It was the last day, the very last. And my heart was breaking. Tomorrow, I’d be off for a new life. Today, was for Carol. Down by the riverside we followed our favourite walk.
“I’ll never forget you,” she said.
The idea of being forgotten slashed my stomach with fine surgical strokes.
“Come with.”
Down on one knee in the park I went. A shard of glass cut my knee, but the pain seemed a relief.
Carol’s face assumed a mask of grief. “I can’t. I’m promised to another.
A tearful embrace as goodbye.
Such things hurt when you’re eight.
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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
Swirls of pipe smoke hung low in the air, occasionally stirred by gusts of boisterous laughter. The barmaid eased between the tables, lithely avoiding over-friendly hands. The fleet was in. Ale flowed easy and copious, and the hubbub rose, so folk had to lean in to hear each other’s quips and insults.
A chair scraped back. A flash of steel. An angry shout. “Oi! You be trying to scry my cards.”
The accused shook his head, vigorous and aggrieved, but drew his knife too.
The innkeep sighed and started towards them. Sailors were good drinkers, but terrible brawlers.
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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
Stories are among our oldest cultural creations. They tell us what’s important and what’s unimportant; what goes with what; who to praise and who to blame.
Stories are different from real-life events. Real life is lived forwards with unknowable endings, whereas the meaning of stories is inferred backwards: stories are about events in the light of their endings. A good ending, it is said, should have the effect of being inevitable and yet surprising.
Character
We may be intrigued by plot, but it is characters we fall in love with. In many ways, character is at the heart of storytelling. When you have a character with a want, you already have the beginnings of a plot. When you have another character with an opposing want, you have drama.
Authors create characters in many ways. By far the most common, and the least interesting is to resort to archetypes. There are many different notions of who the archetypal characters are, but what they all have in common is the reassurance that we already know everything about them. They will not surprise us.
Better, much better, is a full, rich, complex, and contradictory character. Such characters create the illusion of being real people. Though, as Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk argues, real people do not have as much character as is found in novels.
Plot and story
Some definitions are advisable here. A story and a plot are different things. Plot is the time sequence of events, their causes and effects. But the plot may be told in different ways. If the events of a plot are A, B, C and D, they may be told in this order.
But they may also be told out of time sequence. For example, the telling may begin with C and then flash back to A and B before revealing the dénouement at D.
Plot is the time sequence of events. Story is the way those events are recounted. A poor plot can be saved by clever storytelling.
Of course, the telling of a story is much more than this. Vocabulary, sentence structure, pacing, voice, and many other things go into the making of a story.
Narrative
A third definition, in addition to plot and story, may be important. I will call this narrative, to distinguish it from the first two. A narrative exists when it leaves the author’s head and enters the heads of readers or listeners. The reception of the tale is simple passive process. The listener or reader actively collaborates in imagining the setting, the characters, their actions and what these all mean. There are as many narrative variants of a single story as there are listeners. Some of these variants may be significantly different from the author’s intention.
An author may say that they can’t control how an audience responds to their work. And that is true. But an author can anticipate some likely responses and misunderstandings.
Layers, Symbols and Meaning
Layering refers to the hidden depths of a story. This depth can make all the difference between a work that chugs along satisfactorily and one that stays in the reader’s memory for long after the last page is turned. There are different kinds of layers. For simplicity, I’ll categorise them into three types:
Story layers. A layered story has more than one plotline. For example, Elif Shafak’s ambitious novel There are Rivers in the Sky attempts to braid three timelines: ancient Mesopotamia, Victorian London, and the present day. She does this by alternating chapters. Of course, in the end, a story of this type must bring all the subplots together at the end. To repeat, stories are events in the light of their endings.
Character layers. In modern Western writing, the plot is generally driven by the protagonist’s desire for something (their want). More interesting and deeply-crafted characters have layered depths though. Often, the protagonist’s want may be in conflict with their true need. Katiniss in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, for example, wants to win the Games at any cost, but what she truly needs is to learn to sacrifice herself to preserve her own autonomy. The reader’s experience of redemption comes from the protagonist recognising what their true need is and finding completion.
Symbolic layers. This is perhaps the most literary of the layering types. The things that happen on the surface have an additional symbolic meaning. The trick of authors who do this well is not to hit the reader over the head with the meaning, but rather to allow them to find the meaning themselves. Once found, this meaning illuminates the whole story. A classic example here is the theme of unachievability in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Many elements are knitted together to underscore this theme. There is, of course, Gatsby’s unrequited love for Daisy, the endless parade of motor cars, and the recurring symbol of the green light across the bay. Fitzgerald intends this symbolic layer to capture the destruction of the American Dream.
Putting together a story
Characters with multiple dimensions. Stories that achieve the most intriguing telling of their plot. Tales that carry layers of meaning, making the story resonate with deeper issues. These are the elements of good story-telling, stories that can make their way into the world as narratives which reverberate with the sympathy and questioning for readers.
