Three Tears for Crash

Ok, LA screenwriters, what's up with using snow as a shorthand for miracles? I understand it's a rare and precious event in southern California, but for a large part of your audience it's just everyday, annoying February, and the styrofoam gets stuck in the actors' hair.

Why do we put up with styrofoam snow? For movies like Crash .

Crash is not a speculative film. Many of the characters believe they have witnessed miracles (an invisible cape impervious to bullets, the Muslim version of an angel), but the viewer knows that there are real-world explanations for these "miracles." I've brought Crash to this spec fiction journal because its incredible handling of characters has changed the way I look at my writing.

Earlier I described my dissatisfaction with the "bad guy" in Falling Free . Well, Crash has no "bad guys" and no "good guys," either. The film is incredibly human, the characters all antagonists and protagonists to each other. Not only is this an accurate model of the way people interact in the real world, but it creates a gut-wrenching connection between the viewer and the characters on screen. I cried for hours after seeing this film.

Using characters of disparate ethnic an social backgrounds (instead of aliens, bioengineered clones, fairies, or magicians as a spec fiction writer might), the viewer was allowed to "see the story" of each person. A racist cop is also a devoted son crushed by his father's deteriorating health. A locksmith who looks like a "gang member with his pants around his ass" to a wealthy LA housewife is just a husband and father doing his best to shield his family from inner city violence. It is heartbreaking to see how people can live so close together and interact so violently, while understanding each other so little.

Of course, we wouldn't know the stories of any of these people if it we weren't allowed a peek into their private lives, if we didn't have a multiple perspective that let us see into their points of view.

This multiple perspective point of view is a critical ingredient in my novel-length ficton, and in the fantasy and science fiction of some of my favorite authors. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice is an excellente example of a multiple point of view in which the reader is actively "rooting" for every character. The point of view switches so constantly, that chapters are titled with characters' names. The reader may agree or disagree with the decisions made by the characters, but she always understands why the choice was made. I was so emotionally moved by the experience of reading this book, that I'm putting off reading the next in Martin's series for a cheerier time.

I'd love to hear about other fantasy and science fiction books that successfully blend a rotating, multiple perspective narrative to create gut wrenching, human fiction. I'd also love to see more of it being written- our audience responds to this type of narrative on film, and they will respond to it in fiction.

I have long favored the multiple perspective technique, but I hadn't realized why I was writing in this way. Watching Crash and formulating this journal entry, I found the answer. I want to use the exaggerated stage of speculative fiction to show that all people live side-by-side, alone, never completely understanding each other. I want to think about ways that we can change that, and offer examples of how to learn the "stories" of the people we think we know (but don't), of the cultures we think we know (but don't). Understanding is the only way to make "miracles" happen, to avoid conflict and violence.

While I wrote this post it started snowing outside. Not unheard of on an April day in Brooklyn, but I wasn't expecting snow.

Somebody in LA is probably smiling.