Every Wednesday Rodin Wisoff-Fields posts a picture prompt challenging writers to create a 100-word story, poem, or whatever works for you. After posting your work on your blog, go back to her site and add your link on her Friday Fictioneers post. Place. Page.
I’m going to try to keep up with this, as should you. Give it a shot. I prefer to stick to 100 words, but she doesn’t mind either way. Not everyone has the time to sit and write, revise, edit, revise, edit, etc. until getting it down to 100 and telling everything you want to tell.
I had some great editing challenges this week, and I’m kicking myself for not saving them for those who like to see the progression.
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The Sculptor
“Sorry. Haven’t seen them since Tuesday,” The son says.
“Any idea when they’ll be back?” Detective asks.
“Nah. They’re retired. Always going places.” Son washes hands thoroughly.
“Did they say where they’re going?” Detective scribbles.
“Not usually.” Son wipes hands on apron.
Detective leans closely. “What’s this?”
“Soapstone.” Detective scribbles more.
Son precisely arranges hammers, chisels.
“That’s them. I’m sculpting my parents .”
“Nice. So, you’ll call me if you hear from them?”
“Certainly.”
Detective leaves. Son sits, a drastic grin, exhales. Then, fist tight, he punches the table.
One chisel is gone.
Detective hurries to his car, pocket slightly heavier.
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100 words
brainsnorts inc. 
Ha! Your muse took you to a murder too. As expected well done.
thanks very much.
Uh oh. Someone’s in trouble!
Pretty much yes. Thanks very much for reading.
Oh this doesn’t sound good at all. Crooked and alluding! Very nice work Rich.
Thanks very much. And thanks for reading.
Smart detective, that one (or maybe not-so-smart son).
Maybe a little of both. Thanks for reading.
Ooh! Naughty lil bugger. And then…??
And then it is just a matter of time until the match a fingerprint after they find the bodies. Or at least the heads.
Love the cunning detective 🙂
The Son/sculptor does not share your sentiment. Thanks for reading.
Dear Rich,
Spare and tight prose illuminated by light of the studio. The detective may find the DNA he seeks but he’ll still have to find the bodies and provoke the son into a mistake or a confession. You’ve got a few hundred more words for later if the impulse to entertain us strikes.
Aloha,
Doug
Thanks as always for your very kind words. I don’t expect to take it any further, but the detective hopes to.
Excellent crime story! Love the tight prose; it marches the tense mood of the story.
Uh…I mean it matches the tense mood….
Thanks very much and thanks for reading.
Aha! The son wasn’t as smart as he thought he was! I like the flow of the story from his nonchalant demeanor to punching the table when the realization dawns upon him of the missing chisel. Great take on the pic prompt.
Thanks a whole bunch. And thanks for reading.
reminded me of Columbo for some reason. I like the choppiness of the action in your writing. It almost sets the scene as a play or tv script. Maybe that’s what brought to mind Columbo. Oh well, I liked this a lot. I’ll stop rambling now.
thanks. the choppiness was partly due to cutting words and leaving out obvious words like “the” in front of detective. i knew that after the first mention, it wasn’t needed, so i could cut out “the” a few times and add more important words. thanks for reading.
I think the cuts actually made the piece stronger.
thanks. i’ll have to read that again and then be happy about it!
Oh nice…smart detective. I like how you write dialogues…great job as always sir
thanks. dialogue is what i aim to do best.
Well crap! Seems the young man ran into a smart officer. Time for plan B. Nice.
thanks very much. thanks for reading.
It reads like a game of three card monte….Nice Job. Your dialogue is always spot on….
thanks dude. thanks for reading. how’s things?
Things are as well as they can be…Been busy and you know the rest…Hope all is well with you.
Tom
all well. helped a friend move out of an apartment and into their first house today. that was cool for them. reminiscent for me.
Dialogue, tension… Excellent! Everything was so easy to visualize.
i’m glad you felt that way, and thanks for reading.
This is so well done. You got it all the whole story, wow, I’m impressed!
why thank you very much for both the kind words and for reading.
My pleasure!
