WEATHER is an important element in any setting, providing sensory texture and contributing to the mood the writer wishes to create in a scene. With a deft touch, weather can enhance the character’s emotional response to a specific location, it can add conflict, and it can also (lightly) foreshadow coming events.
However, caution must accompany this entry: the weather should not be used as a window into a character’s soul. The weather can add invisible pressure for the character, it can layer the SCENE with symbolism, it can carefully hint at the internal landscape, but it must never OVERTLY TELL emotion. Such a heavy-handed approach results in weather cliches and melodrama (a storm raging above a bloody battle, a broken-hearted girl crying in the rain).
SENSORY DESCRIPTORS:
Sight: panting dogs, people sweating through their clothes, animals and people more lethargic than usual, a pale cloudless sky, a general decrease of animals and people outside for long periods of time (at playgrounds, exercising, at the park, etc.)…
Smell: hot air, asphalt, sweat
Taste: n/a
Touch: clothes sticking to the body, sweat slicking the skin almost immediately upon stepping foot outside, hot air rolling over you as if you were standing in front of an oven, sunburn…
Sound: the crunch of dry grass under your feet, air conditioners and oscillating fans blowing full-blast, weather reports issuing from TVs and radios…
EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS:
Mood: Heat has an escalating effect on emotions. Long-term heat makes people crankier, impatient, and short-tempered. Violent acts often increase during a prolonged heat wave. Being uncomfortable without knowing when it will end and being powerless to do anything about it can…
Symbolism: oppression, sin/punishment…
Possible Cliches: the heat wave that builds throughout the story, only to break at the climax or point of revelation…
Don’t be afraid to use the weather to add contrast. Unusual pairings, especially when drawing attention to the character’s emotions, is a powerful trigger for tension. Consider how the bleak mood of a character is even more noticeable as morning sunlight dances across the crystals of fresh snow on the walk to work. Or how the feeling of betrayal is so much more poignant on a hot summer day. Likewise, success or joy can be hampered by a cutting wind or drizzling sleet, foreshadowing conflict to come.
Weather is a powerful tool, helping to foreshadow events and steer the emotional mood of any scene.
Need more detail regarding this weather element? Good news! This thesaurus has been integrated into our new online library at One Stop For Writers. There, not only has the information in each entry been enhanced and expanded, we’ve also added scenarios for adding conflict and tension. The entire thesaurus is also cross-referenced with our many other descriptive collections for easy searchability. Registration is free, so if you’re interested in seeing a sampling of the fully updated Weather and Earthly Phenomenon Thesaurus, head on over to One Stop.
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
I hate to be pushy seeing as you two obviously have lives of your own to lead … but when are we going to see all these other Thesauruses in books that we can buy and keep on our shelves and take to bed every night????
I know some of them are not as long as your original Positive/Negative Trait Thesauruses but perhaps you could combine two or three together into a book. Or just publish them as slimmer volumes. I know I for one would buy every single one of them!
Thanks so much!
Don’t forget sinus torture! There isn’t enough bottled water and chap stick in the world for some of our blasted So. Cal heat waves.
Whenever I think of heat waves in film there are two movies that come to mind: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, where the summer temperatures mirror the psychological boil that’s coming to a head in all the characters; and Body Heat: sexual misadventures in sweaty south Florida.
Good post. I will refer back to this, this month as my current mg is set in the heat of the summer!
So true! I don’t think I use weather nearly as much as I could.
Oh yes, definitely should have included the sweaty taste. Thanks for that tip!
Great post, Becca! I could practically feel the heat radiating from it. Whew!
P.S. I second Matthew’s comment. 🙂
I love it that you include the mood, symbolism and cliches with these entries. 🙂
I tell you, with WINTER breathing down our necks here in Calgary…I could SO USE A HEAT WAVE right now. I think Becca and I should switch houses for a few months every year!
Angela
My least favorite weather is the
heat wave. Lol. Of course, I don’t
care for the cold either. I guess I
just like the temps mild. Sigh. That
time of years almost gone here.
Awesome! I could use a heat wave right about now! Great job with this.
Thanks for some of these reminders–I have major heat in my story and I think I took out the part where my mc’s clothes are sticking to her…better fix that.
Love the animals getting lethargic, too. So true.
As a fellow Wordie, I must say that I love this post and the site! Very useful, very evocative. Thanks a bunch.
~Rose Anderson
One potential taste might be the saltiness of sweat that drips into the mouth, because when it’s hot enough, you can never wipe all of it away.
Another great entry!
Interesting entry and something I’ve never consciously thought about. Thinking back over all my manuscripts, I realize that I never wrote any weather into the first drafts and kept track of seasons only as part of the chronology (occasionally holidays appear).
However, I can think of several occasions where I went back and added weather in revisions, to enhance mood, primarily, but also to provide catalyst for certain events.
Brainstorming a new story now … I’m going to think about weather from the beginning and see what role it might play. Great post!