Those Dark and Stormy Nights

It was a dark and stormy night...Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, may have been overly melodramatic with this pearl of fiction, but it wasn't a bad idea. The weather can be a great way to set the mood of your story or provide complications to the plot. One blogger listed a number of ways the weather can be used symbolically, such as:

• Rain: cleansing, renewal, mixed emotions, depression
• Thunderstorm: anger, danger, strong emotion
• Blue Skies/Sunshine: hope, happiness, absence of trouble, purity
• No Wind  or humid: stagnant, unable to  move forward, smothering
• Windy: change, things moving too quickly to grab onto
• Snow: inner coldness, sadness, cleansing, covering the bad, a quiet calm, purity
• Blizzard: overwhelmed, trapped, helpless
• Fog: unknown, fear, confusion, foreboding danger

Despite Elmore Leonard's famous rule "Never start a book with weather," it has been done successfully by several authors. He went on to explain that its use should be related to how the weather affects the characters in the story.

Hurricanes have been particularly useful to mystery writers. Randy Wayne White's Dark Light, a Doc Ford mystery, involves the retired CIA agent in the aftermath of a Category 4 hurricane that ravaged the Florida coast. Others have used the massive storms to create havoc for their protagonists.

Thunderstorms, snowstorms, floods, and heat waves have provided backdrops for novels. If you're using one of these meteorological wonders, though, it's best to do some research to make sure your facts are right. Strange things happen during these storms, but sometimes they're a bit too strange to make it in fiction. If you've never been through a hurricane, it's a good idea to talk to someone who has. Of course, everybody has a good thunderstorm tale.

Have you read any good weather-connected books lately?

Chester Campbell