Fiction storytellers pick and choose their settings; the season, the city, and the weather that best sets the mood for their story. While You Were Sleeping, set in summer, would be a very different mood.
In life stories, we can’t just make up story settings. But if we notice different attributes of where our story took place, we can select what best tells where our story happens.
Observing the Weather
The weather and the mood it evokes are part of the story setting. Everybody has some weather. It can change often. It can be dramatic. If you observe and document the mood of the outdoors over a day, you’ll have several examples of setting descriptions.
If you’ve ever been to an outdoor event, and people comment on how the weather is perfect, elaborate. Find some words to describe how the weather fits the day.
Weather Sets the Mood
In our neighborhood, front porches on the same street, on the same evening, at the same time, have different weather and moods.
In August, around five o’clock, one porch is blazing hot. Plants are wilted, dry and thirsty. Unshaded, the sun has scorched and cracked the door.
A few doors down, a porch is cooled by long sweet windy breezes. Wind chimes tinkle. Trees look like full heads of hair tossing. The aroma of spicy food wafts from nearby restaurants.
These are descriptive statements that came about from the weather. We can describe it with pinpoint accuracy by windspeed, a heat index, or instead give a description of what it brought about.
When Weather Becomes the Conflict
Perhaps like me, you have stories where the weather changes from the setting and becomes the conflict. On a road trip, we stayed one step ahead of a very violent thunderstorm. We drove through Arizona and New Mexico but stopped at a Texas Cracker Barrel for collard greens, cornbread, and mashed potatoes. That’s when the storm ran us over. Hail the size of softballs cracked our windshield.
Weather is the setting when it doesn’t pummel us. It doesn’t become the conflict of our story.
Photo by Krishna Gotham via Unsplash