Young Writers Society

I used to play the bagpipes when I was a Scotsman, to this day I sometimes try to blow into cow’s udders to make music. In fact, they arrested me just a month ago; charged me with milk stealing.

I challenged them to check the contents of my stomach, to prove that I hadn’t drunk any of the milk.

The medical examiner used to be an Ancient Egyptian, and to this day he tries to shove pencils up patient’s noses – an atavism from his days of mummifying. I told him Scotsmen never surrender. In desperation, he shoved the pencils up his own nose.

I offered him a hankie to dub the brains running out of his nostrils. “Zang you” he said with a nasal accent. But wait! I thought. Maybe this is not a nasal accent; maybe the pencils have activated a German matrix?

After a few experiments I found that if I gave the right pencil a gentle twist, the good doctor spoke Dutch, and if I gave the left pencil a twist, the Dutch was slowly superseded by Norwegian. If I twisted both pencils, and angled them slightly to the left, I could catch shortwave radio transmissions from the early sixties.

And this is how I came to know who killed Kennedy.

I'm usually not a fan of rapid-fire comments saying "this is great" and nothing more, but this has to be one of the greatest things I've ever read, on YWS or otherwise.

And may you live long and prosper as well, haha

... Hi

Well. Um. I'm not sure exactly what to say about this. What are you saying? Unless this is a deep and biting satire, the point of which I've completely missed, I don't see the point of this. It's short, very short, and I don't know what it's about.

It was funny, yes, and weird, yes, but the humour went about over the place. The ending, with picking up broadcasts from the sixties--that worked, but why is the Doctor an Ancient Egyptian and why does he have pencils up his nose? I'd understand it if it was the main guy who had pencils up his nose, but it isn't.

I used to play the bagpipes when I was a Scotsman, to this day I sometimes try to blow into cow’s udders to make music. In fact, they arrested me just a month ago; charged me with milk stealing.

The bolded comma should be the beginning of a new sentence, I think. Either way, the comma's not strong enough for the whole sentence.

“Zang you” he said with a nasal accent.

You ought to have a comma to end the dialogue.


On reflection, I do quite like this, but it's very hard to pin down. I don't know what it is, so I don't like it as much as I would otherwise. Does that make sense?

-twit

Hi Twit,

Thank you for the feedback,

yes, I understand the need to know what a thing really is, in order to have a stable opinion of it.

I'll try to put the system into words.

I'd call this a self-propelled shifting-surface-logic story. I started the ball rolling with a spontaneous introductory line about him being being a former Scotsman who used to play the bagpipes. This is a foundation based on nothing, self-created, but now that it existed patterns could unfold from it. The bagpipes led to the udders by visual logic, and him being a former Scotsman allowed the doctor to be also a former something.

Due to the medicine feel of this part of the story, my brain went to the ancient world, he almost became a Greek, but stabilized as an Egyptian. This brought forth the pencils - in order to not damage the skull the ancient mummy-makers would shove sticks into the nose to make the brain into mush and drain it.

When the resurfaced scottinessness of the main character defied the doctor's impulses, he commits a sort of frustration-sepuku by the only attribute that he has as a character - the semi-conscious penchant for pencils up the nose.

What a 'former' scotsman or ancient Egyptian means I have no idea - this was a train of meanings generated purely to kick-start the narrative.

...and, as you said yourself, the catching the radio-waves does make sense, because we all still have imprinted the swiveling of a knob in order to tune in to a station; this came as a natural extension of the swiveling as the tuning of the language part of the brain.

In short: this story is based not on plot or character, but on pattern modifications through any possible association in order to achieve a deceptive logic which quickly leads to cognitive dissonance that hopefully generates a burst of laughter and a short rush:)

hmm, I'm with twit. I don't care much for this. How unfair would it be for me to leave it at that? And part of me wants to because it is rather difficult to really uproot the fundamental issues with this. This spontaneous form of fiction has a place, and authors have done it (unconvincingly) before. But the prose, the inane nexus' and the zany characters must be supported by damn good writing before anyone is willing to take it seriously. It must have a theme - the same rules apply. It must be a story or a comment about anything. But most of all it must be undeniably well written.

So how to improve the writing.

Imagery, this needs more. It also needs to be clear. I think the closest you get is with the pencils up the nose, a very Vonnegut image, but it comes out of no where and unprecedented, nothing else in the story is quite the same. So when you say

I told him Scotsmen never surrender. In desperation, he shoved the pencils up his own nose.

You could say something like.

I resisted, thumped my palms of his chest and he stumbled into the corner of his office. Slumped over, with a mad look across his face, he took each pencil and with a synchronized thrust, they went into his own nose.

I don't know, I'm sure you see a difference though. It may cost you a few more words (it may not if your a little more concise than me) but you can make this a lot stronger by really shaping the scene.

So that about covers it. Fix up the writing. Provide some subtle suggestive undertone, like I said an opinion or a comment. Then, this will be good.

Hi, Joshuapaul,
that's the anglosax (I think) in you talking:) Your recommendations would move this from the minimalist Eastern European absurdist tradition and push it into the slightly more coherent ones of say Donald Bathelme and Beckett and the like. Too finicky for me. I like my finicky in the purplier horror or sword adventures.