All in the Mind
All in the Mind
Dressed in his finest suit, he rushed into the theatre and his eyes immediately raced to the stage to meet hers. From the audience, he watched her body glide through the air. She was small, delicate, and graceful. The way she showed emotion in the sweep of a leg or the innocence in her face, it was all perfect. At the end of the performance, the audience roared with applause and flowers flew from every direction towards the stage. Her cheeks became rosy as their eyes met once again. He couldn’t explain this feeling, this attraction and immediate joy he felt towards this woman he’d never even met. All he knew he was in love and he had to make her his to keep, his to hold. As the audience began to clear out, he did a little jog up the stairs so he could find this girl. His head began to spin and his vision began to blur as he spun in circles looking everywhere for her. His mind filled with thoughts of the other man. She must have someone, how could a man not do everything in his power to get this girl, and then his thoughts were confirmed. A lengthy, dorky-looking guy walked out of a small dressing room followed by the girl and he kissed her on the cheek before walking out. As the boy began to walk away, he watched as her smile faded and his began to do the same. What did he expect? He’d been beat, the other man got there first. He pivoted his feet, put his head down, and began to go, thinking to himself about what could’ve been but right before he reached the stairs he heard footsteps behind him. They were so light, almost musical and he knew who was coming behind him. He turned around and there she was, her head at his chest and she began to speak, “I saw you in the audience, as I danced, I almost stumbled because of the way you looked at me, I’ve never seen a person look that way at somebody else.” He scoffed. This woman, this perfect woman, noticed him back. “But, but that man. You looked very happy with him.” “My brother, he lives in the city, he can never make my shows so I was happy to see him but he has to go. Can you please take me to dinner?” His smile came right back to his face and he reached out to grab her slim waist and pull her towards him, but she wasn’t there. He woke up in a pool of sweat in a dark room, rolled over to the beeping sound of an alarm, and realized it was all a dream.
Artistic Statement
I chose to remake the short story, “A Story about the Body” because I think the author’s style, Robert Haas, has the most similar writing style to my own, so I thought it would be the biggest challenge for me to slightly adjust the small differences in our writing styles. The biggest challenge I faced when writing this was not making the structure completely parallel to the original. After analyzing the structure of the original story, I had to come up with my own story that would fit that structure but not be too similar. I did this by mirroring some of the main details of the original but I changed and added some storyline. I also struggled with the length because I had to go into more detail than the original did because of the length I was required to write but the amount of detail was part of the author’s structure and style so I had to balance adding detail and adding storyline. I did this by trying to stretch my story while keeping it at the same level of detail as the original and also keeping it focused on one short moment in time and not making it switch too much between scenes because I think the lack of scene switches in the original is part of the piece’s style. I think this is a beneficial way of writing creative pieces because the structure is already there, you just get to keep the story your own.
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