I do not remember you. Yes, I can bring an image to mind, your hair a crazy tangle in the wind, and lips sensuously curled in a smile. I remember that likeness, but I don’t remember you. There are memories of remembering you. Is it possible, I wonder, to track back from that and excavate the original? When people say “she was wonderful”, I can recall telling the story of how we first met, but the freshness of the event has vanished in the recitation. All but one picture which survives—your bottom in tight denim. .
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
It took years of furtive genetic experimentation. At last, she was ready to plant out the thicket.
For a decade more, she watched it rise behind the construction palisade, until it achieved height and density and bloom. The interlaced branches and the canopy perfectly replicated the appearance of a four-storey tenement block, albeit a garishly painted one. Buds opened in the shape of windows and barked boughs simulated brickwork.
On the east side of the city, she hid her forest in plain sight and set off into its heart to find her woodsman’s cottage.
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Couldn’t resist a second bite. Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Fire one million tonnes of moon dust at the Earth to block some sunlight and cool the planet until we learn how to remove the carbon and solve global warming. Simple. Who knew it would break up weather patterns, flooding Europe and destroying the Indian monsoon? Millions died. Who knew the dust would destroy satellites in Earth orbit, taking out the Internet and GPS services?
I hunker down in my cabin, an involuntary survivalist, assault rifle ready to protect my fields. The dust will clear, they say, in five years.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Do stories have to appeal to either the intellect or the emotions? Can they do both? Can they do neither and still work as stories?
I am instinctively suspicious of setting up a duality of intellect and emotion. What we know shapes what we feel and what we feel shapes what we know, Consider this passage from Night by Elie Wiesel:
“But we had reached a station. Those who were next to the windows told us its name:
‘Auschwitz.’
No one had ever heard that name.”
This is a gut-punch. But only if you know what Auschwitz was Without that knowledge, the lines are bland.
All good stories have to appeal to our emotions, I think. That is to say, they have to engage us, make us care and want to read on. The most fundamental story technique for doing that is to make us empathise with the characters. But empathy is not the only technique or the only emotion stories deploy.
Consider the well-known “hook”. This usually comes right at the beginning of the story: the device that makes us sit up and take the bait. The normal emotion here is intrigue, or curiosity. For example, this opening to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle:
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
Who can resist reading on to discover why she is in the sink?
Curiosity is an emotion with a heavy dose of intellect. It is the emotion that drives scientific enquiry. Even in empathetic reading, there is a strong dose of curiosity. The reader asks themselves “If I were in this situation, how would I react?”, because reading fiction is, among other things, a rehearsal for social life. We may enter story worlds to engage with situations we have never experienced (at least not in quite the same form) and to learn how we might behave and how we might exercise greater courage or to discover a more authentic way of being ourselves.
I would argue that stories that deploy emotion without intellect are almost always composed of “easy” emotional ploys: tropes we instantly recognise without occasioning any need for examination or self-examination. The king is good, the stepmother is bad, the innocent princess is imperilled. Such stories are almost always sentimental, giving us a simple and affirming “hit” of emotion without troubling us in any way. The emotions have bulk, but they fail to nourish us, Similarly, stories can appeal to intellect without engaging emotion: they deploy puzzles where we are interested in discovering the solution, even if the characters are flat. Detective fiction often falls into this category.
Finally, can a story appeal neither to emotion nor to intellect? I would argue not, but I stand open to persuasion.
We could be anywhere—ocean stretching from horizon to horizon. The sun beats down in a featureless sky, shards of light dancing on little waves. Our small outrigger is lost, and I’m scared.
The old navigator points away to the left. “Guam.” And to the right, “Lizard’s Pool.”
“What’s Lizard’s Pool?” I ask.
He grins, hiding a private joke. “No such place.”
“Then how can you navigate by it?”
“Can’t see Guam either, right? The gods didn’t trouble to put an island there, so we must invent it.”
And we sail on, steering the trackless Pacific by imaginary islands.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
This is genuine—he feels it in his bones. The palace of a lost king in a lost city in the middle of the jungle.
“See those red brackets on the pillars,” I say. “Some set designer had an extravagent idea looking at coat hooks.”
He plays his trump card. “You think the Tourist Board secretly built an ancient settlement just so we could stumble on it? Like the Victorians who believed God hid dinosaur bones in the cliffs to fool us?”
At that moment, a warrior gives a blood-curdling cry and rushes us, sword raised.
Nice acting. I hope.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
A few screamed. Most were spellbound. Two in the corner had the rapture. Me, I thought, this doesn’t happen, not when you’re just on an ordinary evening out. A floorshow, sure—that was possible. But not a night sky ablaze with descending lights. I put down my burrito and stared.
In that moment, a hundred futures passed through my mind. A heavenly host come to bear us, the elect, to paradise? Descending flares of a bombardment? First contact?
Yes, first contact. Oh, brave new world! Though the voices spoke no known language, I understood. “Two hundred and ten enchiladas, please.”
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Beyond that door lies the future. Once through it, nothing will ever be the same again. The thought clutches at me with cold hands. They expect me to lead, but I don’t know how to be a hero. What if I pick wrong?
All that comes is images from movies. Once more unto the breach. Go, go, go. This seems to work. They follow: I play my part by playing the part. I’m even dashing. And it turns out, as we take the town for the Motherland, killing is pleasurable.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
One look at his violin and I knew things had turned offbeat. It was saddle-stitched leather, the neck inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I didn’t like offbeat.
“That’s a very unusual instrument, friend,” I said.
He didn’t deny it, but capered, grinned and replied, “Well, I’m a very unusual person.”
Events could have gone in myriad direction from there. Perhaps he might grant me three wishes, or maybe his playing would summon ancient heroes. Magic was available in that moment.
Instead, I asked “How much does such a violin cost?”
The moment passed.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Every one of us unique, individual; and yet so recognisably alike in our individuality. Marlon Brando astride his hog. Question: What you rebelling against? Reply: What you got? They asked, “Still using that greasy stuff?” And we stopped; almost overnight.
Do I actually have an essence or am I just a mass of conditioned buying habits? These questions lead only to madness. If I continue to play my part, maybe nobody will notice. And, maybe, that will be enough.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Neil MacDonald Author 