I really like how you made my feelings change throughout the post – a stupid detective, a clever (yet awful) son, a clever detective, a stupid (and awful) son. Nice writing.
thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
Very enjoyable, you crammed a lot of story in by stripping it bare. It worked beautifully for me, especially the descriptions of the son washing and wiping his hands.
thanks. i wanted him to be slightly neurotic, scrubbing hands, arranging chisels. OCD. but the detective slipped one chisel away, and the son did not account for that.
Dear Switch,
I’ll try to sculpt an apt comment for your stellar piece. Dialogue…terse..to the point. A little like Dragnet. “Just the facts, Ma’am.”
Shalom,
Rodin
thanks very much. have a happy weekend.
Nice one Rich, very pointed. Naughty boy that one.
sometimes naughty can be fun. not this time.
Ah, there is no such thing as the perfect crime. Nicely done.
Here’s mine: http://unexpectedpaths.com/friday-fictioneers/hephaestus-wedge/
thanks very much. and thanks for reading. that list is growing, and i better get started.
Evidence might not hold up in court, but certainly would give them a place to really start looking!!!
Scott
Mine: http://kindredspirit23.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/3636/
thanks for reading. there’s a long list for us to read i see. wow, it’s growing!
Isn’t that great?! Takes a little longer, but I read a lot of them.
Scott
two weeks ago it took me until tuesday. last week i had it sewn up sunday night. i joined a writers group in my area with about 40 members and steered them to the site. not sure how many have joined up, but i’ll ask at the next meeting.
Sparse and you made the best of every word. I’m glad you got the detective in on the act. I hope he’ll be able to prove it and I salute him for his out-of-the-box suspicions. He must be a Fictioneer!
janet
he’s gotta be. too sharp not to be. thanks for reading.
So many of our stories have the murderers or whoever getting away with it, so I enjoyed your intelligent detective.
i didn’t notice that, but you’re right. good point. it wasn’t my original intention, but it developed that way. i was originally going to have the detective leave and then the son would then dispose of the headless bodies, implying that their real heads were inside the sculpture.
I thought that.about the heads and the sculpture, so you got that across.
you have an evil mind. welcome to the club.
I like the turn of event here but what is in the detective’s pocket anyway?
the missing chisel. the detective took it to look for fingerprints and possible traces of blood. possible that one wasn’t as carefully washed as the son’s hands.
Haa! Now that’s a great eye opener (You’re a great story teller very much unlike my grandpa–in my story today)…seeing the story in a whole new light (the clues were there all along, alas, i missed it!)
not a problem. thanks very much for reading. i read many of them a second time. just to be sure.
Hi Rich,
Loved the clues, son washing hands, wiping hands. Something about the word drastic doesn’t seem quite right. Have you been watching a lot of police dramas lately? Ron
yeah, “drastic,” not sure where that came from. i wasn’t seeking it out, but it kind of pushed its way in there, so i left it. if you have a suggestion, i’ll gladly replace it.
Rich, I was so hooked. The dialogue, though sparse is very apt. Well done. 🙂 http://readinpleasure.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/fridayfictioneers-janus
thanks very much, miss. thanks for reading. glad you enjoyed it.
I enjoyed your take on this prompt, but then I am particularly fond of murder/mystery 😉
thanks very much for reading. glad you liked it.
He’s caught I knew it. 😉 I really like how you can create a story out of a dialogue.
Thanks very much. For me, dialogue is action happening right at that moment. I find it more interesting than just telling events in past tense. I like the human interaction. It reveals character and motivation. Sometimes.
Thanks for reading.
I like your use of tags. I will steal this device from you. Definitely. I read the story a second time without the dialogue and it seems to tell the tale as much as the dialogue. A silent movie. I like ‘drastic grin’ though I can’t envisage one. Ann
thanks a bunch. as for tags, i didn’t really understand how to use them until less than a year ago, and i got a lot more views/likes/readers once i understood it. thanks for reading.
If this ‘less than a year ago’ means there’s a source or sources you can direct me to, I’d appreciate it.
i had been using “categories” instead of “tags.” people don’t see categories as easily. so i just started putting key words – things that people might do a search for – like “education” and “writing” and “fiction” and “humor.” and i try to put about 10. that brought more people here. so far, is that anything you’re already aware of?
