Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Six Sentence Story.

Every week Denise suggests a prompt word and invites one and all to write a story of six sentences, a story that uses, is based upon or otherwise involves the word. It’s fun, its relaxing and the variety of stories you’ll encounter each week, well, lets just say, ‘If you find yourself bored reading any of the Sixes on these pages then ya gotta write one for yourself.’

If you recall, last week we tried an experiment. I invited another blogger, (Lisa Listwa) to write a Six using the Doctrine’s Six as her starting point. The result, as expected, was a very clever and quite enjoyable story.

I continue to be intrigued by the idea, i.e. one person writes a story and another writes their own, using the first as a starting point. Sort of what the jazz guys do in improvisation. The basic melody is there but it spins off in novel and fun trajectories.

Interestingly, the writing of a ‘base Six’ is proving a new kind of challenge for me as a writer. So this week I’m imposing on another member of our group to help me out with one more multi-Six this week. Val, ever the supportive and encouraging writer has consented to write a variation on this week’s Six. (Thanks, Val!)

I’m discovering that writing a Six for the purpose of collaboration (or whatever one calls what we’re doing here) is different that writing a ‘standalone’ Six. I’ve decided to stay with ‘the Case of the Missing Starr’, my detective WIP for the context, but will be experimenting with other forms …as time goes by.

(clever segue, no?)

If ya see Bogie then you’re thinking, ‘Oh boy! A little Thursday noir.’ This week we rejoin our favorite detective, Ian Devereaux, as he discovers that too much attention, like too many women, doesn’t seem so bad at first.… (lol…no, zoe, I have no idea where that came from). Never fear, our intrepid detective can always escape to the smoke and neon world of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge for a relaxing lunch.

The word is:

echo                        ECHO

After 3 hours of writing case-notes, I decided to walk down the block to the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge for lunch; I asked my admin, Hazel, if she cared to join me, she looked down at her chest, moved her right shoulder in a circular motion, forwards and backwards, looked up and said, “Nah, I’m good.”

“Honest, Lou I don’t know nothin about nobody harassing the dancers in the parkin lot”, as I approached the club I saw Lou Ceasare hold the glowing end of his cigar an inch from the nose of a tall, amphetamine-thin guy in a sweat-shiny iridescent suit; using his Dutch Masters Corona like a down-city laser pointer, the club owner offset his five foot four height with a ferocity that’d make a Great White shark look at home in the koi pond of a Buddhist monastery.

“Who said anything about a parkin lot,” turning his head, Lou addressed his question to the elderly couple trying to get past the two men on their way to the public library across the street, “is there a fuckin echo out here?”

As two dressed-for-court attorneys approached the entrance, Lou nodded to both and held the door open, refrigerated air and music-in-the-key-of-testosterone poured out onto the sidewalk and headed for the gutter; as the door sighed closed he got very close to the man now standing with his back against the plate-glass window, “I gave you one job, watch out for the girls, make sure they don’t get hassled by any closing-time-Romeos, and yet one of my best girls, Misty, just told me she had to run over some guy’s foot last night.”

Lou is not tall and he is not thin, some have likened his physique to ‘a fire hydrant with a temper’, but tall as the other guy was, he had as much chance of getting the upper hand as a hand-me-down Cabbage Patch doll; I decided my karma’d be enhanced if I somehow prevented further mayhem on the poor schmuck trying to blend in with the background, which unfortunately consisted of ‘LIVE NUDES’ in five foot red-neon lettering.

“Hey Devereaux, heard the Feds were on your ass, I’m sure the FBI guys bugging my joint will be happy to pass along any messages you wanna leave ’em,” smiling broadly, Lou grabbed my upper arm with the compressive force of a medium-sized alligator and with a slight jerk of his head, let the tall guy sidle along the plate-glass until he found the room to break into a run.

background music for improvisation