A GOOD Story...

O'Brien writes,

His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of ant eat, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cow lick at the rear of his skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He lay face-up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young man.... (118).

In the beginning of The Man I Killed, O'Brien shows us how to make a good story. Right from the beginning of the chapter O'Brien describes the man he killed for almost 2 pages. He has on point details about how the man looked to what he might have been , or what his childhood may have been like. He gave the reader a visual of what the scenery looked like, and what the body of the man looked like. Literally from head to toe. Instead of just saying things like he his eye was missing, O'Brien said "his other eye was a star-shaped hole", this gives me a great visual on what the man's eyes looked like. Tim O'Brien really made sure that he got everything down so that the reader feels like they were there looking at the body along with him.