Oh boy. We’re talking about 2 different kinds of tag. I was complimenting you on your use of tags in your story. They are normally banal, such as ‘he said’. Yours characterise etc. Though I’m sure your other tags are equally brilliant.I’ll check them out next time I visit your blog. 🙂
oh crap. my bad. didn’t know what you meant. technically, those are called “attributions,” but i like tags better. i use them with flexibility as a way to cut and edit down to 100 words.
You must have wondered why I was writing about the tags you’d used in your blog instead of focussing on the story! Very polite of you to have said nothing.
I really thought you were asking about the words I put in the tags for the blog post. Probably because I don’t know how long you have been blogging, so I don’t know what you are or are not aware of. There was a time when I had no clue what a blog tag was at all. So then I knew it was possible that you didn’t know either.
Excellent, Rich! I started suspecting that the parents’ heads were in the sculpture when you focused on the son washing his hands. You handled it all just right. Not too much time to THINK — just enough to FEEL what’s going on. Your detective certainly FELT it.
that’s a wonderful comment and compliment. thanks very much.
Guess it’s a good way to hide part of the bodies. But where’s the rest of them?
outside of town, 6 feet under, near the colson farm.
I can see Peter Falk in his trench coat, waving an unlit cigar, saying, “Just one more thing.” Well done, Rich.
I originally considered beginning with that exact line. But then I decided to just make it a regular detective. Thanks for reading.
So where are the parents? And why? I know you commented to Doug that you don’t want to take it any further, but can the detective publish his notes a future date?
First there will need to be a trace of blood found on the chisel. If not, then it will only be a way of getting fingerprints. After that, I haven’t thought that far ahead. Actually, I did not think this far ahead until just now. The only thinking to come next will be breakfast. Thank you very much for reading.
And assuming there is blood on the chisel, and it’s not the son’s… Enjoy breakfast.
thanks. you too.
I’m glad to hear you talk of cutting words – i struggled yesterday to keep mine at 100. It is a good practice in that you have to evaluate everything. I enjoyed yours and had a brief flash to Columbo at the end. Hope you enjoyed breakfast!
struggling is good. if you’re not struggling to edit, then not enough is happening. well, not enough for me. thanks for reading.
The son should have watched those crafty hands of the detective a little better. But, then unless the detective were to have had on the plastic gloves as crime scene investigators use, his fingerprints are on the chisel as well as the son’s. Then, his evidence is compromised. Maybe, the detective’s move is not the smartest. Now, to go look for the missing, maybe murdered parents. Great story here, Rich. I also go through a lot of edits before the finished product is done on any and all fiction projects whatever the piece. As writers of fiction we work at the craft, to the finished product, much like the sculptors sculpting their masterpieces.
the detective likely picked up the chisel with a handkerchief. my guess. thanks for reading. good to know about more editing.
I’m afraid he made be foiled.
i’m thinking so. yup.
Lol…yup. indeed.
Can’t beat a good murder – on paper, that is.
yeah, paper. that’s different.
Well done, Rich! I kind of went the same direction. Although yours is more mystery. I guess sculptures inspires the idea of death.
It was because the sculpture looked like severed heads. Thanks for reading.
Exactly! That’s exactly what I thought, Rich! You must read mine now. Well, if you want to.
I have not read any yet. Just finished a fun weekend with my kids. Will begin reading them all soon and hopefully I will finish by tomorrow at lunch time. But I will definitely seek yours out at the beginning.
Oh, good. I’m glad you had a nice time with your kids! That’s the important stuff. Mine relates to yours. That’s all!
That was masterfully told. I like how the details of the son washing his hands speaks so much without actually saying anything at all overtly.
thanks very much for reading and enjoying it.
really creepy..an interesting read
Thanks for reading.
The question: Does he watch enough CSI and NCIS to know how to clean the chisel so there is no trace of evidence. Or is the detective on his way back with the offending tool?
the son doesn’t know enough, and the detective is on his way to have the chisel examined. thanks for reading.
Loved it.
thanks. i had fun writing it. and i better start reading those of others. lots to read!
ha! outsmarted ^^ he thought he handled it pretty well only to realize he’s been outsmarted. great story ^^