the Wakefield Doctrine

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

Serious about improving my chops in the world of stories and imagination and, did we say ‘a Story involving a prompt word that is Two Hundred and Fifty words (or less) in length?’ (But then again, had I been realistic about my math ability, I might’ve saved a half of semester in college.)

Wellll… in that case, we best stop in at jenne and ceayr’s weakly ‘hop, the Unicorn Challenge.

“It’s nearly midnight, Seth.”

The woman stood in the gazebo and looked down from the small, memorial park above on the village circle. Despite growing up in the peculiarly tribal culture found on islands, when the choice was presented to her as an adult to spend the War Years there with her children, she did not hesitate.

Walking down the path, the woman chose an arc that would be the shortest relative to the boy on his circular journey. The boy’s course was marked by the near-actinic glare of his cellphone light as he followed the outer arc of the sidewalk; past shops and stores, crossing the alleys and lanes that divided the circular town.

The boy, in the way as familiar as her hand, began to speak without the slightest preamble, “This GPT-4 app, if allowed access to sufficient similar material will create a virtual extension of any story.”

The boy began walking again, following the light of his video app.  In his left hand, the handle of a vintage Radio Flyer, in the wagon a very old dog.

“Seth, the vet said Nema was healthy but old. Nothing can be done.”

The boy resumed his counter-clockwise journey, “But thats what the app is for! If I could let it see everything Nema has seen, then, even if only virtual…?”

The mother nodded, fell into step with the boy and the dog as they sought to gather the past to create a future.

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

This is the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop

To be more precise, this is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop

Being a bloghop, this current edition of this weekly ‘hop, puts us about halfway through the annual cycle.

(Pro-Tip: If I were a counting-Narrator, I’d be smilin’ all, “Damn. This intro’s like four Grats already. How hard can this be?”)

(Hey, Readers! Do a hypo-youthful blogger a solid? Somewheres in the list below is an item (suitably expressed in the lingua gratiarum of a weekly grat exercise) will be a description of a scene: ‘A young man, a slightly older girl and a dog walk down to the merry-go-round in their seaside community around midnight and…’ anything about these three you might want to say? I would be very… well, you know.)

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop

5( so, we participate in a bloghop, the Unicorn Challenge (created by SSC&B alum jenne and one-half-Tasmanian-devil-one-third-human-whoopee-cushion, ceayr) and, even though this is one of those Doctrine, following the Doctrine conferred advice: ‘You can only improve by interacting with your betters (story-telling-wise, of course!). But, as a clark we’re are nothing if not possessed of a subversive streak a college-protest-wide, so why not ask Readers for help?

Readers? We’d be, like two Grat Items grateful if’n you’d write whatever came to mind when you read the story-question posed in the intro to this post (you know, the one about ‘a young man, a slightly older girl and a dog walk into a scene…’)

6) Update: Weird-assed door flower:

7) (this space deliberately left blank) so we can cover ourselfs if any Reader takes us up on the request for plot ideas for the ‘corn Challenge:

8) Hey! You’ve all heard of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro, right? (early post: here) Well, Tom (the short-order cook and all-around chaos-sower) was pretty active this week. Check it out. (Want an invite? I’d say Nick or Chris or Mimi would be your best shot at gettin’ one.) (But you didn’t hear it from us, capisché?)

9) something, something

10) Secret Rule 1.3

music

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