Comp 1, Paper 1

Narrative Paper Instructions:

– Compose a paper that clearly conveys an event or series of events.

– You may select any subject matter that interests you and any tone that you feel fits that subject matter.

– Pull from personal experience. Do not retell an existing story, and do not create a work of fiction. For example, you might write a humorous paper recounting the mishaps you experienced on your first day of high school, or a cynical paper tracking the process of securing a summer job, or a serious paper tracing your development as an athlete through a particularly difficult season.

– You need not write to reach any particular page count or word count. Instead, write toward your objective: a complete and clear narrative.

– Format the final draft in MLA style.

 

Sample Narrative Writing:

 

New Town, New School

The patio was empty. The hour was still too early. But I didn’t know that then. I learned later. The first night, I sat alone in the corner—wondering if I’d come to the wrong place.

It wasn’t anything like the bar I knew best, a Midwestern dive called the Regal Beagle, a cave of a place with a door in the front, a door in the back, and not a sliver of natural light anywhere in between.

With my back against the bench, watching the corner, I twirled my zippo lighter—a 1943 model—in my palm, flicking the hinged lid open with my thumb and snapping it shut with my forefinger: cling, clap, cling, clap, cling, clap—over and over as I waited for something, for someone.

As a general practice, I didn’t smoke. But the lighter was a point of pride, a favorite possession. It looked exactly like a prop pictured in the hands of one soldier after another in seemingly every WWII film ever made.

And it was handy. It was socially expedient. At some point as an undergraduate, I realized many girls would approach a boy at the bar—cigarette dangling daintily between two fingers—and ask for a light. The simple question was a low-stakes way to start a conversation. So I had a lighter.

That’s exactly what happened my first night at school, at least that’s how I remember it.

The girl sat down on the bench beside me.

“Do you have a light?” she asked.

Cling

She inhaled, further accentuating her sunken cheeks. The burning end of the cigarette brightened in front of her face.

Clap

I noticed the bow in her hair—like a mother might lovingly weave through the locks of a daughter departing for her first day of the second grade. The two ends of the ribbon dangled among her long brown curls, innocent streamers of adolescence. But something in her expression disagreed, and the subtle contradiction was unnerving.

She moved closer.

“Chemistry,” she said, answering my first question.

The word slid out smoothly, turning one scientific term into three provocative lyrics.

“Georgia,” she said, answering my next question.

Now a crowd was slowly starting to gather. Another girl stood on the sidewalk, glancing in at the patio. She wore black and her eyes were painted like a Hollywood Egyptian. Her cigarette was already lit.

But she came over anyway. She sat down across from me and leaned forward. We talked—and I learned she was perfectly authentic, a real desert-blooded Egyptian. She was born there.

“Political Science,” she said, answering the standard question.

I wondered if this was how the whole night would proceed. She smiled across the table at me. I looked down at my drink for a moment, pushing the red stirring-straws around in the black sea of rum and coke. The ice started to melt. I felt like I’d paid five dollars simply for the customary appearance of a drink-in-hand.

Political Science continued telling me about herself—and Chemistry moved even closer. They both knew something about their subject matter.

Across the street, another crowd had materialized at another bar. Students were now moving between the two. Traffic proceeded cautiously through the intersection, unsure when someone perched on the sidewalk might lurch out onto the street.

The next morning I walked up Michigan Avenue and onto campus. I ate at Einstein’s for the first time, sitting outside in the morning sun. After the night before, the morning glare was blinding—white light, beating down, fractured only by the patches of shade provided by the tiny live oak leaves and palms.

The thought of hot coffee felt appalling, so I ordered cold turkey on a bagel.

Classes hadn’t started yet. Campus was quite. No crowd was in the commons. I felt the air for signs of fall—the change of season—and found nothing. It just wasn’t there, not the feeling I knew: the fading heat of a waning summer, hints of the coming cold.

Chemistry was on campus, too—with her face hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses. Her bow was gone. In the light, she looked like someone my fanciful imagination might picture emerging from the dawning shadows of a seaside villa. Then the day washed out like a photo over exposed—and the memory fades.

