A Vast Horde of Souls

Here is a (politically correct) excerpt from what the Wave-inatrix considers the best short story of all time. The Waver who can identity this writer gets a cupcake. I really mean it this time.

There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled into her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives and bands of blacks in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away....

Aside from the fact that the paragraph above is writing so good it hurts, what does a vast horde of souls, leaping and clapping have to do with screenwriting?

All weekend, The Wave-inatrix sat in my booth at the LA Times Festival of Books with my dear friend Jeff and watched the parade of humanity swirl and cluster into and out of booths. And Wavers, it was unparalleled people watching. The shufflers, the apple-grabbers, the twitchers and the quiet observers. The tall lady dressed in a mango-colored dress and hat with a foreign accent, a tongue piercing and dubious gender identification. The children with face paint, eager, bright-eyed and direct. The limping older guy with a desert hat, ZZ top beard and braces.

Jeff and I, both writers, when we weren't establishing what kind of facial hair would be best on Jeff or the writings of Trotsky and Freud, managed to beat out 85% of a great new action-adventure idea over that long, hot weekend. It's amazing what you discuss when you're bonding in a hot tent.

But in-between our brilliant ideas, we were transfixed by the way people wear their personalities on their exteriors. Baldly so. Their clothing, speech and posture spoke loud and clear. Probably because we are writers, we are more observant. Perhaps because we are writers we embellished with our imaginations.

It struck me that with the endless, infinite range of personalities, exteriors and back stories, no screenwriter ever has an excuse to write a two-dimensional, nondescript character. Take your cue from real life, Wavers. Today be observant of the vast horde of humanity that you co-exist with. Can you imagine back stories for who you see today based on their look and attitude? Can you try to guess what's going on in the life of the guy next to you at the red light? He may look normal, even bored in his car. But as I say to clients all the time - dig deeper.

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