Insert a thick description of a climactic moment in an effort to create mood or "dominant impression."

Avoid all abstractions.  Avoid weak verbs.

In-class:  Partner up with a fellow student and do a practice run at thick description using a graphics archive which the teacher will point you to.  This should be done before writing a thick description into your funny/dangerous narrative.

Here is the description of the most significant moment in my narrative. 

As soon as my head broke the surface, I inhaled in a gasping panic, and suddenly I could see everything in sharp colors and sounds -- [[A list>>>red and black cliffs, stark, blue sky, and the flush of spring green on the bluffs rolled past me.  Dark gray thunderheads etched with white undertones [[attention to strong verbs>>>loomed down the canyon to the west.  Above me buzzards, barely pinpoints against the blue, [[strong verbs>>>lolled on the updrafts, and swallows living in the cliff face swept over me in low arcs across the rapids, all ignoring my [[Instead of "I thrashed, I use the verb form "thrashing" as an adjective>>>thrashing rolls.  On the opposite bank from which I had been swept, jays and mocking birds [[a little bit of a made up verb>>chittered and darted through the brush, the cane bent low in a hissing moan, and the rapids themselves gurgled past the bank, over and around the rocks in brown bubbling foam, deflected right toward me and the cliff face toward which I had been helplessly swept. The rock against which clung for the moment felt gritty under my fingers.  I lay over its brownish red hump my fingers clinging, even using my face as a lever and wedge to hold me on for the moment.  I smelled its flinty cracks like wasted matches.  Water boiled around its rounded mass barely breaking the surface, and the river's fingers pulled at my clothes and my heavily sodden shoes and dragged me from the boulder.  I saw everything; nothing saw me.

Note that I am using lists, thinking about verbs, and picking and choosing my details in an effort to create an overall mood or "dominant impression."

To see it inserted into my narrative click here.  I'm going a little overboard here, so I revised the paragraph down a little in the next version.