Stormy Weather Makes Exciting Stories

By Chester Campbell

There's a thunderstorm booming away outside as I write this. My wife says I need to get off the computer, that a woman was hit by lightning while on her computer when her house was struck. I figure the odds are pretty long on that happening again. But the weather can do some decidedly dramatic things.

I've read some writers say you shouldn't talk about the weather in your book unless it's a central theme of the story. I respectfully disagree. I frequently describe clouds or wind or rain or snow as part of setting the scene. The recent heat wave has everyone thinking about the weather. To leave it out of our stories would be like avoiding smells and colors and other things that round out the description of what's going on about the characters.

In my newest book, Beware the Jabberwock, the weather frequently has a bearing on the story. Rain-slickened streets in Hong Kong are seen as a contributing cause to an accident. Weather conditions have to be just right for an aerial photography mission over an island off the Florida coast. A violent thunderstorm nearly wrecks a sailboat escape. And at the book's opening, a cold, blustery rain helps set the tone for a crucial meeting in Vienna of former Cold War enemies who agree on a diabolical plot.

I agree that giving elaborate details on the weather in a routine manner is unnecessary and a bit of overkill. But when a scene is outdoors, especially, a brief comment on atmospheric conditionns gives the reader a better feeling for what the characters are experiencing.

Of course, when a book's plot depends almost wholly on a weather phenomenon, there's no question of its relevance. I had never heard the term "derecho" until I read William Kent Krueger"s Northwest Angle. After the one that slashed across the Midwest recently, nearly everyone now knows it's a long-lived straight-line windstorm associated with a band of severe thunderstorms. They move at greater than hurricane force. Krueger's book deals with the storm and its aftermath.

The thunderstorm is gone as I finish this, and obviously I didn't get struck by lightning in the process. My wife is more fearful of the weather's vagaries. I was in a tornado when I was seven, and I've slogged through just about any kind of muck you can imagine over the years. I remember when my four kids were small experiencing a violent thunderstorm, with searing streaks of lightning hitting all around us, as we watched from a small cabin in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Everyone enjoyed the spectacle.

I say bring on the weather in our books. It adds an exciting dimension to the story.

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