| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: should insure, too, the readers's support to the point, at
least, where the prediction is fulfilled. Sometimes a
careless author loses sight altogether of his promise, and
then the tricked reader is likely to go on to the very final
page, teased by the expectation that that which was hinted
at will be revealed.
Fanny Brandeis had a way of going to the public library on
Saturday afternoons (with a bag of very sticky peanut candy
in her pocket, the little sensualist!) and there, huddled in
a chair, dreamily and almost automatically munching peanut
brittle, her cheeks growing redder and redder in the close
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: father's poor horse Prince. The morning mail-cart, with
its two noiseless wheels, speeding along these lanes
like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her
slow and unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the
cart had entered the breast of the unhappy Prince like
a sword, and from the wound his life's blood was
spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into the
road.
In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand
upon the hole, with the only result that she became
splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: on a long spruce log, taking two-pound fish with the fly, and
stepping out at every cast a little nearer to the end of the log,
until it slowly tipped with him, and he settled down into the
river.
Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning
many things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the
weather as it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or
bad; learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a
banquet for two--provided the other is the right person; learning
that there is some skill in everything, even in digging bait, and
that what is called luck consists chiefly in having your tackle in
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