*

A Boat with No Name

The little diesel engine grumbled—once, twice—and then died. I’d already let the plugs warm, and I’d given them plenty of time. The engine should start—but it didn’t. I turned the key again: the same grumble, followed by the same silence from the engine compartment. I shut off the electrical components I had powered on, and I waited for a moment, thinking over the situation: an old sailboat, recently purchased and delivered to a marina in Melbourne, a few hours of January daylight left, and 30 miles to my intended destination in Titusville.

If the engine didn’t start, I’d need a mechanic, a place to store the boat, a lift home, and a lot more money. I turned the key again. The engine gurgled and grumbled as the tired ignition urged the greased parts into motion again, and I felt the acute pang of foreshadowed defeat before the short voyage had even begun. A hiccup then interrupted the grumble—maybe the final punctuation of the engine’s protest, for better of worse—and the engine churned to life, the beautiful rhythm and tenor of a dutiful diesel.

I ducked back into the cabin and flipped on the power for the depth finder, and then I scrambled over the deck to untie the line connecting the bow to the dock. With the engine finally running, I felt disinclined to turn it off until I reached my destination—and I had no reason to linger in Melbourne for a single second longer.

“Turn toward the causeway as soon as you leave the marina,” called out one of the dockhands who helped set the mast on my boat. “And stay parallel to the road until you reach the center of the channel. You’ll smash up if you don’t.”

“Thanks,” I yelled back and waved goodbye.

With both lines cast off, I threw the engine in reverse and backed the boat out of the slip as I swung the helm hard to turn the boat around in the narrow space between the docks and the shore.

I went too fast, and my heart leapt—too close to another boat and too close to the shore. The boat didn’t react anyway near how I predicted. I’d grown up maneuvering boats since long before I could drive a car, but those boats were small outboards with shallow drafts. They reacted immediately and nimbly. This boat—longer deeper, and steered by a rudder—behaved differently. The boat’s reactions felt drunken in my inexperienced hands—a vessel taking directions that were followed sloppily and only then after a delay.

But I managed to about-face the boat without hitting anything and then exit the marina. I followed the dockhand’s instruction, and reached the center of the river without incident. I spun the helm, and the boat responded, lazily turning 90 degrees so that I was pointed north—ready to head up the Indian River.

The Indian River isn’t a river at all, by the way. It doesn’t flow. Instead it’s part of a lagoon system that includes the equally misnamed Banana River and the more appropriately but less appealingly named Mosquito Lagoon.

As the boat chugged north over this long lagoon, golden rays of winter sun washed over the water—unusually determined for January, even by Florida’s standards. I took off my shirt, put on my sunglasses, and basked in the afternoon warmth. For a moment I felt good, maybe even confident—like every part of my plan might pan out the way I intended—and as if on cue, a group of dolphins arched their backs out of the water, swimming beside me in a way that I felt sure should confirm my sunny expectations. I just needed to hold the helm and keep chugging.

I didn’t want to approach the marina in Titusville after dark. The main channel only offered a narrowly navigable path in some places, and the side channel into the marina would likely be even more confined. I didn’t want to make this approach after nightfall, especially the first time in a boat I’d never docked. Nor did I want to feel rushed to make my move toward the dock when I reached Titusville. With these thoughts in mind, I decided to spend the night on the river and start early the next morning to allow myself plenty of daylight.

I unfolded one of my navigation charts and scanned the various depths of the water outside the section of the channel through which I was currently passing. I couldn’t just indiscriminately drop anchor anywhere. I needed a good position—sufficiently deep but far out of other vessels’ paths. Four feet was my limit. I needed at least that depth for a boat with a keel designed to sail in the open ocean. When I found a suitable spot on the chart, I veered out of the channel and anxiously eyed the descending numbers on the screen of my depth finder: 12—11—10—6. I glanced at the chart again, hoping I could trust it. The numbers continued to fall: 6—4—too close—6—5. I stopped there. That spot would work.

