Fact and Fiction

This assignment required writing a paragraph that contained one fact and three fictions, then to write a paragraph that contained one fiction and three facts.

One fact, three fictions:

A medical examiner is an objective presenter of evidence. While not a law enforcement officer, Paul Hindemith was as much of an investigator as any detective, but his deductions were intellectual, his witnesses dead. His work area often stank, and he had not seen the burled maple writing surface of his desk in years. But his grandfather’s words of wisdom (memorialized in the sampler lovingly stitched by his grandmother) had proven true time and again: “When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not unicorns.”

Three facts, one fiction:

Waterloo was a ferocious battle: the defeat of an empire, inflicted on a Sunday afternoon on a field of battle a mere two miles long and two-thirds of a mile across. After the fighting, Napoleon blamed his marshals for the disaster, while officers of rival regiments on both sides bickered over which was the most heroic. Much has been written about the commanders and their strategies and tactics, but little about the men and their reasons for being there.