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The goal of the writer is to live with the keenness of the foreigner. To experience, wide-eyed, the sensations aroused and the events offered up by peculiar surrounds and then to evoke them so brightly on the page that the reader, too, experiences the foreigner's frisson. A time-honored way this is accomplished is through the keeping of a field notebook -- through the faithful recording of the this-and-that of life; the atmospheres and incidents; the bells, the beer, the bread.Based on what accomplished nonfiction writer Sara Mansfield Taber learned in her many years of field notebook keeping, Chance Particulars is a unique and handy primer for writers who want to use their experiences to tell a lively, satisfying story. Often, writers try to turn their notes into a memoir, essay, travel piece, or story, only to find that they haven't recorded enough of the concrete, sensory details necessary to create evocative description.