I lifted the danforth style anchor and a long line from the locker at the tip of the bow, and I tied the line to one of cleats on deck. Then I lowered the anchor into the water. After a minute, I gently tugged the line—and the anchor gave way with ease. It hadn’t set properly, and it wouldn’t hold the boat if left like that. I pulled the anchor the rest of the way up and out so I could throw it into the water again. This time, however, I heaved the anchor out a little farther and then pulled its angled points across the bottom of the lagoon. I waited another minute and then gave the anchor another test tug. It held fast, and I felt satisfied.

I stepped down into the cabin, an insular little world of teak veneer, and crawled feet first into the bunk behind the navigation desk. I left the companionway hatch wide open, so I could see the stars and feel the night air. The boat hardly moved in the calm water—and in a moment, I almost fell asleep.

But then I heard a sound—the faint murmur of water moving through pipes. I climbed back out of the birth and listened more closely. I followed the sound toward the head, and I discovered it was filled with water. I checked the valve to make sure it wasn’t set to flush by pulling in seawater—a setting that, if left engaged, can sink boats by continuing to take in seawater around an expired seal long after a sailors stopped deliberately pumping it into the head. Even if could eliminate this worrisome contingency, I would still find myself faced with two other frustrating possibilities: the fresh water tank leaking into the head or the holding tank pushing it’s waste content back up.

I couldn’t settle the question, not there and then—especially with my limited knowledge—and I eventually resigned myself to this frustrating sense of inaction. Aside from making sure the valve was set to block the entrance of seawater, I couldn’t do much. I crawled back into my bunk, realizing I needed to rest. But as I lay there, fixated on the persistent sound of water entering the cabin, sleep no longer washed easily over me.

 

I woke before sunrise with the feeling of morning mist settled on my face. I sat up and looked at the floor, relieved to find it un-flooded by water from an unknown source. I stepped out of the cabin and found a blanket of bone gray fog covering the lagoon, just waiting to be baked away by the sun.

I walked across the deck and pulled on the anchor’s line. Like last night, it remained firmly set. I pulled harder. The anchor didn’t budge. Realization and frustration began to simultaneously assemble in my mind. I leaned my entire wait into the line, and finally I felt movement—and relief for a split second. Then I realized the movement was the boat moving toward the anchor as I pulled on the line.

I knew what I needed to do: attach the line to one of the winches beside the companionway and then use the mechanical advantage to break the anchor free. So I untied the anchors line and pulled the boat around so it could reach the winch. I turned the winch, and the boat inched toward the anchor. I turned it again. The boat inched further toward the anchor. The line was then stretched desperately tight off the cabin, across the deck, and over the side. The boat couldn’t move any nearer to the anchor without sinking below the surface to meet it on the bottom. I turned the winch again—and finally felt the sudden dissolution of tension I’d been hoping to feel from the beginning. In a moment more, I had the anchor in my hands and found it enclosed in something like cement—the natural comingling of shell bits, fine sand, and water.

The fog soon dissolved into a network of thin wisps, allowing plenty of visibility. I turned the ignition, and the engine reanimated itself on my first request. I turned the helm to guide the boat back into the channel—and I was on my way.

As I progressed, the weather turned unpleasant. The wind gained spirit, and the rain fell, tentative at first—but then with increasing resolve. As I approached the drawbridge south of Titusville, I knew I would need to wait for the operator to lift it. The mast stood far too tall to slip beneath the structure. As I waited, the wind quickly began to blow the boat out of the channel, gusting against its broad side and causing it to skate sideways across the water. I repositioned the boat in the channel and began to play the engine back and forth, forward and reverse, to hold my spot where the bridge would lift. In a moment, I heard the distinctive whirl and clang of a drawbridge coming to life, and I watched as the roadway lifted. When it stopped, it looked absurdly high from my perspective on the water. I moved the boat forward, slowly—but not too slowly. I didn’t want to miss my opportunity. As the boat closed in on the opening, it felt smaller than ever. I risked a skyward glance, watching the mast pass uncomfortably close to the opened edge of the road—and then I was through. In a few more miles I would be able to see my destination.

And then I could see it, the marina in Titusville. In another ten minutes, I was almost even with it. I slowed the boat to a near-idle crawl and ducked into the cabin to collect a pair of bumpers, anticipating the possibility of a less than graceful entrance. I attached one along the aft, and then I hurried over the cabin to attach another bumper farther forward. As I did this, the boat shifted unnaturally. I dropped the bumper and scrambled back to the cockpit, throwing the engine in reverse and hoping I could reverse what I suspected had just happened.

