The Weather Outside Is Frightful

We're just over halfway into January. How did that happen? Snow and ice and all things cold have settled over my little part of the world.

(Image via www.bbc.co.uk)

Snow and ice creates different reactions in different people. 

A) Snow means fun and sledging. Snow means throwing snowballs and running inside to drink hot chocolate to warm up. 

B) Snow is a huge pain in the butt. It's freezing. It makes traveling take forever. The traffic is a nightmare. 

These two different reactions give a little example of how weather can affect the mood of people. And it can have the same effect in a novel. 

We know it isn't advisable to begin a story with weather, but (like I said before) weather plays an important role within writing. Weather can be part the setting and add conflict. Weather can be symbolic for the mood of a character or foreshadowing events. But writing weather needs be done carefully or it can become cliche (think of all those movies where the heroine is crying in the rain). 

Think about layering in some weather the next time you're writing, or revising, a scene. Your characters don't have to talk about how horrible the rain is, but think about how the rain affects their mood? Or their plans? Or adds conflict to the scene? It could add a whole new layer to your story. 

Now I'm off to play in the snow. Happy Wednesday.

Want more weather writing links? Here are a few helpful ones:

Writing about the Weather 

The Bookshelf Muse  

The Emotional Thesaurus  by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi