to the audience. For a reader who doesn’t know what a jack or a lug wrench is, you’ll have to define more terms and explain steps in much greater detail than for a reader who knows what’s in the trunk of his car. Providing a complete account means leaving out nothing that’s essential to performance of the operation. Don’t choose as subject a process so complicated that you can’t cover it adequately in the space allotted — or one so simple that you’ll have to pad the paper.

If how-to instructions are to be included in a driver’s manual or a cook guide or some similar publication, reader interest is no problem. Only people who want to be instructed will seek them out. But with some how-to material and in much other informational writing, the interest of the audience has to be aroused and sustained. Clarity will continue to be the primary goal: make sure you neither baffle readers by using undefined technical terms nor confuse them by failing to explain how Step 3 leads to Step 4. But you’ll also need to persuade readers that your subject is worth reading about. Certainly the best way to do this is to choose a topic that interests you and to have a reason for writing about it.

This opening of an article on the mechanization of post offices tells what the job of operating a Ziptronjc Mail Translator machine entails:

You are seated in front of a green plastic keyboard. Sixty times a minute, a rotating metal arm reaches into a tray of letters and deposits one onto the chain conveyor 16 inches in front of your eyes, You have six-tenths of a second to read the zip code on the letter before you hear the click. Then, within the next four- tenths of a second, you must press the right three keys, like staccato notes on a piano. When a full second is over, a rubber finger snaps the letter out of your line of vision and onward toward its intended destination. Simultaneously, the metal arm deposits another letter 16 inches in front of your eyes, and you have six- tenths of a second before you hear another click.

Your job as operator of a Ziptronic Mail Translator machine goes on like that, 45 minutes out of every hour, eight hours a day, all year long. — Joseph Albright, New York Times Magazine

Note the use of the present tense. Unlike pure narrative, which tells what did happen (“Once upon a time”), the process paper tells what always happens and always will happen under a given set of circumstances (“Whenever the temperature drops below freezing”). It’s natural, then, to adopt the present tense in writing about a process.

Besides telling what goes on in a process, you will usually want to tell why. You may need to point out the significance of each stage and the procedure by which one stage merges into the next. Or you may decide to begin by giving an overview of the process, emphasizing its function or usefulness and so directing the reader’s attention to the whole scheme before dealing with its separate stages.

Below are two how-to papers written by students. One is serious, the other lighthearted. The first gives a good deal of space to describing the situation in which the technique is used and to explaining what its principle is and why it works. The how-to section is a single paragraph. The second paper consists largely of instructions, including plenty of warning about the risks of not following them.

The Heimlich Maneuver

Imagine that you’re eating in a restaurant and suddenly hear someone at a nearby table gasping loud and hard. He is conscious but cannot speak. His friends are slapping him on the back, but the man continues to gasp. You realize that he is choking on something he was eating. Unless the obstacle is removed, he will die within minutes from lack of oxygen. What can you do?

The answer is to use the Heimlich Maneuver, a technique devised by Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, director of surgery at Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati, Ohio. This technique has proven most effective in forcing large bites of food from the windpipe.

Choking occurs when food is sucked into the windpipe instead of being swallowed. Usually the gag reflex makes a person cough out the food before it becomes lodged, but sometimes—particularly when alcohol has dulled the gag reflex — the big bites of meat or other food “Sticks in the throat.” Because this can occur only during inhalation, there is normally a small amount of air in the victim’s lungs. The principle of the Heimlich Maneuver is that of a piston action—to compress the air out of the lungs with a force that will also propel the food up and Out of the mouth.

Stand behind the victim, and instruct him to lean forward, bending at the waist and letting his upper body, arms, and head hang down. Then wrap your arms around him just below his rib cage. (If the arms are wrapped around the rib cage, broken ribs may result.) Make a fist with one hand and grasp it with your other hand. Then exert a sudden, strong, upward pressure, repeating it if necessary. This pressure on the victim’s abdomen should force the diaphragm upward, compress the lungs, and cause the air expelled from the lungs to dislodge the chunk of food stuck in the windpipe.

CAUTION: T-bars May Be Hazardous to Your Health

One of the trickiest techniques for a beginning skier to learn is how to use the T-bar, a type of ski tow still found in many areas. Once you have learned the knack, the T-bar will take you from a loading station at the bottom of a slope to an unloading station at the top. A cable runs from the bottom station to the top one, then around a pulley and back down again. The T-bars, which are hooked onto the cable at set intervals, are upside-down T’s of metal, equipped with a spring to prevent them from jerking at take-off. Two people use each T-bar. One stands on either side of the vertical main bar, holding onto it with one hand while leaning his rear end against his half of the horizontal cross bar.

I would like to suggest that before you attempt to tackle the first problem, which is the loading procedure, you stand back and observe a few other skiers to pick up some pointers. The effort less manner in which experienced skiers glide into place and get whisked away will also give you confidence. Of course, if the other skiers happen to be novices like you, you may see them falling every which way all over the slope, and that won’t do a thing to build up your courage. But concentrate on the experts.

Once you decide that you are ready to give it a try, take your place in line with your partner and wait your turn. Well before that time arrives, the two of you should decide which person will be on which side of the T-bar. It’s best for the more experienced skier to take the far side, so that he can guide his partner into place. As a safety precaution, be sure to take the straps of your ski poles off your wrists and hold both poles in the hand that will be on the outside when you are on the T-bar. If you fall and try to throw the poles away while they are still hooked to your wrists, they will probably come right back and conk you—or your poor, defenseless partner.

As soon as the couple in front of you takes off, whichever one of you agreed to be on the far side should move into position. Then the other gets into the snow tracks beside him. If you are on the near side and don’t wait until your partner is in place, chances are that you will run over your friend’s skis, causing both of you to land in a heap at the feet of the lift attendant.

Once you’re in place, don’t relax! Look back so as to be prepared to grab the vertical shaft of the approaching T-bar with your free hand when the lift attendant places it between you and your partner. Make sure the T-bar is correctly positioned. If it hits you behind the knees, you can go over backwards and be dragged up the hill feet first.

You must bend your knees. Bent knees act as shock absorbers, lessening the initial jolt when the T-bar grabs you from behind. If you insist on standing stiff-legged, you will most likely end up with your nose in the snow while your T-bar sails on, laughing silently at its latest victim.

Another common mistake is to sit on the T-bar. This is an error you must avoid at all costs! The T-bar was not made to be sat on. It’s supposed to pull you and push you, not carry you up the hill. If you sit on it, it won’t support you. Instead, its spring will stretch until you and your partner find yourselves sitting on the cold, hard snow feeling very foolish.

But let’s imagine that you have avoided all these pitfalls. You are on your way up the slope. What fouls up many beginners at this point is the snow tracks. You must concentrate on keeping your skis in these deep ruts, for if one of them strays, you’re in trouble. Once a ski is out of the track, it will behave as if it has a mind of its own. The harder you try to get it back where it belongs, the farther out it will move. Eventually you may find your self doing a full straddle split in the middle of the slope. Once again, the T-bar won’t stop and wait for you. Leave it, and you’re stranded.

If you do get separated from your T-bar, remember to get out of the path of oncoming skiers as quickly as you can. Many a painful pile-up has been caused by the stunned novice sitting open-mouthed in the middle of the tracks.

The last hurdle is the unloading procedure. While some be ginners have at least as much trouble getting off as they do getting on, leaving the T-bar is really quite simple. All you need to do is twist the main bar. This will cause the cross bar to be come vertical so that it can slip between you and your partner and the whole contraption can continue on its way. Just be sure not to twist before you reach the fiat ground at the top of the slope, or you may find yourself speeding downhill backwards.

After successfully parting company with the T-bar, step care fully from the tracks, and you are ready to start down the slope. Although worn and tired from your nerve-wracking encounter with the mechanical monster, you will be fully restored by an exhilarating descent. Then all you have to do is to face once again that murderous modern convenience, the T-bar.

• For Writing

In 500 words write an account of a process. It can be in the form of instructions (how to play stickball, how to weave a rug or upholster a chair, how to prepare for moving from one house or apartment to another or from home to dormitory) or a description of an operation (how a sewing machine works, how a building is demolished, how an auction is conducted) or step- by-step advice about how to organize and carry out a fund- raising project like a car wash, a bake sale, or a raffle.

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