This realm is not the only one. So says old Fergus. “Is this supposed to be news?” I ask derisively. “Have I not trekked over high mountains and through raging rivers to the land of the Karmon?” But Fergus explains, with a patient laugh, that he wasn’t referring to journeys across the earth, but rather meant journeys up and down. When I seem confused, he adds, “Into the heavens and down to the underworld.”
“Do the spirits in the sky also dream of travelling?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. “They crave the substance of meat and the mirth of beer.”
Of the realm of the dead, we spoke not.
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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
Was it my fault? Honestly? When I search my conscience, everything was by the book—the examination, the prescription, everything. Should I have seen the signs? No, nothing said she’d jump in front of that bus.
But they’re gunning for me. Somebody has to take the blame, and it’s not going to be them. Or is this paranoia? Maybe they only wanted to make sure I’m OK.
Fuck, a whisky would be good. Just one won’t matter. A mistake, though a minor one. But can I afford mistakes right now?
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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
There was no need to ever be yourself here. That’s why he liked the place. Brash, garish, and full of performative affection, Rebounders offered endless second chances to make a first impression.
The girl had smoky eyes and purple hair which matched the bar’s décor. “What’s a nice place like this doing in a girl like you?” he quipped. This made no sense—it didn’t have to, so long as it sounded engaging.
She replied something that sounded like “Pastermoolies.” Good enough, he decided. The main thing was to avoid having to sleep alone tonight.
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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
Snow fell—a lacerating chill of knives. After a season, the sun returned—a shrivelled peach rehydrating into the Spring sky. Down in the thawing loam, we awake again, and slither insistently towards the light. This time, it will be different.
We are legion and we are solitary. Both are true—a swarm of spores crafted by uncertainty over the unique position of our oneness. Flowing, rising, rising into the heavens on the slenderest of stalks, a fruiting body that contains the universe. We are the seed and we are the field. calling to our own selves in the deep.
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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 story may benefit from an explanation. This year is the centenary of quantum physics. Hence the reference to uncertainty and the title—Einstein famously derided quantum “entanglement” as spooky action at a distance. The one/many theme reflets slime moulds—creatures which spend much of their lives as isolated single cells but which, under the right circumstances, flow together to form a multicellular organism with a fruiting body on a narrow stalk.
Anything might lurk in this fog. I call and my voice rebounds, as if baffled by solid cliffs. Should I be scared or, perhaps, awed by the austere serenity? All colour has bled from the world. Maybe I’m adrift in some old newsreel as the boys march soundlessly off.
A voice, not my own, cries back as the ghost of a fishing smack manifests momentarily. The words are muffled and unintelligible. “Ho,” I shout.
Someone from the boat waves. Or I believe they waved—it may have just been a trick of eddying air.
“Godspeed,” I whisper. And it’s 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
It’s when the ringing stops you need to worry. Or the drums in the night. Or the fire beacons that flare from hilltop to hilltop against the chill and moonless sky. Have you betrayed a vital trust to keep the message travelling onwards? If you don’t answer, will the invaders storm unthwarted up the beach? If you don’t answer, will you wonder and regret for the rest of your miserable life?
You pick up the phone, but are unable to summon an answer.
A voice. Female. Angry. “Tell Benji he’s dead to me.”
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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 previous post looked at techniques borrowed from biology to reconstruct ancients stories. If biological analogies are suspect, can archaeology perhaps provide clues? The picture below is taken from an 11,000 year-old wall in a communal enclosure at the Neolithic settlement of Sayburç in Türkiye.
Does this represent an 11,000 year-old story? According to the discoverer, yes[1].The frieze occurs on a bench 60-80 cm high and 60 cm wide. The whole thing is 3.7 m long, Two humans, two leopards, and a bull are depicted side by side in a long scene, or a set of two scenes. Among the reasons for suggesting that this is a story is that all the figures, animal and human, are on one horizontal level. Other carvings from this culture, such as the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe, have a vertical relationship between human and animal, The orientation of the figures from two main sections is like the panels from a comic strip or like bible scenes from a church mural.
The one on the right is the most striking at first glance, with a man standing in the centre and a leopard facing him on either side. Unlike the others, this male figure is rendered in high relief and does not face either of the leopards, but looks straight ahead into space, indicating perhaps that he is not threatened. The figure is depicted in a seated position, holding his phallus with his right hand. He wears a triangular neck adornment similar to those seen on the Yeni Mahalle sculpture (also known as Urfa man) and on some T-pillars from Göbekli Tepe. The leopards on either side of him are depicted in a state of attack, with their forelegs slightly raised, their mouths open and their teeth visible.
The panel on the left is a man with his back to the leopard scene and a bull, head down, opposite him. The man is shown in a slightly crouched position and motion. His arms are raised and bent at the elbow. In his open left hand, six fingers can be counted, while in his right hand, he holds something that has been variously interpreted as a sling, an inverted snake, or a rattle.
The bull facing him is shown in an attacking position, like the leopards, with its front legs slightly raised. Though the body of the bull is depicted side-on, its head and dangerous horns are shown from above. The man may be recoiling from the bull or perhaps preparing to leap onto it. One of the main features of the Sayburç reliefs is that the movement is just as important as the figures which suggests that events are as prominent as figures, whether human or animal.
