Preamble: Third person, staying close but focused on surrounding world, present tense
The street sits naked in the afternoon sun.†† A breeze catches a grocery-bag on a branch and sounds the alarm, which goes unheeded.† A garbage truck rumbles through – retching stops and starts – turns left at the corner light and moves down the [...]

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Preamble: emotional season, third person omniscient narrator, create a setting that reveals a mood, characters incidental, characterization as side-act.
The slow complacency of fog rolling inland from the coast. It permeated things, crept around corners, into crevices, under your skin and behind your eyeballs. Like mustard gas. It snuck up on the young [...]

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Preamble: first person, older/younger, non-judgmental, narrator; easy transition in time; “first time” topic
The first time I smoked pot, Ron took us out back of his mother’s house just off the interstate, where you could hear the stream of cars like a hoarse whisper in the shadows. It was California, 1973 — the year half [...]

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