MamminaBooks

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Weather Games

   The most important aspect of a story's setting is its environment.  This means describing the scene surrounding the characters without being over descriptive.  This can be a big mistake for some stories.  Some settings need to be described well, like the first time inside an illustrious castle hall or the frightening characteristics of a haunted house.  But, sometimes, us writers can get caught up in describing new settings too much that the real point of that scene is lost.  Losing the reader into the setting is a disappointing loss of their attention to the true concept of your message.  So, a good way to staple in a setting with its main events is to blend in weather.  This will help the reader pay attention to detail as well as the setting, since the setting affects the characters.
    Weather can be utilized almost effortlessly to move the scene along as well as give the reader a detail to remind them of its importance.  Some examples can include a heated argument under the hard falling rain in the middle of a street.  An epic battle can be fought amid the falling snow.  A baseball game can be played in a relentless heat wave.  A crash of lightening can solidify a desperate scene.  Like how a smell or moving song can recall memories from way back when, so does the mentioning in of weather in a story aid in the impact of your big scene.  Write about it.  Here are some of my examples...

Paltronis: Large battle in open dry land under light falling snow, before a volcano in the distance untimely erupts.

Protector of Children: An emotional rooftop battle to the death between two former friends under falling rain.

The Angels of Resistance: A warlord crosses over into the Shadowland of the Demon Plague, a radial area where the sunlight is blocked out amid dead soil, dry bones and rotting flesh.

Redeem the Knight: Eden: Battle against vampires in a complex where the power has gone out, leaving only some flashing emergency lights.

-Happy Writing

-David V. Mammina