People at the time would undoubtedly have recognised the figures and what was happening, much as we would instantly recognise the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the single image below. Today, we can only speculate.
Phalluses are the only elements that identify the sex of the Sayburç figures, and the emphasis is on the predatory and aggressive features of the animal world, such as teeth and horns, which has also been observed at other sites in the area. The Sayburç reliefs, however, differ in that the figures can be interpreted as forming a narrative, with the two individual scenes appearing to be related to each other as scenes in a story or set of stories. The comparable stature of men and animals in the Sayburç relief may suggest a new dimension recognised in the narratives of pre-Ceramic Neolithic people.
Again, the claim that these scenes form a story can be questioned. What really Is the evidence? That the relationship between the figures are arranged horizontally, rather than vertically? Well, they are inscribed into a horizontal feature, a bench, so a vertical arrangement was not possible. That the figures are shown, dynamically, in motion? The same might be said of the birds from pillar 43 in nearby Göbekli Tepe, one possibly playing with a human head.
Features of the panels
The animals (leopards and a bull) are wild and savage
Both humans are male
The high relief human figure on the right between the leopards is different from the crouching human on the left.
The high relief may signal a different status to the other human
He is not perturbed by, or even interacting with, the leopards. Is he in control of them (a Master of Animals)? Note, however, that he in not resting his hands on the animals as in other depictions of Masters of Animals). In some myths, the Master of Animals controls the game animals, releasing a few to humans as food
He wears a V-shaped neck adornment, a motif also found at Göbekli Tepe, and on Urfa Man and a similar statue at Karahan Tepe. Martin Sweatman (2022)[2] interprets this symbol as representing a lunar month and the V necklace as indicating controller of time, but this interpretation is highly contested.
The Master of Animals figure is not the centre of the story. He is rendered as nothing other than his status. It is the other figure who is in motion and individualised with six fingers and s held object. The object may be a sling (is he therefore hunting?) or perhaps an inverted snake (similar to the Gilgamesh carving above) or a rattle.
If he is the centre of the story, it seems plausible to suggest that he has come into conflict with the Master of Animals or the proper behaviour the Master represents. Perhaps he has failed to engage in the correct rites before the hunt and now is alone, confronted by the bull.
If so, how this story ended might depend on the location in which it is graved. What was this enclosure for? The enclosure has still only been partly excavated. But other sites. such as Göbekli Tepe, have been more fully explored. There is much debate about the function of the large enclosures there: sanctuaries, cultic centres, communal houses?. If these enclosures were spiritual in purpose, the role of the story might have been to underscore what was fitting to do. If they were domestic or recreational, the story might have been more mischievous. In all probability, these societies did not make a distinction between the sacred and the profane.
So, perhaps an interpretation of the story, if there is a story, might be something as follows.
A man desires to hunt for meat, but, being impatient, sets out without consulting the Master of Animals. [This is a serious violation of the natural order. It is the role of the Master of Animals to ascertain where the herds are and to propitiate their spirits before any hunt]. The man is a giant, with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot and believes he can do just as he wishes.
The man treks all day, finding only a rabbit. Though he is after bigger game, he is hungry and brings the rabbit down with his sling. He skins the animal and skewers it over the fire to cook. Tired, he finds his eyes closing, and leaves his arse to guard his prize. While he is asleep, foxes come and steal the cooking coney. When the man awakes and finds the bounty gone, he is furious. “I left you to guard the rabbit while I slept,” he says, “and now look what’s happened. I’ll teach you.” He grasps a burning log from the fire and rams it into his bottom. The pain is intense. “What?” he cries, “Must I bear your punishment too?”
The man proceeds gingerly on his way. The Master of Animals sends a deer into his path. “I am yours,” says the deer to the man. Haughtily, he replies, “Though your antlers are magnificent, I am after more dangerous game than you.” So the Master of Animals has a ferocious boar stray into the man’s path. “I am yours, if you have the courage,” says the boar. The man strokes his great chin, “It is true your tusks are sharp and deadly,” the man says, “but I am after bigger game than you, something that can feed my whole clan.”
So, the Master of Animals decides to teach the man a lesson and sends a huge aurochs, taller than two men standing on each other’s shoulders, charging at him. “Ho, man,” says the bull, lowering his horns, “what do you think you are doing, walking the hills armed only with a sling?” The giant bull charges, forcing the man to jump out of its way at the last moment, narrowly avoiding being gored. At the next charge, the man cries out in alarm, “Oh save me, for I will surely die.”
The Master of Animals takes pity, summoning the spirits of the sky to lift hunter and beast up into the heavens, where they still confront each other today.
This story is built on three elements. The first is the analysis above of the carving, which provides the set-up of the tale. The second, to add scatological humour that might have been expected around the night fires, is the theft of the rabbit and the burning stick from the fire. This element has been borrowed from the North American Crow myth cycle. The third element, the intervention of the Master of Animals to save the man by transforming him and the bull into constellations, is, of course, the Cosmic Hunt, described above. This provides a satisfactory ending. It is all entirely speculative.
Neil MacDonald Author 