Thursday, February 14, 2008

Weather Woes in Works

I recently read "In the Bleak Midwinter" where the unusually cold and snowy winter weather was as much of a character as any person. How have you used weather as a character?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've tinkered with using the heat of an Ozark August as a sort of presence in my latest Finnegan novel, but it doesn't serve much purpose in the plot, and I'm afraid it will get out of due proportion.

Anonymous said...

I've used weather to help set the emotional tone of a scene. When you set your books in winter in bleak Buffalo, the weather does become a big part of the overall story. (The next book, Dead In Red, is set in June, and a storm over Lake Erie becomes part of the emotional push to a certain scene.)

Ruth L.~ said...

The weather as a character? Hmmm . . .I don't know. Does it count that I talk to the weather when I wake in the night? "Come on blizzard! How 'bout a 'no school' day tomorrow?"

Rick Bylina said...

Ruth...That's not a character. That's every schoolchild's nighttime prayer.

I use the weather, but ya know, it's hard to figure out how many ways to indicate that lightning is going to strike without it being a bit clicheish.