(from issue #179 of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter)

as inspired by Damon Knight

Example of a reality check process. (To be used whenever someone gives you a writing "rule"--be it the author of a how-to-write book, an editor, an author who is your idol, or anyone who tries to tell you "this is the Only Way.")

Editor on a panel at a con says, "Don't start stories with a weather report."

Reality check:

Go make a pile of as many different kinds of published stories as you can find (especially stories that editor has bought, or if it's a published author, look at stories that author has written).

Read the beginnings. Notice how many of these start with a description of a scene and the kind of weather happening in the scene.

Ask yourself why the editor would advise against starting stories that way. Were any of those starts boring? Did any of them have a character in the setting, noticing/experiencing the weather? Did any of the "weather reports" go on for too long?

Were any of them wonderful to read? (In my opinion, Tony Hillerman, who starts almost every one of his chapters with a weather report, can keep doing that for as long as he likes. I love his chapter starts. Which is remarkable because I usually find large chunks of description very boring, especially when they are weather reports at the beginnings of stories. However, in the hands of someone who knows how to do it- -and I've asked Hillerman how he does it (he doesn't know, or so he says)--even a weather report can be a hook.)

Next step, analysis:

What about Hillerman's weather reports makes them work for me?

What about other weather reports makes them boring? Is there something I can learn from these examples?

Step after that, immersion:

Type story beginnings that work for you into your computer.

Type story beginnings that don't work for you into your computer. Notice as you type what is different about each. If that doesn't help, tear those weather reports apart. Examine their structure, the number of adjectives they have, the number of other parts of speech they have, the order of the various parts of speech. Diagram the sentences if you have to. Make a list of the different kinds of sentences and sentence structures. Disect the life out of them, but understand them.

Final step:

Decide for yourself how you are going to write.

Use this procedure as often as necessary.

I frequently do type things that I think work. I've deconstructed parts of GRR Martin's work more times than I could count.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't understand the advice.

I actually just had this moment myself. A while back I got the advice, "Don't start a story with a meeting." Apparently, meetings are boring things you have to do at work and nobody really likes. Well, my WIP starts with a meeting. It's a mystery story and starts with the meeting between the PI and the client.

I tried to start the same story with a gunfight but hated it.

I just picked up "A is for Alibi" by Sue Grafton. It starts with a meeting. So do dozens of other mysteries.

I recently critiqued a story that started with a meeting at which the protag sat feeling put-upon while the speaker went on... and on... and on...

About 1,500 words later there was a hint that something, sometime might happen. After reading that, I might give the same advice. That doesn't mean, of course, that it can't be done well.

The same goes for rules about stories that start with dialog or someone waking up or with flashbacks. You study what doesn't work to see why it doesn't work, and you study what does work (especially if it breaks a "rule") to see why it does work.

Not that there isn't merit in taking the advice of others (particularly the advice of professionals) but at the end of the day it's you at that keyboard and your name on the paper.

I think it is a matter of starting with something interesting. Now that can be a weather report. Or a news item or a description of a character. A conversation or a meeting. It doesn't matter WHAT it is, just that your words reach out and grab the reader.

I generally like a story (or movie, or whatever) to have weather of some kind---it ads to the feeling that this is taking place somewhere, and is not just a creation from inside someone's mind. Characters should step outside and step into sunny, rainy, snowy, whatever...or if they stay inside they can talk about stuffy or chilly or something.

quote:

---

The fact that Hillerman starts with weather reports and sells partly is because his name is well known. People trust him to give them a good story no matter how he starts it off.

---

Did you know that Hillerman was once a new author, and that at one time few people had even heard of him?

I met him back then, at a book signing for his first book (the bookstore owner was a mystery fan and told me about it, so I read it before the signing, and that was when I asked him about how he managed to write such good beginnings--and he told me he didn't know). For most of the signing, I was the only other person there, talking to him.

Perhaps the better way to word the "rule" might be something along the lines of "establishing shots are for television and movies, not for written works."

And yes there weather in space, solar storms, cosmic rays, even as ships battle in dust clouds there is lightning that can fry a fight crafts main computer.

Weather is all-around us in everyday life so why would it not play a part in the stories we write?

RFW2nd

Weather as a plot device is fine; it would be difficult to write a story about a hurricane without saying that it was raining.

Weather as comic device is, in my opinion, fine as well; "As I started to walk home, it started snowing."

The worst cases that I've read are when authors use the weather in an attempt to force the reader into a mood or as a harbinger of bad things to come. It's cliche that bad things happen on dark and story nights.

Consider the difference in: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

and

"The dawn had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitment."

A static weather front bred thunderstorm cells from New Orleans to Pensacola. Rain dropped in sheets and lightning shredded the sky. Then, as if on a switch, the deluge halted and the air turned sweet and balmy. Ten minutes later, earth and sky were at war again. Mobile, Alabama, was dead center in the conflict.

"What do you think, Carson?" My detective partner, Harry Nautilus, peered through the windshield wipers. "Time to start loading up the animals two by two?"

"How about this time we leave the mosquitoes behind?"

In your second example, the weather is relative to the action. Those of us who regularly "set forth at daybreak" know that the weather at the time of leaving can set the mood for the rest of day.

I honestly...am speechless and that's not easy.

Edit: I keep thinking about explaining, but... Oh, dear. I'm leaving now. Perhaps you might want to look that piece up.

Some rules are made to be broken, others are not.