But I couldn’t. Whatever I’d unwittingly guided the keel into, I’d slid it far enough to allow the bottom to close around the blunt back of the boat’s tapered bottom. I turned the helm hard, all the way, and pushed the engine forward again—thinking, or hoping, I might break free. But, again, I couldn’t.

I looked at the navigation markers in disbelief. I had run the boat aground, mere feet outside the channel. I scanned the various depths marked on the chart, incredulous that such a seafloor shelf could exist at the central spot where I found myself immobilized. But I found it. I found it right on the map—a tiny plateau in the middle of the lagoon, just three feet under the surface.

I threw the anchor as far as I could, hoping it would set and allow me to pull the boat off the shelf. I tried this method over and over—and every time I failed to free the boat. I needed a new plan.

I looked down at the water—murky, cold, and home to some full sized alligators. I didn’t want to get in it, but I had few options if I wanted to unstick myself from this situation.

I lowered myself over the side, took the anchor in my hands, and swam it to the edge of the channel—much further than I could throw. Then I climbed back on board and tried to pull the boat free. The first attempt failed. So I swam the anchor out again, farther this time—but the boat still refused to move when I pulled on the line. On the third attempt, I altered my method by swimming out the anchor in a slightly different direction. The results, however, remained the same.

I sat down—cold, wet, and tired from swimming around with anchors. I tried to rethink the situation, and I decided I might need to adopt a more direct approach. I lowered myself back into the water—but this time I didn’t swim anywhere. Instead, I planted my feet firmly on the lagoon’s grainy floor and took hold of the boat. I began pushing it, back and forth at first, and then hard toward the deeper water. As I visualized the situation below the water line, however, I soon realized that this plan was probably even less likely to produce any favorable results.

I stepped into the cabin and looked at my phone. I hadn’t charged it for over 24 hours, but I had plenty of power to make a few calls. I dialed the marina manager, and he picked up after a few rings. I explained the situation. He thought it over and then told me that Joe, a stranger to me at the time, had just put his boat in the water and that he could pull me out with it. The manager said Joe would be out soon, and he told me to have a few long lines ready.

I set to work, untangling old lines and tying them end-to-end. And then I waited. The weather began to pick up again, and the choppy surface of the lagoon had turned into small but proper waves. With the ability to equilibrate compromised by its grounded keel, the boat took the waves roughly—a jarring and uneven sway that refused to find any regular rhythm. Ever third or fourth wave sent a shower of cold spray over the entire cockpit. I felt sick—but refused to allow it.

Within a half hour, I heard the steady scream of a motorboat headed toward me. I looked out over the water and saw a small offshore fishing boat—twin hulls, twin outboards, and a washout cockpit. In a few seconds more, I could see Joe at the helm with two other men. Joe was a tan little man with curly black hair. He tilted his head at the world as if he were trying to follow an absurd set of inexplicable contortions that only he could see—and I suspected that he was just a little drunk around the edges.

I threw him the line.

Joe tied his end to the back of his boat and then returned to the helm. He turned to watch, waiting for a sign. I waved, and he pushed his throttle. The sailboat lurched, and the motorboat strained. Joe turned the helm. The sailboat turned with him. He turned the other way. And the sailboat turned with him again. He straightened his boat and pushed the throttle harder. The outboards roared, and the sailboat tipped forward at a unnatural angle, temporary posing in a new and even more grotesquely prostrate posture than when I had run aground. Joe threw a wild glance over his tanned back and pushed the engines even harder. Sound and spray and the scent of exhaust swirled around us—and neither boat moved. Something, however, must surely give. I could feel it. And it did.

The line snapped. The material just pulled apart in an explosion of little fibrous pieces—not where I had tied it together but at what must have been the weakest point. Joe circled around, clearly irritated. He seemed to be taking the situation as a personal failure.

“I wanna try it side-by-side,” he yelled over to me.

I shook my head.

“I think it’s too rough,” I yelled back.

