Military jargon. Got a military pilot returning from a mission. He has the post-mission debrief ahead. Here's the sentence: Is that correct? Or would it be worded another way - "where we received our debriefing"? "Where we were debriefed"?
Depending on time frame debrief would be an older term. The more current term would be AAR, after action report.
Ooo I do like that. It is a modern story. How might I use this phrase in a sentence like the one above? "We continued on to Grand Forks Air Force Base, where we ??? after-action report ??? before making a return flight to our home base at Sioux Falls." What correct wording goes there?
You would choose an active/whimsical phrase to contrast with the beginning and ending phrases. Those are built around "continued on" and "making," which are very dry. It would be wise to fill the middle section with a kinetic, emotional image that is flawed and humanized. It's not about hitting a grammatically perfect verb (don't even bother finding out what that might be, not here). It's about making the sentence prove itself. Or think of it this way . . . you're aiming to use "AAR" for its legalese. It gives you a measure of authenticity. It's like a genre shibboleth. The fact that you said it (the magic phrase, that is) proves you understand the setting, and that makes the reader trust your narrator. Remember in "Office Space" how they kept carrying on about the TPS reports? It's not the report that's funny, it's what's around it. Without the characters, no one would remember "TPS." So in miniature, that's what you're doing here. You step away from the bureaucratic terminology to build a world around the event. What goes in there depends on your narrator and your characters. We continued on to Grand Forks Air Force Base, where we signed off on AARs and shouted at the welterweight match on the dayroom TV before making a return flight to our home base at Sioux Falls. We continued on to Grand Forks Air Force Base, where we hancocked official AARs and shared a smoke with a thoroughly bored ground crew before making a return flight to our home base at Sioux Falls. We continued on to Grand Forks Air Force Base, where we scribbled through AARs while casually flexing for a couple cute gals in the secretarial pool—they wanted us to stay but we just couldn't—before making a return flight to our home base at Sioux Falls. I know those are long sentences, but long sentences serve a purpose. Each of those stretches out as a metatextual trick. They mimic the journey. (They could be even longer!) Of course that could all be tossed aside and you could aim for short lines. I would still humanize one of the sections, even so. My examples probably weren't the best. I did them really fast and I don't know your settings/characters the way you do.
