Puzzle time by Bill Kirton

This has nothing to do with anything

What follows is a piece I posted on my own blog between Xmas and New Year. My excuse/reason for repeating it here is that I think it illustrates the process of how asking questions of ourselves as writers (questions of which I gave examples in three of my AE blogs in the summer of 2015), provides the substance and complexities of stories and novels. The range and nature of the responses I got to the challenge at the end made me want to provoke some of the literati who frequent the AE blog into giving their take on the exercise.

First, then, the blog.

Facebook is a strange place for all sorts of reasons – some good, some less so. You can, for example, find out which 18^th century politician, Renaissance painter, or Jane Austen character you most resemble just by answering a few questions. Really useful, eh? Other questions help you decide whether you’re a porcupine, a swallow-tailed butterfly, or a haddock. Some ask you to combine the name of a relative with the make of car you drive to reveal what you’d be called if you were in a Quentin Tarantino movie. And they’re all part of the daily reality of millions of people.

What I was...

One of those transmigrations happened to me recently when, by giving the wrong answer to a puzzle, instead of remaining the small wooden grotesque which my mugshot identified me as, I had to become a llama for a day. I asked my nephew, Joe, to draw the animal for me and he did a great job so that, for those 24 hours, I was, in fact, quite attractive.

What I became

Another part of the punishment was that I had to explain why I’d come over all South American camelid, and that meant repeating the challenge as part of my own feed. The upside of that was that it triggered far more comments than usual so it seems that Bill Kirton, pillar of the community and writer of high quality literature, is far less interesting than Bill Kirton, llama.

Anyway, in the course of mentioning that fact, I suggested I might concoct some puzzles of my own. I don’t mean those in which men have to row wolves, foxes, chickens, goats, sacks of grain and the latest iphone across a river one at a time without any of those still on the banks eating one another or stealing the man’s identity. They’re too easy. I prefer the type which only have an answer when the responder provides one that fits.

As writers and readers, we use words to create our worlds, our truths. Faced with extremes of any sort, including absurdity, our impulse is to explain them, bring them under control, impose some order, try to make them make sense. And that’s exactly what the sort of puzzles I’m talking about demand of us. The writer provides the text, the reader analyses it and gives it coherence. So here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean. All you have to do is tell me what’s going on in this scenario.

A man is carrying a yellow box very carefully. He walks up to a cottage door and knocks. The door is answered by a teenage girl with dreadlocks. Over her scruffy clothes she’s wearing a spotless white apron. She keeps her hands behind her back as they talk.

‘Is Marie-Louise in?’ says the man, ‘I brought this for her.’

‘Let’s see,’ says the girl.

The man opens the box and holds it towards her. She looks inside. It’s empty.

‘They’re all asleep,’ she says. ‘You can’t come in.’
She closes the door. The man takes off his shoes, puts them inside the box, leaves it on the doorstep, and walks away.

And that was it. I then offered a couple of books as prizes and the exercise produced some entertaining responses, including one from our own, ever-inventive Chris Longmuir. Some continued the story and added a twist, and each was inventive and intriguing in its own way. Now, though, I’m going to be more demanding. I’m going to insist that an ‘explanation’ for every one of the details in my scenario be incorporated into any offerings. I think we need to know:

• Who the man is
• How he relates to the people in the house as well as to Marie-Louise
• Who the other people are
• The significance of the colour yellow, the dreadlocks, the scruffy clothes, the hands hidden behind the back
• Why the box is empty
• Why she shows no reaction to the fact that it's empty
• Why they’re all ‘asleep’
• Why he puts his shoes in the box and walks away

         

Any takers? I don't expect stories, just quick notes on the relationships, etc. However, Susan suggested in a comment on one of my 2015 'questions' blogs that an anthology of stories, each incorporating the same elements,  might result from such exercises. I’m not suggesting this is worthy of that – I think it’s maybe too specific, but it could be an interesting trial run.