The elder of Joe’s two ad hoc crewmembers—an ultra lean, stern-faced, and shirtless man—looked at Joe like he had lost what was left of his mind.

“We’ll just smash against each other,” I yelled over the waves, now a little more insistent.

But Joe moved closer as the hull of the sailboat as it lifted and fell like a giant and unpredictable bludgeon. Then we collided—a sickening gnashing of fiberglass on fiberglass—and the collision punctuated my assessment: Joe and his boat couldn’t help me. He offered plenty of speed, but not enough power.

To his credit, Joe soon realized and acknowledged the same truth: we’d need a more powerful engine for this job. The finite window of light allowed by a January day had almost expired, and the storm front further accelerated the descending dusk. Joe asked if I wanted to come in with him and come back for the boat later.

“No,” I said, hoping to maintain a little dignity. “I’ll stay here.”

Joe looked indifferent, but the older of his two companions caught my eye and nodded his approval.

“Can we get anything?” asked Joe.

“I could use some water if you have it,” I said.

I had almost nothing to drink for 48 hours, and I was feeling the effects of mild dehydration. The younger of Joe’s companions threw me a bottle of water—and then Joe and his boat were gone, disappearing toward the marina. Night fell over the lagoon, complete and unmitigated by any pearly glow from the moon and stars.

I turned on my lights, to avoid collision if another boat chanced my way. In this anxious interim, I pushed the sailboat’s engine one way then another, forward and reverse, with reckless abandon in the naïve hope that I may inch my way into deeper water. This proved futile, so I sat behind the helm, and I waited.

Then I heard a rumble. I saw a spotlight sweep across the black water, and from the gloom emerged its source—a long low cruiser with twin diesel inboards. I couldn’t make out the man piloting it. Nor could I make out any of his companions. They backed toward me while one of them stood on the dive platform. He threw me a pair of lines and told me to tie both on to different cleats.

“Do you still have power?” a disembodied voice asked through the darkness.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Alright,” said the voice. “Untie the line once we pull out. Just follow us into the marina.”

“Okay” I answered. “I’m ready.”

The cruiser moved away slowly until the lines were pulled taunt.

“Alright,” I heard the same voice yell to whoever was piloting the cruiser. The growl of the diesels intensified—and nothing happened, at least for a tense second. And then the sailboat pitched forward, finding a new precarious angle, and dragging the bow pulpit downward, further and further until it dipped down below the waves.

The aft lifted, pulling the rudder out of the water, and I braced myself against the helm to keep from losing my footing and toppling straight forward. And then I felt the deck level under my bare feet. The boat felt impossibly smooth—and I was free.

Once in the channel, I rushed to untie the lines before the boat had a chance to drift out of the channel again. Then I follow the lights of the cruiser through the dark. I would, after all my efforts to avoid such an outcome, be approaching the marina at night. Worse yet, I realized that the autopilot hardware that turns the helm to maintain a course toward preset coordinates had been compromised during all the pushing and pulling and straining. It no longer turned freely in concert with the helm. Instead, the broken components caught each of the helm’s spokes and prohibited it from rotating—restricting the range with which I could reliably turn it to about thirty degrees.

The realization that I now had no method of effective steering didn’t fully formulate in mind until after I was tightly tucked between the rows docked boats. I could see my slip, forward fifty feet and perpendicular to the position of my boat. I needed to turn the wheel, one way or the other. Meanwhile, I continued gently playing the throttle between forward and revers to keep the boat moving as slowly as possible. With my other hand, I gripped one of the helm’s spokes and wrenched it downward with all my strength. I needed to break through the compromised autopilot. The mechanical components smashed to pieces, and the helm moved freely. The boat turned hard toward the slip—and then turned past it, over 90 degrees—as I still continued to move forward, now pointing crooked toward an occupied slip. I forced the helm back the other direction, smashing through more pieces of the broken autopilot as I tried to compensate for my initial overturning. The tip of the bow swiped under the other boat’s lifeline and blasted effortlessly through one of its stanchions as if the steal wore nothing more than rotten wood—and then I was in position. I pushed the throttle in reveres to further slow the boat as I pushed toward the dock—too fast, still far too fast—but almost there.