Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Hosted by Denise, there is but one rule: make the sentence count come out exactly at six.
Prompt word:
TEXT
At the focal point of the lecture hall, stood a chalkboard; to it’s left, a podium and behind that, a man wearing wire-rim glasses, hair of anachronistic length and a tweed jacket that had patches on its signature patches; on the dark slate, to his right, in all-cap yellow letters: CONTEXT, TEXT and SUBTEXT (and scrawled beneath: can’t tell a story without ’em).
From somewhere in the half-dark of the top row of desks, a young woman’s voice climbed up to her raised hand and threw itself, all Danza de los Voladores, towards the podium, “Professor Pangloss, can you give us examples of these three essential elements of fiction?”
“This,” the professor, stepping around the podium to the edge of the stage, extended his arms straight out to his sides while twisting his torso to face one side of the classroom and then the other; returning to center, he grinned and said, “This is Context.”
Seeing the girl’s hand begin to flutter, he added, “Your request and my response: Text.”
The trajectory of the broken piece of chalk he then threw, a dusty comet tracing an arc from stage to a student who sat hunched over dueling thumbs engaged in millennial foreplay with the glowing screen of his phone, resulted in the device flying from his fingers to lie mute on the floor.
“Hey man, what the hell,” the outrage of the phone-deprived student brought all attention to the man on the stage who then, with arms in a bowing flourish, pronounced, “Voilà …Subtext!”
About clarkscottroger
..”a young woman’s voice climbed up to her raised hand and threw itself, all Danza de los Voladores, towards the podium..”
Love that line, lol. Excellent.
A most entertaining and clever Six, Clark.
Well, I guess I got my answer.
Ex ell ent, master Weaver.
T Y
very entertaining – Thank you
Nice description of Professor Pangloss: “wearing wire-rim glasses, hair of anachronistic length and a tweed jacket that had patches on its signature patches”
He also has great aim with pieces of chalk. I think I now know the difference between context, text and subtext myself.
borrowed the name from none other than Voltaire’s ‘Candide’*
* one a a vanishingly small number of useful info-bits from college
Bravo!
(But, did she get it?)
Maybe, maybe not. I’m still a bit lost too 😅
welcome to the lobby of the Wakefield Doctrine hotel! lol
One can only hope!
There’s nothing quite like a live visual demonstration.
yes ’em
Fabulous! This reminds me about a chalkboard and one of the many strange lecturers, suddenly it is so vivid.
that chalk!
I really enjoyed this one, Clark. The description of the professor at the beginning seemed quite traditional, and lead into an expectation about the way he’d answer the question, but then the contrasting way he demonstrated the differences was really fun.
Mu!*
reference to an old zen story/lesson that I’ll bet was in the back of my mind when trying to do the ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ part of this Six