再来看一篇用第三人称写的记叙文。

Short Trip

The fare to the Aqueduct Race Track is 75 cents on the special subway train from Times Square. This includes a send-off: the narrow escalator down to the platform ends beneath the words Good Luck printed on the grimy-gold arch of a huge wooden horseshoe. The subway car is as free of talk as the reading room of a library, and, in fact, all the travelers are reading: The Morning Telegraph, The Daily News, the latest bulletin from Clocker Lawton. They are very ordinary-looking men and a few women, a bit older than most people these days.

It hardly seems 30 minutes before the train bursts out of the black hole and onto an elevated track that winds above the two-family houses and cemetery fields of Queens. It is nearing mid-day, in the butt-end of another year, and the travelers blink briefly in the flat a hard sunlight. They are standing long before the train skids to a stop. They run down the ramp toward the $2 grandstand entrances, then on to daily-double windows five minutes away from closing.
Before the race of the day, at any track, anywhere, there is a sense of happening, of a corner that might be turned, a door that might open. There is almost a merry ring to the pari-mutuel machines punching out fresh tickets to everywhere, and the players move out smartly, clapping down the wooden seats of chairs, briskly stepping onto the pebbled concrete areas that bear the remarkable signs, “No Chairs Permitted on Lawn.” Seconds afternoon, the first race starts. It lasts little more than a minute, just long enough to hold your breath, to scream, or fall to your knees against a metal fence and pray, “Angel, Angel, Angel.”

But on this day, Angel Cordero, the hot young jockey, finishes fourth in the first race, and the praying man collapses on the fence like a steer caught on barbed wire. Another man smiles coldly as he tears up tickets, and says: “Dropping down so fast like that, you mean to tell me he couldn't stay in the money? Sure. Haw.”

It is suddenly quiet again, and the day is no longer fresh and new, the day is tired and old and familiar. An old, hooded man from Allied Maintenance moves over the asphalt picking up torn tickets with a nail-tipped stick, tapping like a blind man among the empty wastebaskets. Men watch him to see if he is turning over the tickets looking for a winner thrown away by mistake. He is not.

The race track settles into a predictable rhythm. In the half hour or so between races, men study their charts, straddling green benches or bent over stew and stale coffee in the drab cafeteria or hunkered down beneath the hot-air ceiling vent in a cavernous men's room, the warmest spot at Aqueduct. As the minutes move toward post time, they gather beneath the approximate odds board. They interpret the flickering numbers—smart money moving, perhaps the making of a coup. At the last moment they bet, then rush out on the stone lawn for the race. A minute later they are straggling back, chanting the old litany, “I woulda…coulda…shoulda…”

There are ebbs and flows throughout the day. People leave, others come, the machines jangle on. There is a great deal of shuffling in the grandstand area, and little loud talk. People move away from strangers. When men speak of horse, they use numbers, not names, and when they talk of jockeys, they frequently curse. It was, they whisper, an “election”; the jockeys decided last night who would win.
The day ends pale and chilly a few minutes before 4 P.M. and the fans troop out to the subway station. There is no special train returning: the city will get you out fast enough but you can find your own way home.

Horseplayers are smart, and they all wait in the enclosed area near the change booths, ready to bolt through the turnstiles onto the outdoor platform when the train comes, and not a moment sooner. They stamp their feet, muttering, “Woulda…coulda…shoulda.” The losers rail against crooked jocks, gutless horses, callous owners, the ugly track, the greedy state that takes 10 cents of each dollar bet.

Then they bolt through the turnstiles, quick and practiced, tokens in and spin out upon the platform. But there is no train yet, they all followed a fool, and now they curse him for five minutes in the cold until an old shuddering train lumbers in to carry them away.

Robert Lipsyte使《纽约时报》的体育记者和专栏作家。记者的天职就是告诉我们“事情是怎样的”。这就要求他们不仅仅是记流水账，而是要解释记下来的故事的意义。更准确地说，记者们必须赋予所写的内容以意义，因为“事实”本身其实是并不会说话的，只有当它们被有目的地组织起来的时候才会具有意义。

这篇文章没有一个特定的主人公，相反，作者的写作对象是一群人——the horseplayer。 作者旨在通过对他们一天生活的记叙，来反映自己的态度。本文的结构十分的精巧。虽然没有一般意义上的情节，但是故事内容还是有机地组织起来了。

有人或许会觉得这象是一出三幕剧，第一二段是第一幕，第三到七段是第二幕，第八段到结尾是第三幕。这种看法不无道理。每一幕以地点的转移为主要划分依据，当然，时间和场景也随之发生着变化。第一三幕是赛马场外内容，分别先人们如何去赛马场，又如何离开。第二幕则是赛马场内容。

同时，这篇记叙文又严格地按时间顺序展开，文中就有不少词体现时间的变化，大家可以自己去找一找。而第6段完全是按时间顺序行文的一个良好典范，并且，该段第一句话就点明了中心思想。

值得学习的一点是，作者首尾呼应结束全文。乘坐地铁来，又乘坐地铁回去，来来去去中，生活有没有什么改变呢？人们又从中得到了什么呢？第八段中有一句话说的耐人寻味：“the city will get you out fast enough but you can find your own way home.”

假设你也是一名记者，你手上正巧又一篇下列标题之一的文章要做。首先想好你要通过你的经历传达什么主题，然后再选取相应的细节，组织好文章情节。在此，再提醒大家一下，让故事自己说话。
A Wrestling Arena in a Small City
Evening Visiting Hours at he Hospital
Backstage at a Play of Opera