How We Use Weather in Our Writing

by Lynn Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn

A personal note from Lynn: Please continue to pray for all those impacted by Hurricane Helene. My brain can’t process the devastation, and my heart is broken for all who lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods. 

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For the past few days, the weather has been front and center in my life. Hurricane Helene and her aftermath have influenced every decision I’ve made, from what I’ve purchased at the store to how I’ve spent my time to how I’ve prayed. 

A few of my friends have mentioned how they fully expect some of the things that have happened to wind up in future books. And they’re probably right! 

As I’ve considered this, I started thinking about how we use weather in our writing.

We generally think of weather as part of the setting, but today I want to explore the idea of weather as a character. 

Weather as a Character in the Story You Write

1. Like a contentious neighbor or a gentle grandma, the weather can be as irritating as a persistent cough or as comfy as a favorite sweater. 

Has it rained for five days? Is everyone tracking mud, leaves, and snow through the house? Is it so hot that when you walk outside, you immediately lose five pounds through perspiration alone? 

Or does the sunset beg you to come outside and take a stroll as the wind caresses your skin? Are the leaves falling in a dance that calms your wounded heart? Does the air have just enough of a bite to be refreshing? 

Whether it’s a positive or a negative, we can use the weather in our writing in the same way we would use a secondary character—to bring out the best or the worst in our hero/heroine. 

2. Like an unexpected and/or unwanted visitor, the weather can thwart your characters’ plans. 

You know the scene in the movies and in (too many) books where the hero and heroine are just…about…to….kiss… and the phone rings? Maybe the best friend, neighbor, or business partner has urgent news that can’t wait, and they burst onto the scene, and the mood is broken. 

I’m all for the interrupted kiss myself, but what if the interruption is a clap of thunder, a lightning strike that causes an outlet to spark and then fries the modem (that happened to me this summer), or a gust of wind that blows a particularly disgusting piece of trash into the face of the would-be kisser? 

The options are endless. (Imagine me giggling in a rather disturbing way as I contemplate the possibilities…or, maybe don’t!)

3. Like the best villains, the weather can put your characters’ lives in danger, threaten their future happiness, and place them in situations that force them to examine their lives. When your characters are facing a murderous fiend *and* a hurricane, you can put them into a survival spiral. This can require them to make dangerous choices that they would avoid on a sunny day. 

It doesn’t have to be quite that dramatic. It could be as simple as a sunny day that convinces your heroine to go for a jog and puts her in the path of a bee…which she’s … uh-oh … allergic to. 

(This could be fun…I could go on…but I won’t). 

Now, a few caveats:

1. Please don’t start your book with a treatise on the weather. It can be done, and it can be done well, but in modern storytelling, it’s generally frowned upon. 

2. Be careful about using the weather as a crutch in your writing. Not every difficult conversation can be avoided with a freak tornado. :) 

3. Pay attention to what is reasonable weather for the location and season you’re writing about. What are the average temperatures in January or June? What about the average rainfall or snowfall? 

I’m not saying you can’t push the envelope a little bit, but prior to, well, the last few days, if someone wrote a book that included a tropical storm hitting the Gulf Coast of Florida and causing massive flooding and devastation in the mountains of Western North Carolina…I would have thought that writer hadn’t done their research. 

But then again, truth *is* stranger than fiction. 

Grace and peace,

Lynn

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Lynn H. Blackburn is the award-winning author of Unknown Threat, Malicious Intent, and Under Fire, as well as the Dive Team Investigations series. She loves writing swoon-worthy southern suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy, but her grown-up reality is that she's a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters by putting them into terrifying situations while she's sitting at home in her pajamas! She lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with her true love, Brian, and their three children. Learn more at www.lynnhblackburn.com.