Friday Fictioneers Tales of t’Internet – Len Scleaner the Ocularist

ByLinda Parkinson-Hardman

This week I’ve decided to try to combine two of the things I like to try out in one Friday Fictioneers challenge. I’m attempting to add another story to my Tales of t’Internet series, which is my slightly sideways look at the subject of search engine optimisation through the medium of the fairy tale. I know, it’s odd but do bear with me.

Firstly, a big thank you to Rochelle Wiseoff for managing the group and secondly I thank you to Ted Strutz for the photo

The usual restrictions apply to the image, the photo is copyright to Ted Strutz so please respect that. Finally, constructive criticism is always appreciated.

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Len opened the door to his new shop and was surprised to see no-one waiting to come in. He looked up and down the street, expecting to see a little army of purchasers descending on him; but sadly there were none in view. He was sure his signs were correct, they were clean, bright and pointing in the right direction too.

After a week with no sales he decided visit the Ocularist on the other side of town. They were very busy. When he asked, he was told they had been in business for many years and everyone knew them.

After looking carefully at their wares he noticed they used the same supplier. On further inspection he realised that their sales tags bore the same descriptions as his own.

‘Perhaps I need to talk about my wares in a different way to my competitors’, he thought.

(146 Words)

Following on from the suggestion by Janet in the comments below, my earlier Tales of t’Internet can be found here:

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54 Comments

  1. I love the idea of fairytale – you can say so much and get away with much more in this genre; I guess it fulfils a similar role to that of the court jester of old whose job was to highlight issues in an ‘amusing and light hearted’ way 🙂

  6. They do – I live with on and I am a bit of a geek myself … can’t get stranger than this household I can tell you 🙂

  13. Thanks Debra and I shall be sorting out the links later today – we’ve just moved house and I’m finally able to settle again to catching up with the blog.

  23. Hmmm…your links to the tales are for edit. I think you did the same think I did with my blog on Inlinkz, and pasted the wrong link… I’m getting a ‘you can’t edit’ message.

  25. Maybe Len Scleaner should add a few gorgeous models in bikini/thongs wearing “designer” sunglasses and have them model in his window…or march up and down his side of the street.

  27. This could make an interesting discussion topic in any B School.
    A nice insight into an entrepreneur’s mind. Very different work.

  29. Coming in for the first time it appears you are building on an already established story and unfortunately your links above don’t work. 🙁 Not knowing the story I can’t comment on that part, but I find what you have here intriguing. Smart use of the name.

  33. Thanks Madison, your compliment is very much appreciated and I must admit I get quite a lot of pleasure thinking about how to add a dry and dusty subject to something lighter and nicer 🙂

  35. Len Scleaner is definitely an attention getter and should be capitalized upon–might do well to change his supplier and jazz up his line instead of trying to reimage the same goods.

  37. It was clever, but not my brainwave unfortunately. I demanded a title from Stevie and he came up trumps 🙂

  39. I’m usually ok with the 100 word limit – the challenge will be to see if I can keep this up and work on getting the tales of t’Internet into a much tighter format.

  41. That’s a great idea and I’ve now added in the links to the previous stories. The idea is that they are reasonably short anyway, but obviously not short enough for 100 words – although I have just spotted how I could have made it shorter, perhaps next time 🙂

  50. That’s true and one of the reasons this is so valuable, isn’t it? Choosing and honing words is the writing equivalent of lifting weights. 🙂 I usually try to get an entire story in the 100-words, but a number of people either have a story going through a number of prompts (the way you’re going to, from the sound of it) or use the 100 words as the hook for what could be a longer story, whether it gets written or not.

  52. That pesky limit!! It’s got to be hard when you’re writing something that part of a bigger story. I imagine you feel as though you’re just getting started.

    If you’re going to be using Friday Fictioneers as a vehicle to write your story, I’d suggest having the links to the previous story segments along with the new section each week. That way people can go back to get the whole story up to the current part. (Does good things for your hit list, too.) 🙂

  53. He could do so many things but I’d already gone way over the 100 word limit suggestion; so we’ll have to wait for another opportunity to meet up with him to see how he solved his problem 🙂

  54. I’m interested to see where this will go. He’s on the right track about differentiating himself from the crowd (or the other vendor.) But what will he decide to do???