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Today we discuss "Salvation" by Langston Hughes, which is the third chapter of his memoir, The Big Sea. The chapter does an excellent job of demonstrating how to focus in a narrative. Let's look at the 14 paragraphs and see how focused it is.

1. Background. The first paragraph tells the background of the event. In earlier times, revivals could last for several weeks. A typical mistake people make in writing narratives is to try too wide a focus. They will talk about every day of the revival. Langston gives a brief intro in one paragraph that paints the general picture of the revival without going into day-to-day detail.
2. Background. This paragraph is also background. If the first sentence lets us know that something will go wrong with his salvation experience, paragraph 2 gives us a clue as to what will go wrong. Young Langston literalizes the metaphors we use to describe an indescribable religious event. "She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her." The key phrase that young Langston misses is in your soul. All he knows is that he will see and hear and feel Jesus, and he believes he will do so literally.
3. Service. Now we get to the event itself. Notice how quickly we arrive here. Hughes quickly summarizes the service; again, not going into too much detail, just enough to get us to the heart of the narrative, the invitation. This is the part of the service where people sing and the minister exhorts people to come to the front of the auditorium and receive Christ.
   
4. Invitation. Because Hughes has so compressed the majority of the revival, he is able to focus on this one invitation and go into great detail. Notice how we can make a list of the things he noticed the way we've done in earlier invention exercises.
• A great many old people came and
  
• knelt around us and
  
• prayed,
  
• old women
  
• with jet-black faces and
  
• braided hair,
  
• old men
  
• with work-gnarled hands.
  
• And the church sang a song about
  
• the lower lights are burning,
  
• some poor sinners to be saved.
  
• And the whole building rocked with
  
• prayer and
  
• song.
  
5. Invitation. He makes it clear he expects to see Jesus walking into the church, the way everybody else said they had.
   
6. Invitation. Now we get a bit of humor with the introduction of Westley. The two are the last left on the mourner's bench, and feeling immense pressure to go up front. "Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: 'God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved.' So he got up and was saved." Obviously Hughes is using "saved" ironically.
   
7. Invitation. Now the waiting is starting to wear on young Langston. Probably not much time had passed on the clock, but a child sitting as the focus of so much pressure, it felt like he'd been sitting there forever.
   
8. Invitation. The minister continues to exhort him. "Why don't you come? My dear child, why don't you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don't you come? Sister Reed, what is this child's name?" The evangelist knew Langston's Aunt Reed, but does not know his name.
   
9. Invitation.
   
10. Invitation. Now he addresses Langston directly: "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" The failure of the story is more the failure of the minister and the aunt than of Langston personally. The minister was speaking rhetorically — he did NOT expect an answer from Langston. A wiser approach would have been to close down the church service and talk to him in private. They could have cleared up his misunderstanding. But by pushing to close the sale, they lost him forever.
11. Invitation. Nor Langston makes a decision, but not the kind they indended. He decides to lie and say he's seen Jesus.
    
12. Invitation.
    
13. Invitation. After he comes forward, joy fills the room.
    
14. Invitation.
    
15. Dénouement, which means "the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved." But joy does not fill his heart. The end result of the incident is that young Langston has lost his faith in God and in trusted authority figures because he did not literally see Jesus.
    

In your own writing, be sure to focus narrowly on one thing. Don't write about every step of a journey; just focus on one part that you can then describe in depth.