J. J. Torres

A Kick to the Trousers of Modernism:

A Revision Account of my Fiction Piece

I continue to embrace romanticism in my fiction writing as with the poetry. Although there are elements of romance within the story, the story’s focus is not the romance but world the reader finds themselves in. I am not a fiction writer. In fact I really do not enjoy fiction; especially modern fiction. I am a poet, and my poetic elements can be seen in the language of the story. The only fiction I am familiar with is the myths of my faith, and the Ramayana happens to be one of them. My writing style tends to reflect the Vedic narrative.

The origin of the story is the mythical epic Ramayana, and how I see myself in the story if I was a character. The warrior protagonist is a reflection of how I feel about society, shunned yet somehow dutiful to it because of my caste (varna). It is specifically my romantic escape to the land of ancient Ayodhya. Since I am mostly European decent, I used a Teutonic character as my stand-in. Instead of me being black in a white society (as I feel now), the character is white in a black society.

Although there is clearly a plot of the warrior finding the other half of his sky kingdom, the romance nor the union of the kingdom is the focus of the story. The romantic element of the duality of the universe is the focus of the story; the union or separation of the divine and the profane. The union of war and graces of the gods, the separation of the spirit from the physical sky kingdom, the duty one must perform in the mundane world so that a divine conquest can occur, and eventually the separation from the dream, these scenes are the focus of the story. Romanticism is an escape from society, and the matter that this episode is a dream is quite romantic. Dreams are the reality in this story, and the forgotten maiden symbolizes the divine trapped in the profane only to exist if one embraces her existence (such as the divine).

The main response I received from Christi in my first draft was the lack of dialogue. Since I am so accustomed to the Vedic verse, I lacked the foundation of casual dialogue. When I asked my friend Ashley how I should incorporate dialogue, she suggested that I have women speaking gossip of the legends of the protagonist warrior. I adopted this idea, but instead of having the women speak gossip, I had children repeat the gossip of their parents. I really enjoyed this part the most because I used the duality of romanticism in the dialogue with the children. As small children, their duty is light and their free-child spirit is displayed. However when the children argue amongst themselves, they use their caste (varna) as justification for what they speak. This is the duality of romantic escaping (children) and shackled society (caste). The children being stained with mud is ironic, because it displays that the children were playing yet they debate such a serious matter as to who is strange in their kingdom (xenophobia).

The main changes I made was not to have any character named outside the myth and the names of the gods, mainly I had not mentioned the Greek name “Daphnis” as I had in the first draft. Also, instead of the narrative background information, I had the children give the legend in dialogue. Christi also suggested to shorten my paragraphs and suggested paragraph breaks within the text. I completely had taken out the celebration to shorten the length of the story, even though I would have liked to show in more detail the festivities of the celebration. I debated the final two scenes that I kept nearly in-tact. I wanted to have the maiden attempt to assassinate the warrior, however Ashley didn’t like the idea; she said it was too masculine for a story she believes is aimed towards a women audience. So I kept the romance of the split atman. I also debated in keeping the dream sequence since the reading warned to stray away from this element. But I like the idea of a mysterious spirit that invokes romance in dreams.

I really want to develop my use of language in fiction. I have a problem of sticking to the Vedic language I am so used to writing. It is ok to write in a Vedic style for poetry (for the Vedas are mostly poetic-hymns) but it is difficult for me to capture a modern tongue in my fiction writing. I don’t write the way I casually speak because I am trained to write academically, and casual speech is abundant in modern-fictional writing. I guess it is because of the romantic purpose I believe should incorporate good fiction. As a romantic I like to escape to worlds I have never encountered in reality, and that is through creating a world with language. So I use Vedic language for a Vedic world, Greek language for a Greek world, Canaanite/Egyptian language for the world of the tribes of Israel, and so on. Most of what I write is in the past for it is what I embrace most.