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!”
