Experiments in style: anaphora

The opposite, in a way, of epistrophe!

Greetings!

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Experimenting with styles

For today’s experiment I wrote it using the literary device of anaphora. I’m sure you’ll be able to deduce what that is without looking the word up in a dictionary!

First, though, here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:

The original (template) text

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

Anaphora

Because I needed to use the bathroom, I got out of bed.

Because it was nighttime, it was dark.

Because I was tired, I was half-asleep.

Because I was half-asleep, I didn’t think of turning on the light.

Because it was dark and I was half-asleep, I walked into the wall instead of the door.

Because I walked into the wall, I banged my head.

Because I banged my head, I felt nauseous and had a headache.

Because I had nausea and a headache for a few days, I went to the local hospital to get checked out.

Because the people there were not wearing their masks properly (if at all) or social distancing, I was scared of getting Covid.

Because I had a head injury, I was seen fairly quickly.

Because a nurse conducted various tests, she concluded that I had mild concussion.

Because I had mild concussion, she told me to take it easy for a week or two.

Because I had nausea, headaches and had to spend time in the hospital, I didn’t get any writing done.

Because I couldn’t write, I had to read instead.

Because all I could do was read, I got through nearly a fifth of my book.

Because I was reading on a device, I could tell that I’d actually read 17% of my book.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s version. See also, Epistrophe.

For more experiments, please see the index. Paid subscribers also get behind the scenes information about some of these experiments as well as access to the whole of the back catalogue so to speak.